Analysis Of The Article ' School 's Discipline For Girls ' Essay

High school is often considered a microcosm of society. Beliefs, social order, and current issues present themselves through student’s interactions and the environment they learn in. One of the oldest and still prevalent issues in the United States today is race and equality. So it is no surprise when racial issues are exposed in public education. Although many believe the civil rights era fixed most discrimination, racism remains in schools. Even after court ordered integration, classroom disparities have led to harmful segregation to continue within schools.

Race and racism continue to exist in our world, and with the assistance of white privilege it becomes increasingly difficult to find a solution. Beverly Daniel Tatum’s book, “Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?” provides an understanding of why race and racism continue to operate in our world. Tatum effectively answers the question she poses as the title of her book; moreover, I agree with her perception of Affirmative Action and the word racist, but I do not agree with the definition of racism in her book.

The first reading “Unaccounted Foundations: Black Girls, Anti- Black Racism, and Punishment in Schools” by Connie Wun explores the use of punishment in the educational institutions in order to highlight the racial formations theory that states that race is a permanent fixture but its criteria and implications are fluid over time. Although African American students are seen as a minority, they still make up a large percentage of the victims of formal discipline within schools for violent acts like fighting and nonviolent acts like chewing gum in class. This range of punishment creates a justification for punishing both boys and girls of color. This reading reminds me of the educational institution as another peculiar institution that produces

Tragically, some poorly performing schools accommodate as pipelines to prison for youths. But black people in America have an opulent history of resisting the efforts to keep them uneducated, including slaves learning in secret, the elevate of ebony colleges and universities, court battles, the ebony history kinetics, Liberation Schools in the 1960s, and community-predicated academic and mentorship programs that avail our youths prosper. Once formal schooling begins, inequalities continue. More than 140,000 students were held back in kindergarten in the 2011-2012 school year. Black students are more likely to be held back, despite mounting research showing that holding back children doesn’t benefit them socially or academically and makes them more likely to drop out later. Retention rates for students hit a high in ninth grade, when 34 percent of students held back are black. While 12 percent of black students are held back in ninth grade, just 4 percent of white students are, according to the U.S. Department of Education's Civil Rights Data Collection. When all grade levels are combined, black students are nearly three times more likely to be held back as their white peers. There is no surer way to get a whoop of appreciation from a Negro consultation than to affirm how strong black people are, how we have survived. As the title of a popular motivational book for African American English puts

My mother’s valuable life lessons made me an analytical young scholar and a head-strong campus leader and activist. Now as a graduate student and an educator in an urban school district, I often reflect on the ways my voice was criminalized and stifled voice during my K-12 experience. Watching my Black female students endure the same type of pushout from their teachers like I did, I began to question what our educational systems are doing to our girls. Seeking answers, I soon grew frustrated with the lack of gender and race based studies for Black girls in urban school settings. We were trapped in the juncture of race and gender—where studies on Black youth focus primarily on issues encountered by Black boys and the studies on girls gives attention to the challenges faced by White girls. Because of the absence of information on Black girls, many often make the assumption that Black girls are not up against some unique challenges of their own—which is far from the

With the creation of affirmative action policy, the election of the United States’ first African American President, and debate concerning reparations for slavery, twenty-first century America appears to have largely disowned its iniquitous history seated in centuries-long mistreatment and intolerance of non-white, minority peoples. Though the overt designs of slavery and Jim Crow no longer mare the American cultural landscape, the covert racist and classist machinations of bygone individual agents and national policies persist—though in lesser forms—within the nation’s paramount cultural institution: its education system. African American and Hispanic students consistently score lower on standardized exams—which determine grade advancement, college admission, and professional success--than white students (Ford).

Racism in schools is an ongoing problem that requires everyone to take action because teachers and staff aren’t doing anything about it. It is essential for the public to understand because African American students are treated unfairly in their schools, and that’s very immoral.

Notable psychologist Viktor E. Frankl once stated: “When we are no longer able to change a situation - we are challenged to change ourselves.” Dramatic and serious change is difficult because when predictability disappears, so does our human sense of safety. While it may be grueling and exhausting, change is essential when a problem needs to be battled head-on. As a society, we need to change the way racial inequalities have been set up and the way we go about our lives. Racism has a large effect on minorities nationwide daily, and it can often go unnoticed or be incorrectly identified. But what truly is racism in America, today? Racism is still an extremely prevalent subject in today’s society, based on specific phenomena that affects black youth and perpetuates the false veil of brute equality.

