The historic decision in the Brown vs. Board of Education case brought all races together in our schools and society, but, unfortunately, divides in our education system still continue to this day, particularly when it comes to the disproportionate amounts of expulsions and suspensions for students of color.
In fact, a 2015 study done by The Center for the Study of Race and Equity in Education revealed that although black students make up only 24% of public school enrollment in K-12 in thirteen Southern states (Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia and West Virginia), they represent 48% of students suspended and 49% of students expelled in the same states. Hillsborough County itself didn’t do much better in the same study, as African-American students make up 21.5% of the population, but 42% of district suspensions.
Black students are suspended at a higher rate, possibly because they are more likely to be perceived as older and less innocent as their white counterparts, even at the age of ten, according to a study on the dehumanizing of black children, published in the APA’s Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
As sad as it is, this country does still have strong racial biases towards its youth. Discrimination, subconscious or intentional, weakens the growth of black youth substantially, even for children as young as preschoolers. A 2014 U.S Civil Rights Data Collection report revealed that black preschoolers represent 48% of out-of-school suspension while being only 18% of the enrollment. Such disparity at such a young age reaffirms the presence of an implicit bias in the American education system.
A possible cause for the disparities in this data is cultural deficit thinking, which states that the poor performance of individuals from a certain ethnicity is due to their cultural background. While there are certainly cases in which the student deserves their punishment, implicit bias may cause administrators and teachers to have negative feelings or attitudes towards students of certain races or ethnicities, and, by extension, they are more likely to punish them more severely. In other words, it’s not that the student was completely innocent all the time, but rather that students of color are typically punished more severely than their white peers.
On top of the immediate issues of this way of thinking, cultural deficit thinking also reinforces the stereotype that black students are lazy or disrespectful simply because they are black. Cultural deficit thinking subconsciously strengthens the racial bias that many people have, and could be the reason for the supposed racial bias in schools.
There are multiple ways to combat bias in schools, including providing service training that exposes all teachers and administrators to information about cultural deficit thinking, revising discipline policies to provide clear definitions of infractions, and creating a discipline supervisor in schools to ensure that punishments are distributed equitably.
Jordyn Dees // Co-Opinion Editor
