INTRODUCTION
Black feminist scholars and activists keep ringing the alarm about the inequities between men and women (Collins Reference Collins2005; Harris-Perry Reference Harris-Perry2011; Haynes Reference Haynes2016; Patton et al., Reference Patton, Crenshaw, Haynes and Watson2016; Wun Reference Wun2018); they note that in order to adequately address the social and economic conditions of the Black community we have to pay more attention to the well-being of Black girls and women. While Black women’s educational gains are often touted as a sign of success and well-being (Patton and Croom, Reference Patton, Croom, Patton and Croom2017), statistics rarely relay that only 25.2% of Black women complete their degrees within four years; and 43.9% within six years (NCES 2018). Although they experience successes in education and entry-level employment when compared to Black men, Black women are not quickly admitted into positions of power (Dixson and Chambers, Reference Dixson, Chambers, Bush, Chambers and Walpole2012). Furthermore, Black women earn less than White women at each educational level (Women’s Bureau 2016). Alarmingly, Mariko Chang (Reference Chang2010) found that the median wealth of single Black women in the United States is just $100. Additionally, Black women consistently deal with assaults on Black motherhood (Roberts Reference Roberts1999), negative portrayals in the media (Collins Reference Collins2005), the disproportionate impact of domestic violence (Petrosky et al., 2017), and police brutality (Crenshaw et al., Reference Crenshaw, Ritchie, Anspach, Gilmer and Harris2015a).
In 2019, at least six Black women were killed by or after encounters with police (Washington Post, 2020). Emblazoned in the psyche of many Black Americans are the names and stories of Trayvon Martin, Oscar Grant, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, Eric Garner, and George Floyd. However, as many activists and scholars have attested, Black men are not the only ones suffering from police violence and brutality, yet the public is less likely to know the names and stories of the Black women impacted. Kimberlé Crenshaw, legal scholar and co-founder of the African American Policy Forum, has been a valiant voice in stressing the plight of African American girls and the ways that they are diminished in comparison to the spotlights offered to Black boys (Crenshaw Reference Crenshaw2014). Crenshaw and the #SayHerName campaign remind us that Breonna Taylor, Mya Hall, Rekia Boyd, Miriam Carey, Michelle Cusseaux, Shelly Frey, Kayla Moore, and Sandra Bland have all suffered state-sanctioned violence.
These violent police encounters are mirrored in schools. For example, a 16-year-old girl identified in the media as Shakara was flipped and dragged across a classroom in her seat by a police officer at Spring Valley High School, in South Carolina. She and a classmate, Niya Kenny, who filmed the incident, faced misdemeanor charges for disturbing school (Craven Reference Craven2015). In acknowledging how state-sanctioned violence crosses institutional boundaries, scholars have employed the phrase school-to-prison pipeline to refer to “policies and practices that systemically push at-risk youth out of mainstream public schools and into the juvenile or criminal justice systems” (Kim Reference Kim2009/2010, p. 956). Within schools, there is a direct path (arrests and tickets) and indirect path (exclusionary discipline practices such as suspensions and expulsion) to the criminal justice system (Advancement Project 2005).
Much of the discourse on the school-to-prison pipeline is centered around Black boys, and, to a slightly lesser extent, Hispanic boys, despite consistent evidence that Black girls are impacted just as much by exclusionary discipline practices. In a report about the academic success of Black boys, Ivory A. Toldson (Reference Toldson2011) found that 59% of Black boys reported being suspended or expelled from school compared to 43% of Hispanic boys, and 26% White boys. He also found that Black girls were about as likely to be suspended as Hispanic boys (also see Fabelo et al., Reference Fabelo, Plotkin, Carmichael, Miner and Booth2011). While boys of all racial and ethnic groups are more likely to be disciplined, the disparities between African American and White girls are far greater than the disparities between male student groups (Crenshaw et al., Reference Crenshaw, Ocen and Nanda2015b). Across the United States, Black girls are disciplined six times as much as White girls (DOE Office of Civil Rights, 2014). Additionally, the rate of growth in suspension rates for Black girls is higher than any other group (Losen and Skiba, Reference Losen and Skiba2010; Wallace et al., Reference Wallace, Goodkind, Wallace and Bachman2007). Jamila J. Blake and colleagues (Reference Blake, Butler, Lewis and Darensbourg2011) found that Black girls were overrepresented in all disciplinary sanctions. In particular, they were twice as likely to receive both in-school and out-of-school suspension compared to other girls. Often these sanctions occur disproportionately for defiance, disruptive behavior, disrespect, and profanity (Annamma et al., Reference Annamma, Anyon, Joseph, Farrar, Greer, Downing and Simmons2019; Mendez and Knoff, Reference Mendez and Knoff2003).