In this excerpt I will be touching on how Brayan, a 10 year old, was experiencing racism in a mostly white populated school in the late 2000s and early 2010s. I will provide examples from different times in his life when he experienced any racial behavior shown towards him or any other of his classmates during the period that he attended middle school. I will also provide outside examples of racism occurring in today’s world, with different sources. I will also explain how this experience helped shaped his view on different aspects of life and how it changed the way he approached life in general. His experienced help him become better as a person and as his life progressed he never showed a certain individual favoritism because he knows

The media has conditioned society into thinking that racial stereotypes are the norm. “Irish people are drunks” and “Asians are good at math” are all classic examples of common racial stereotypes. Author Michael Omi of “In Living Color: Race and American Culture” asserts how media presentation of minorities establishes people perspectives of “these groups”. But where do these racial stereotypes at the media fingertips originate from? It comes from the establishment of America oppressing others. Minorities has been feeling oppression from the “dominant race” for generations. However, it has gotten better? No, it has not. Minorities, more importantly blacks are being discriminated in institutions; in a multitude of southern states they cannot vote without being accused of voter fraud, and schools are inferential racist. As sserted in “Actin’ White” author Stuart Buck tackles the pros and cons of desegregating the school system. Buck expresses how the lack of representation in high level school officials can affect black children negatively. By highlighting stereotypes throughout the media, Omi addresses how “inferential racism” is seen throughout daily “intuitional life” which Buck strengthens in his article when he confronts the negative repercussions of desegregation.

In today's society, people of color have been conditioned to suppress and deny any form of racism. This sort of silence perpetuates oppression and racism by letting it happen over and over again. From the moment they are born, people of color are both advertently and inadvertently told to ignore and deny any forms of racist acts they or people like them may endure. Then when these inhumane acts occur and no one acknowledges them the society believes everything is alright. Men and women are being taught to be silent and disregard these actions in many institutions, including schools. The educational system plays a critical role in both shaping and challenging this silence, as schools have the power to influence and manipulate what tomorrow’s

Blacks are being discriminated throughout the country by their peers in school and by their teachers and principals. A black fifth grader came home one day and told his parents he was being called a “nigger.” He was the only black child in his class and it started when the class started reading a book which contained the word “nigger.” A fifth grade class reading a book that contains such words can cause them to become racist in the future. Reading a book that has racist material at their age can make them develop a racist attitude towards blacks and other races. This bad attitude towards black children can destroy their self-esteem and prides, making them feel that their life has no value and that they’re less than everybody else. Children learning slang terms like “nigger” and bad representations of black people can change their view towards blacks for the rest of their lives and it can even make them feel hostile towards blacks, an incident of this occurred at the University of Mississippi. Three college students at the University of Mississippi hung a

The assistant principal of an elementary school was giving Pedro A. Noguera, the executive director of the Metropolitan Center for Urban Education, a tour when he noticed a young black boy standing outside his office. The man pointed to the boy and declared, “You know, there’s a prison cell in San Quentin waiting for that boy.” Shocked, Noguera inquired about what the school was doing to help the eight-year old. Noguera discovered that the boy would be suspended and his schoolwork delivered to his house weekly. The assistant principal explained, “I can’t allow one kid to take up so much of my time that I end up ignoring the needs of others” (“Introduction” xxii). Sadly, what this boy experienced is not uncommon. From a young age, black students are not expected to succeed. In a 1962 letter, James Baldwin tells his nephew that he was “not expected to aspire to excellence” (“A Letter”). This detrimental assumption, along with the neglect and marginalization that the boy experienced, create a racial achievement gap before students are given the chance to succeed. There is a clear achievement gap between black and white students in the public school system of the United States due to a high concentration of nonwhite students being taught by less qualified teachers with a lack of resources. However, through teacher collaboration, student-teacher trust, mixed-level classrooms and communication with parents, the achievement gap can begin to be narrowed.

An interesting dynamic in the school system that covertly guise colorblindness is the conceptual language to describe whiteness and blackness (Kumasi, 2011). Society For instance, non-discriminatory language such school achievements, intelligent, beauty etc., represent whiteness, whereas, language like gangs, welfare recipients and, basketball represent the marginalized youth of color (As cited in Kumasi, 2011, p200). These words are created through the social construct of how America operates, as individuals are categorized. This is manifested through false media representation, negative labels, false stories, and what constitutes a favored racial identity (Kumasi, 2011). This is another barrier that stripes youth of color of their humanness,

To begin, a white woman named Erin Gruwell decides to take up teaching at Woodrow Wilson High School two years following the 1992 Los Angeles Riots. She arrives on the first day to find out that her class is full of “at-risk” high school students— some of which are just out of juvenile hall and have very poor grades. These are kids who have segregated themselves into racial groups so badly that they can’t even sit near each other in the same classroom or walk by each other without getting into fights.