On The February 19th Dr Monique W Morris, ed.D came to give a conference At the University of San Diego . She is a writer, but also professor at St Mary’s College, She also has taught at the University of San Francisco and California State University of Sacramento. Award winning author she is the founder and president of an association called National Black Women’s Justice Institute, that advocate for Black women’s right but especially young Black girls, in regards to the equality of educations, and justice giving to them in our society. During this conference, Dr Morris introduced us to couple major team of her book called “Pushout: The Criminalization of Black Girls in Schools” in the form of an open Inquiry conversation.
In this analysis, Dr Morris firstly highlight the importance of considering race,gender,education and Justice as social construct that are distinctly separated but related. In this way, we get a deeper understanding on social policies that directly affect the black community .Social policies more often made in urgency, based on the “Fear of politicians”. Furthermore on an historical perspective, young people in America get extraordinary punishment and can be in contact to juvenile court at a very early age. However, Her presentation emphasized on the “Understanding of education”. Juvenile Delinquency as well as education has been treated has a work of discipline almost like a punishment rather than a work of prevention. This understanding of education and Justice combine with the inequality raised by gender and race, makes it really unfair to black girls as they are defined as “Black women” sometimes long time before puberty.
On the other hand, there are multiples of policies, practices, condition facilitating the criminalization of Black Girls define as the “School to prison pipeline” by Dr Morris.
During history, suspension from school slightly decreased, while the number of arrest increased as well as experiencing restrain. Giving us various example: Shai, a black girl in a white space, Deja that did not respect the dress code, Stacy that had a tendency to fight, Paris was exploited has a transgender, Jennifer who experienced sexual violence at home. By presenting all this different black girls with different drawing, we get a better perception of the different profil incarcerated and we understand better the injustice that this person goes through. As previously said black girl are often considered grown way longer before adulthood. This process of adultification usually occurs between 9 and 13. It is actually very interesting as we’ve seen in class, historically black people have always been more adultified from their early age in order to obey to a settle of rules. Dr Morris Ed explanation on the “disturbing school law” surprised me as I’ve never heard of those law before. In fact, this set of laws has for aim to punish bad behavior in a classroom, which in my opinion could be handle through simple school disciplinary action. Moreover, what is considered a bad behavior under the law can be something pitty such as being “obnoxious”, and make it really unclear on the way it has to be enforced by law. This set of law comes in effect between the age of 10 and 14 while the increase presence of law enforcement at school is usually between the age of 13 and 17.
The involvement of the Juvenile Court on school disciplinary issues is to me the most significant example of this society that criminalize every behavior that could be seen as deviant, with a wide set of law that doesn’t promote human flourishing but rather create inequality as they are unjust and can’t be rationally enforced. Consequently, the first community to suffer from this bad policies are the black community, especially black women. To reform this system but also maintain safety for all, Dr Morris suggest that we considered school as center of healing, engagement but also center of emergence and co-involvement” She also mention on the importance of free-space for black girl. The creation of different classes where critical media literacy would take place is a good idea as “Media is a bad tool that teach us the cultural norms”, but also culturally responsive programming to promote sister-hood.
Morris, Monique W. Pushout: The Criminalization of Black Girls in Schools. New York: New Press, 2018.