Within the school-to-prison pipeline discourse, there is a hyper-focus on Black boys, which has resulted in interventions at the local, state, and national levels with little thought about how the punitive practices or even the responses to them might impact Black girls (Annamma et al., Reference Annamma, Anyon, Joseph, Farrar, Greer, Downing and Simmons2019; Morris Reference Morris2012). The experiences of young women of color are obscured by academic and policy interests explicitly focused on Black boys (Lopez Reference Lopez2002; Osler et al., Reference Osler, Street, Vincent and Lall2002). This remains worrisome for several reasons. First, research has shown that negative attitudes towards school and school failure are powerful in predicting the delinquency of girls (Simkins et al., Reference Simkins, Hirsch, Horvat and Moss2004). Second, the single largest predictor of later arrests among adolescent girls is having been suspended, expelled, or held back during the middle school years (Wald and Losen, Reference Wald and Losen2003). Third, exclusionary discipline is associated with teenage pregnancy (Clark et al., Reference Clark, Petras, Kellam, Ialongo and Poduska2003). Finally, girls who leave school early are less able to access work and training than boys (Archer et al., Reference Archer, Halsall and Hollingworth2007). Given the impact of the media on public opinion and policy, this research seeks to understand how race and gender fit into national media coverage of school discipline. Specifically, I ask: to what extent are Black girls included or excluded from the national print media coverage of the school-to-prison pipeline? In answering this question, I seek to “ring the alarm” and extend the literature on the school-to-prison pipeline by interrogating how the popular discourse and the resultant policies and practices of exclusionary discipline are raced and gendered.
REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE
Within the indirect path of the school-to-prison pipeline, exclusionary discipline, meaning suspension and/or expulsions, is generally associated with adverse educational outcomes. These include lagging achievement for students of color, weakened bonds between students and schools, students becoming less invested in school rules and course work and less motivated toward academic achievement, and future involvement in criminal justice system (Arcia Reference Arcia2006; Fabelo et al., Reference Fabelo, Plotkin, Carmichael, Miner and Booth2011; Gregory et al., Reference Gregory, Skiba and Noguera2010). Despite these negative impacts of exclusionary discipline, the number of school suspensions nearly doubled between 1974 and 1999 (Thomas and Stevenson, Reference Thomas and Stevenson2009) and, by 2002, suspensions become the most common form of school discipline. This is despite mounting evidence that they are not effective (Fenning and Rose, Reference Fenning and Rose2007; Skiba and Peterson, Reference Skiba and Peterson2003).
The statistics on exclusionary discipline reflect a distinct racial and gender pattern. Black students face exclusionary discipline at rates more than double White students (Fabelo et al., Reference Fabelo, Plotkin, Carmichael, Miner and Booth2011; Gregory et al., Reference Gregory, Cornell and Fan2011; Toldson Reference Toldson2011). Moreover, within gender groups, 84% of Black males had at least one discretionary violation compared to 59% of White males, and 70% of Black girls had at least one discretionary violation compared to 37% of White girls (Fabelo et al., Reference Fabelo, Plotkin, Carmichael, Miner and Booth2011). While both Black boys and girls are disproportionately impacted by the school-to-prison pipeline, many studies on exclusionary school discipline are not reported with respect to gender, but couch their introduction, conclusion, and implications with respect to the impact that exclusionary discipline has on Black boys (Annamma et al., Reference Annamma, Anyon, Joseph, Farrar, Greer, Downing and Simmons2019; Haynes Reference Haynes2016). The work of Monique Morris (Reference Morris2012, 2015) suggests that the lack of an intersectional lens obscures the disciplinary experiences of Black girls. Specifically, while Black males may be subjected to exclusionary discipline as a result of their perceived threat to public safety, Black girls are often disciplined because of their nonconformity to White femininity.
