BOOK EXCERPT
Making Black Lives Matter at School The national movement has four key demands to eliminate racism in education. BY JESSE HAGOPIAN
times the rate of white students nationally and Black girls are suspended at six times the rate of white girls. While Black girls make up only 16 percent of the female student population, they account for nearly one-third of all girls referred to law enforcement and more than one-third of all female school-based arrests. Howard Zehr, a professor of restorative justice at Eastern Mennonite University, explains that punitive approaches to discipline, known as retributive justice, ask these questions: With this understanding, Black Lives Matter at School nationally has issued four core de• What rule has been broken? mands to disrupt this anti-Black web of policies, • Who is to blame? practices, and beliefs in the education system. • What punishment do they deserve? The first demand is to end “zero tolerance disciBy contrast, the Black Lives Matter at School pline” and replace it with restorative justice. movement has called for the funding and imBlack youth have been disproportionately plementation of restorative justice practices to suspended and expelled from school since the replace retributive and zero tolerance approaches. explosion of so-called zero tolerance policies modeled on the racist “war on drugs.” As Mi- These restorative practices are used proactively chelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow, in schools to build healthy relationships, not just reactively after a conflict arises. explained in an interview: Some of these restorative practices include “Many people imagine that zero tolerance the use of peace circles, peer mediation, comrhetoric emerged within the school environment, munity conferencing, and trauma-informed apbut it’s not true. In fact, the Advancement Project published a report showing that one of the proaches to teaching. Zehr explains that when earliest examples of zero tolerance language in conflicts do arise, a restorative justice approach school discipline manuals was a cut-and-paste asks these questions: job from a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administra• Who has been hurt and what are their tion manual.” needs? “The wave of punitiveness that washed over • Who is obligated to address these needs? the United States with the rise of the drug war • Who has a “stake” in this situation and and the get-tough movement really flooded our what is the process of involving them in schools. Schools, caught up in this maelstrom, making things right and preventing future began viewing children as criminals or suspects, occurrences? rather than as young people with an enormous Asking these questions holds the potential to amount of potential, struggling in their own ways and their own difficult context to make it build nurturing communities rather than to just react to disruptions of community and resort to and hopefully thrive.” Black students are suspended at almost four punishment.
Advocates for justice know that racism in the schools isn’t only a product of openly racist and bigoted people. It is an institutional problem, rather than a merely individual one. As Black Lives Matter co-founder Opal Tometi has pointed out, “Anti-Black racism operates at a society-wide level and colludes in a seamless web of policies, practices, and beliefs to oppress and disempower Black communities.”
From Black Lives Matter at School: An Uprising for Educational Justice, edited by Denisha Jones and Jesse Hagopian, published December 1, 2020, by Haymarket Books and excerpted with permission. Excerpt is from the introductory chapter written by Hagopian. The book is available for purchase at https://www. haymarketbooks.org/books/1607black-lives-matter-at-school. Jesse Hagopian, an editor for the magazine Rethinking Schools, teaches ethnic studies at Seattle’s Garfield High School and is a member of the national Black Lives Matter at School steering committee.
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