In 1954 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled their milestone decision in the landmark Brown v Board of Education of Topeka case: “Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.”
Fast-forward 53 years. Are educational institutions racially equal? Whether or not their “facilities” are fairly balanced is debatable; however, the question of whether African-American students receive harsher disciplinary punishments-in contrast to their White, Latino, and Asian peers-is not.
Howard Witt suggests in a chicagotribune.com article that a decline in “court-ordered” integration of suburban schools, coupled with the “gradual re-segregation” of inner-city schools in recent years, has not made much of a difference in disciplinary rates. “Even in urban schools where most of the students are black, black youths are still disciplined out of proportion to their population, the data show. In Washington, D.C., for example, black students are 84 percent of the public school population but 97 percent of the students who are suspended.”
Take these chicagotribune.com statistics for example:
• “In the average New Jersey public school, African-American students are almost 60 times as likely as white students to be expelled for serious disciplinary infractions.”• “In Minnesota, black students are suspended 6 times as often as whites.”• “In Iowa, blacks make up just 5 percent of the statewide public school enrollment but account for 22 percent of the students who get suspended.”
To what can we attribute the inequitable distribution of punishments of African-American students? Perhaps there are many explanations.
One ongoing obstacle, according to Dr. Conrad Worrill, PhD, Director, Jacob Carruthers’ Center for Inner City Studies, is White racism.
“I would attribute it to the system of White supremacy embedded in the institutional fabric of American society…In different periods in history, [it has] manifested itself in a variety of manners.”
He elaborates, “I think we have to [define] White supremacy, which is a philosophy that somehow one race is superior to another… This idea has not been eradicated from American society, and so now we are witnessing the reemergence, through school disciplinary actions, of young Black males being disciplined disproportionately to other students in school populations.”
When asked whether he believes that African-American kids being subjected to stricter punishment at school is a future predictor of trouble with the law as adults (Re: Jena Six), he told the Independent:
“If you look at the statistics throughout, you would see that [African Americans] are disproportionately incarcerated, disproportionately arrested, and we are disproportionately given higher sentences, so this is just a part of the challenges we still face in America- to rid the system that’s driven by White supremacy, [which has] manifest itself in racist behavior on the part of those who control institutions, and in this case educational institutions.”
Dr. Worrill makes a very compelling argument, and there is a large body of research to back him up. There are, however, differing opinions as to the cause of the disparity in punishment.
Josh Kinsler, Department of Economics, Duke University, said in a 2006 research report titled, Racial Disparities in School Discipline: Racism or Rational Choice?: “Despite the myriad of potential explanations for the differences in punishment, the overarching theme in the education literature is that schools target black students for discipline as result of racial bias. The general public and child advocacy groups appear to have reached the same conclusion.”
Kinsler’s research reached a different conclusion. “Disciplinary data from North Carolina in 2001 indicates that black students are more likely to receive out-of-school suspensions and receive longer sentences when punished. However, the cause of this discipline gap is not pernicious bias on the part of schools, but is the result of varying disciplinary policies across schools. Schools serving higher proportions of minority students tend to use harsher measures of punishment when compared to schools that serve fewer minority students. Thus, the disparity in discipline reflects strategic punishment on the part of schools.”
In spite of the large body of research in the area indicating that race does play a role in the unequal distribution of punishments for African-American students, and the efforts of community leaders, politicians, and activist to address the issue, it appears that the problem is getting worse.
Dr. Conrad Worrill agrees. “So were seeing a trend. Were seeing a trend also in the nooses that we have witnessed, that have been placed in work places; that have been placed on college campuses; have been hung on professors’ door’s at Columbia [university]; and of course the most famous one, of note, is the noose hung around the tree in Jena [Louisiana].”
Some researchers believe that the “socioeconomic conditions” which many African-American children come from contribute to their “delinquency.”
“Yet black students are no more likely to misbehave than other students from the same social and economic environments, research studies have found,” according to the chicagotribune.com article.
Dr. Worrill believes this attitude is indicative of a problem in our educational institutions. “I would say that this is consistent with white administrators, who are playing out there racism in the observation of Black children in school districts.”
He appears to have support from other researchers. For example, Dr. Russell Skiba, a professor of educational psychology at Indiana University whose research focuses on race and discipline issues in public schools, told the chicagotribune.com: “There simply isn’t any support for the notion that, given the same set of circumstances, African-American kids act out to a greater degree than other kids. In fact,” he continues, “the data indicate that African-American students are punished more severely for the same offense, so clearly something else is going on. We can call it structural inequity or we can call it institutional racism.”
In light of this information the question is: what can be done to reverse the trend? Dr. Worrill suggests that the American public school system is a good place to start.
“I think [that] one of the things that is missing in the American public school system is the continued absence of African-American children seeing themselves in the curriculum… One of the projects that we’ve been working on for many years is to restructure public school curriculum to more accurately reflect the contributions of African people, and African-American people, in all subjects.”
The media can also play a role in addressing the disparate punishment rates African-American kids are subjected to by drawing attention to the issue. Some believe that the media was remiss in its original coverage (or lack thereof) of the “Jena Six” story.
“It’s late, but it’s not too late, for all of America to act,” says Laura Flanders of the Thenation.com. “In fact, truly massive public attention is needed right now as a white backlash builds in Louisiana. While Air America and National Public Radio move on, David Duke and his radio listeners are all over the Jena story. Last week, the former Ku Klux Klan leader announced his support for Jena’s white residents (who voted overwhelmingly for him when he ran for Louisiana governor in 1991.).”
The preponderance of the research data on institutionalized campus racism suggests that it is not a myth. It is a reality for millions of African-American students on campuses throughout America. Yet there is hope for the future that this injustice can and will be eradicated.