The Erasure of Black Girls
According to Blake and colleagues (Reference Blake, Butler, Lewis and Darensbourg2011), the disciplinary experiences of girls are studied routinely in relation to boys, and their experiences rarely mentioned outside of descriptive statistics. For example, Chance W. Lewis and colleagues (Reference Lewis, Butler, Bonner and Joubert2010) examined the discipline patterns for African American boys in a Midwestern school district, yet they describe their study as examining “this school district’s responses to discipline, and disciplinary actions meted out to African American students and the resulting impact on these students’ academic achievement” (p. 8). In this instance, and throughout their study, the authors use “African American” and “African American males” interchangeably, thus erasing the experiences of Black girls and diminishing the impacts of gender on students’ experiences. They go on to tell the readers that in this school district, Black boys comprise 11% of the student population, but make-up nearly 37% of all boys cited for disciplinary action. These statistics are used to justify a further examination of the disciplinary patterns of Black boys.
Former President Barack Obama’s My Brother’s Keeper (MBK) Initiative, while claiming to be evidenced based, tells an incomplete story. MBK describes the outcomes of Black boys in comparison to White boys. However, these data should only be presented if they have been disaggregated by both race and gender, yet data on girls of color are never included—and rarely, if ever, discussed. MBK’s 90-day interim report makes 114 statements about children and youth of color based on these data. Eighty-nine of those statements (78%) are about children and youth of color undifferentiated by gender. However, Black girls face a majority of the same barriers faced by Black boys; albeit the causes may be different (Morris Reference Morris2012). Heidi Hartmann and colleagues (Reference Hartmann, Childers, Shaw, Sacco-Calderone and Johnson2015) argue, “By excluding girls and young women of color without making a data-based claim for doing so, the initiative and report seem to rely on widely held stereotypes that minority males face the greatest barriers and have the least opportunities” (p. v). This exclusion could lead to disproportionate allocation of philanthropic and public dollars towards addressing the needs of boys and young men of color while the needs of girls continue to go unmet.
Policing Black Femininity
Louise Archer and colleagues (Reference Archer, Halsall and Hollingworth2007) argue that femininity is seen as compatible with education, and therefore, a male-centered gaze misses the manner in which girls disengage from school. The definition of problematic behaviors has traditionally been constructed around the behavior of boys who, when disengaging, exert their masculinity and maintain a public appearance of being disruptive and not working. On the other hand, young women disengage through behaviors such as missing school or pretending to do work while listening to music (Archer et al., Reference Archer, Halsall and Hollingworth2007; Osler et al., Reference Osler, Street, Vincent and Lall2002). In many overcrowded urban schools, feminine traits such as silence and passivity are valued and rewarded (Lopez Reference Lopez2002). This gendered construction of behavior defines girls who disengage from school as anomalies and, therefore, the girls’ disengagement was seen as less pressing (Archer et al., Reference Archer, Halsall and Hollingworth2007).
The construction of femininity is also problematic for Black girls who do not comply with being passive and silent. They must contend with stereotypes that view African American girls as loud and confrontational (Annamma et al., Reference Annamma, Anyon, Joseph, Farrar, Greer, Downing and Simmons2019; Fordham Reference Fordham1993; Morris Reference Morris2007). Failure to conform to race-gender stereotypes may be the cause of the disproportionate discipline of Black girls. Black girls are at a higher risk for disciplinary actions for behaviors such as chewing gum, defiance, dress code violations, and failure to comply with prior discipline (Blake et al., Reference Blake, Butler, Lewis and Darensbourg2011; Smith-Evans et al., Reference Smith-Evans, George, Graves, Kaufmann and Frohlich2014). Similarly, Blake and colleagues (Reference Blake, Butler, Lewis and Darensbourg2011) found that Black girls were most often cited for defiance, inappropriate dress, profane language, and physical aggression—behaviors that challenge traditional (White) standards of femininity and correspond to stereotypical images of Black women. As a result of this “no-win” scenario, too many Black girls have to participate in identity politics that marginalize them or place them into polarizing categories—such as “good” or “ghetto” (Jones Reference Jones2010). These polarizing categories and the ways that they have to navigate them exacerbate stereotypes about Black femininity and place Black girls at risk of being criminalized for not conforming to White middle-class ideas about how females should behave.
