Punishing or Supporting School Girls? Race, Gender, Class, and Multi-Dimensional Control of High School Girls

• In Event: 4340 - Children, Youth and Institutions

Abstract

The 1980s brought a sharp upturn in punitive practices in U.S. schools. One negative result of harsh school discipline is that poor students of color have been punished at disproportionate rates, with the racial disproportionality in sanctions being especially dramatic among girls. Some argue that support services might undermine race, class, and gender inequalities in punitive exclusion, although there are questions about whether and how support services might mitigate these inequalities. During a 13-year ethnography of responses to girls’ rule violations (especially violence) in a high school in Oahu, Hawai‘i, I found that school staff and girls had conflicting definitions of school safety. Consequently, girls were left alone to defend themselves from race-, gender-, and class-based demoralizations, and if girls relied on physical aggression to protect themselves, they were often punished and referred to therapeutic programs. Therapeutic support blunted some harsh edges of punishment for individual girls, but therapy did not address the larger inequalities giving rise to girls’ outbursts. Insights from critical race theory and intersectional and black feminist theories are used to explain the processes through which multiple inequalities are advanced in the punitive and therapeutic responses to the girls in this study.

Author

• Katherine Irwin, University of Hawaii-Manoa