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An example of systemic racism by which Black boys are disproportionately “funneled out of public schools and into the juvenile and criminal justice systems”. It results from a combination of bias and policy. Bias—whether implicit from culture and media portrayals or explicit from racist beliefs—causes teachers and administrators to see age-appropriate behavior as reasonable in white children, but dangerous in Black children and especially Black boys. Teachers and administrators have broad discretion when it comes to discipline, which gives bias a lot of room to work. From a report from the Council of State Governments, “only three percent of the disciplinary actions were for conduct in which state law mandated suspensions and expulsions; the rest were made at the discretion of school officials primarily in response to violations of local schools’ conduct codes.”
Then, due to “zero tolerance” policies, children thus identified are frequently removed from schools due to suspension or expulsion (which happens 3x more to Black children than white). This leads to a reinforcing feedback loop where students kept from attending school fall behind (“Repeated suspensions and expulsions predicted poor academic outcomes.”), have trouble adjusting, and are ultimately more likely to end up in the juvenile justice system.
Where intersectionality comes into play, the CSG report also found that “African-American students and those with particular educational disabilities were disproportionately disciplined for discretionary actions.”