Gendered Language
Feminists argue that language has been, and continues to be, a tool of women’s oppression and liberation (Pauwels Reference Pauwels1998; Prewitt-Freilino et al., Reference Prewitt-Freilino, Caswell and Laakso2012). From the myth of the male generic to the use of honorific titles (Miss, Ms., Mrs.) that define women by their relationship to men, language reduces women to the status of subsumed or invisible. Male generics have been defined as linguistic forms that have dual functions: “they are used sex-specifically in reference to male persons and generically in references to mixed groups and people whose sex is unknown or irrelevant” (Stahlberg et al., Reference Stahlberg, Braun, Irmen, Sczensny and Fielder2011, p. 169). While the word man and the pronoun he are supposed to include both men and women, generic male-linked words are often perceived as referring solely to men (Fischer Reference Fischer2009; Stahlberg et al., Reference Stahlberg, Braun, Irmen, Sczensny and Fielder2011). Thus, the dual function of male generics equates maleness and humanity and represents the male as the norm (Spender Reference Spender1990).
According to Dagmar Stahlberg and colleagues (Reference Stahlberg, Braun, Irmen, Sczensny and Fielder2011), female references are marked; that is, expressions referring to women are often formally more complex than expressions involving men. For example, in English, we see the use of female suffixes in words such as heroine or waitress. In representing men as the norm, the English language presents masculinity as the unmarked form, rendering the world male unless proven otherwise (Spender Reference Spender1990). Empirical studies have found that individuals that read material using male generics are more likely to imagine male rather than female characters (Hamilton Reference Hamilton1988; Hyde Reference Hyde1984; Martyna Reference Martyna1980; Switzer Reference Switzer1990). The gendering of activities and gender stereotypes also impact how gender is read with the use of the male generic (Garnham et al., Reference Garnham, Oakhill and Reynolds2002; Gygax et al., Reference Gygax, Gabriel, Sarrasin, Garnham and Oakhill2008; Irmen and Rossberg, Reference Irmen and Rossberg2004; Kidd Reference Kidd1971; Oakhill et al., Reference Oakhill, Garnham and Reynolds2005). Sentences with the generic he were generally interpreted as male but less so when traditional female roles or behaviors such as “emotional” or “teacher” were referenced (Kidd Reference Kidd1971). In a study conducted by Manuel Carreiras and colleagues (Reference Carreiras, Garnham, Oakhill and Cain1996), participants built a representation of gender during reading relying on stereotypes. When a stereotypical gender role is applied to an individual, an inference about the probable gender of that person is made (Ganham et al., 2002). Pascal Gygax and colleagues (Reference Gygax, Gabriel, Sarrasin, Garnham and Oakhill2008) found that “when no mark of gender is provided by role names or their accompanying definite articles, the representation of gender is based on stereotypicality” (p. 480).
THEORETICAL FRAME: FRAMING AND SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIONISM
In investigating the racialized and gendered discourse on the school-to-prison pipeline, this research draws upon theories of Framing and Social Construction. According to Berger and Luckmann (Reference Berger and Luckmann1967), humans socially construct reality through interaction and internalize their realities as real and natural. The media is an ideological tool and thus plays a significant role in the construction of social issues (Binder Reference Binder1993). Furthermore, the way an issue is framed affects public opinion (Chong and Druckman, Reference Chong and Druckman2007; Lakoff Reference Lakoff2004; Lippman Reference Lippman1960). For this research, I situate framing within the broader paradigm of social constructionism (Gamson and Modigiliani, 1980; Gitlin 1980; Van Gorp Reference Van Gorp2007).
Framing may be viewed from the micro or macro-level. At the micro-level, framing refers to how individuals interpret information. Framing at the macro-level refers to the tools journalists use to present complex information in an efficient and accessible manner (Scheufele and Tewksbury, 2007). In other words, framing refers to a central organizing idea or storyline that provides meaning (Gamson and Modigilani, 1987). In simplifying complex ideas, journalists employ frames through the selection, emphasis, and exclusion of ideas, events, and groups (Gitlin 1980). Edward M. Kian (Reference Kian2008) demonstrated the practice of exclusion, arguing that sports media exclude women by rarely covering women in sports and trivialize them by comparing their abilities to men’s, minimizing their accomplishments, or describing them as sex objects.
Beginning with the assumption that each news story has a central organizing theme or frame, Pan Zhongdang and Gerald Kosicki (Reference Zhongdang and Kosicki1993) identified four framing devices: syntactical structure, script structure, thematic structure, and rhetorical structure. First, the syntactical structure, which mirrors an inverted pyramid, involves the sequential organization of structural elements, beginning with the headline, and followed by lead, episodes, background, and closure. Second, the script structure is comprised of storytelling in a recognizable and predictable format. News stories are typically organized by following the prompts of who, what, when, where, why, and how. Third, the thematic structure of an article consists of a hypothesis about a particular issue or topic and presents supporting evidence in the form of examples, quotes, and background information. Finally, the rhetorical structure encompasses the stylistic choices journalists make to elicit vivid imagery and promote the salience of a point.
