Black Students in Harm's Way: Dismantling a Racial Quarantine Fraught With Entrapment, Violence, and Opportunity Hoarding

• In Event: The Role of Cultural Capital and Race in Urbana Schools' Post-Pandemic Outbreak

Abstract

Through 133 interviews with Black youth in Baltimore, we uncover a persistent antiblack disposition that treats Black youth as embodied prisoners, structurally cutting them off from quality resources, opportunities, and educational experiences that humanize their presence within their schools. These interviews revealed that the physical conditions inside school buildings were worse than or similar to some prisons and that the public transportation used to get students to and from school increases their chances of exposure to trauma and interpersonal violence. Building on the work of scholars investigating habitus, racial structures, and BlackCrit, we conceptualize an antiblack-lasting disposition rooted in slavery and routed through a racial quarantine that has been socially constructed and state-supported.

Authors

• Richard Lofton, Johns Hopkins University

• Justin Hill, Johns Hopkins University

• Joshua C. Schuschke, Johns Hopkins University