Refusal & Discipline: Racialized Schooling in East Texas

• In Event: Classrooms Under Fire: Teacher Well-Being, Student Belonging, and the Politics of Schooling

Abstract

This critical ethnography explores Black students’ perspectives of racialized discipline in a small city in East Texas. While decades of research examine racial disparities in discipline, a dearth of research has examined the experiences of Black youth and Black educators in the context of small, southern, conservative cities. By centering the voice of Black students who are most marginalized by the schooling process, this study connects racialized discipline to the criminalization of Black youth refusal. Using circles as a method rooted in the Black liberatory fantasy (Dumas & ross, 2016), this study offers a conceptual and methodological contribution to the field of education policy.

Author

• Cecelia Jordan, University of Texas at Austin