While frames do not govern how people think, they have the ability to make certain problems appear more salient. Therefore, what is included in a news story is just as important as what is excluded (Watkins Reference Watkins2001). For example, if a story about a Ku Klux Klan rally is framed around issues of free speech and First Amendment rights, rather than violence and disorder, people are more likely to tolerate the rally on the basis of their respect for civil liberties (Nelson et al., Reference Nelson, Clawson and Oxley1997). Similarly, Kimberly Gross and Marcie Kohenak (Reference Gross and Kohenak2007) found that news coverage in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina focused attention on issues of race, class, and poverty with images of citizens begging for water, food, and rescue. However, this did not result in policies addressing poverty and inequality because these images competed with coverage of looting and crime, and reports that suggested that those left behind could have evacuated and only had themselves to blame. The coverage of the latter reinforced stereotypes about the poor and African Americans. Because this frame drew on conscious or subconscious beliefs held in society, it had a better chance of succeeding (Binder Reference Binder1993).
METHODS
The primary research question for this study asked: To what extent are Black girls included or excluded from national print media coverage of the school-to-prison pipeline? In order to answer this research question, I conducted a content analysis of articles published in three major news outlets: The New York Times, USA Today, and The Washington Post. Footnote 1
These three outlets were identified for three primary reasons: (1) they are considered elite newspapers; (2) they affect reporting decisions made in other national and regional news coverage (Taylor-Clark et al., Reference Taylor-Clark, Mebane, Steelfisher and Blendon2007); and (3) these newspapers have a broad national circulation and have a history of being used for content analysis research (An and Gower, Reference An and Gower2009; Christie Reference Christie2006; Kian Reference Kian2008; Wanta and Hu, Reference Wanta and Hu1993; Winter and Eyal, 1981). I performed a LexisNexis keyword search of “school discipline,” “zero tolerance,” and “school-to-prison pipeline,” which are all phrases that are regularly used to describe exclusionary school discipline and the accompanying racial disparities that are associated with future involvement with the criminal justice system. This search resulted in ninety-seven unique articles across the three newspapers. Thirty-one articles were excluded because they were completely unrelated to the subject at hand or mentioned school discipline only in passing. This left sixty-six articles, thirty-two of which mentioned race and/or gender. The articles mentioning race and/or gender are the basis of this study. The keyword search rendered articles published between 1983 to 2018, with a concentration of articles published between 2010 and 2014 (see Appendix). The findings of this paper are focused on three articles published at the ascent and height of recognition of the school-to-prison pipeline phenomenon in order to examine how it entered the national consciousness.
After narrowing down the list to sixty-six articles, I uploaded the data into Atlas.ti, a qualitative software program, which was used to facilitate data analysis of the project. Drawing on a grounded theory approach, I conducted an initial phase of line-by-line coding to familiarize myself with the concepts, themes, and messages present across the news articles (Charmaz 2010; Corbin and Strauss, Reference Strauss2015; Glaser and Strauss, Reference Glaser and Strauss1999). Initial coding resulted in four codes related to race: race, racial disparities, colorblind rhetoric, and racial composition. Embedded in these codes was the absence of gender, indicating that the intersection of race and gender was a critical aspect of framing. Any article that had an aforementioned code was re-examined during focused coding to assess to what extent gender was implicated. This inductive approach provides an in-depth description of the three main frames utilized.
FINDINGS: THE ERASURE OF BLACK GIRLS AND WOMEN
Frame analysis examines the salience of certain aspects of an issue by exploring images, stereotypes, metaphors, actors, and messages (Matthes Reference Matthes2009). The majority of the articles resulting from the keyword search were not framed around the racial implications of exclusionary discipline. In a vast majority of cases, discourse around the school-to-prison pipeline often renders Black students invisible either by not specifically discussing their experiences or by only mentioning them in passing. There is a deracialized discussion, which positions racial disparities as secondary and often uses alternative explanations for why these disparities exist or why readers should care. This is in line with dominant narratives such as colorblind ideology and the Black male crisis discourse. Several articles focused on the role of litigation, namely the lawsuits that school districts across the country have faced. Others focused on the growth of exclusionary discipline overall and the detrimental impact that it has on the entire student population. In the few instances where racial disparities were discussed, the reader is encouraged to direct their sympathy toward Black boys, in essence, ignoring the experiences of Black girls.
My analysis of the news stories revealed that there are three primary ways that Black girls and women are erased in articles on the school-to-prison pipeline. First, Black girls may be non-existent in the narrative about school disciple, and the manner in which the article is written encourages the reader to think about students overall as the victims of the school-to-prison pipeline, ignoring the underlying racial dynamics. Alternatively, in cases where the school-to-prison pipeline is racialized, the reader is encouraged to direct their sympathy toward Black students irrespective of gender. If a Black girl is featured, her story is used to highlight the experiences of Black students overall rather than demonstrating their unique challenges as Black girls. Finally, a hyper-focus on Black boys and the utilization of the Black male crisis narrative buttresses policy solutions that do not attend to the lived experiences of Black girls.
All Students Matter
Similar to the refrain “All Lives Matter,” which suggests that all lives matter equally and therefore we do not need to attend to racial disparities, a portion of articles addressing the school-to-prison pipeline suggests that all students are affected by punitive school discipline policies such as zero tolerance. An article published in 2000 in The New York Times, titled “Becoming Fed Up with Zero Tolerance,” is an example of how readers are encouraged to think about the overall student population as victims of the school-to-prison pipeline. In the introduction, the author, Debra Nussbaum, documents how all student behaviors have been criminalized. She states, “What was once a toy is now a weapon. What was once name-calling is now a threat. What was once a prank is now a cause for police action.” Nussbaum goes on to provide statistics demonstrating school violence has decreased in New Jersey, and the chances of a child being killed in school are minute. Then she humanizes the issue by profiling five students who have suffered harsh school discipline:
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• A Montclair high school pupil is suspended after brandishing a cigarette lighter shaped like a handgun and jokingly pointing it at another student.
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• Four kindergarten students in Sayerville are suspended for three days after apparently using their hands as make-believe handguns.
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• A nine-year-old boy is suspended and made to undergo a psychological evaluation after threatening to use a rubber band to shoot a wad of paper at a fourth grade classmate at Upper Elementary School in Plainsboro.
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• A six-year-old in Harrisburg, PA is suspended for ten days after bringing a toenail clipper to school.
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• In Bucks County, PA a sixteen-year-old high school student is suspended and threatened with a one-year expulsion because he has a small Swiss army knife attached to his keychain.
Through the syntactical structure of this article, including the headline, lead, statistics, and stories, Nussbaum builds a robust argument that students from a variety of backgrounds are impacted by over-harsh school discipline. However, Nussbaum’s rhetorical choices suggest that male students are the actual targets of zero tolerance; each of the exemplar cases presented are gender neutral or masculinized. The reader does not know if the student from Montclair is a boy or girl, but because the student was suspended for brandishing a cigarette lighter shaped like a handgun, the reader is primed to imagine a male student because guns are routinely associated with males.
All Black Students Matter
An article with a similarly constructed argument appeared in The New York Times in 2007. Bob Herbert, the author of “School-to-Prison Pipeline,” also offered several case examples in order to provide a face to those affected by the harsh disciplinary practices in schools. The article states:
Far more disturbing (and much less entertaining) is the way school officials and the criminal justice system are criminalizing children and teenagers all over the country, arresting them and throwing them in jail for behavior that, in years past, would never have led to the intervention of law enforcement.
Herbert goes on to remind readers that in previous work he has written about a six-year-old girl in Florida who was handcuffed by police and taken to a county jail after a temper tantrum in class. He also provided an example of a case where thirty young adults between the ages of thirteen and twenty-two were arrested and accused of gathering unlawfully and engaging in disorderly conduct as they walked toward a subway station on their way to a wake for a teenage friend who had been murdered. In another case, a seven-year-old boy in Baltimore was handcuffed for riding a dirt bike on a sidewalk. Similar to Nussbaum, Herbert provided these examples to build an argument that the manner and the types of behaviors that kids are being disciplined for is irrational and problematic.
After quoting the Racial Justice Program at the American Civil Liberties Union on racial disparities in school discipline, he tells the reader that the six-year-old in Florida and the seven-year-old in Baltimore introduced earlier are Black youth. Perhaps Herbert, recognizing racial biases, made an intentional choice to delay disclosing the race of the students in order to draw sympathies from the audience. After revealing that those students are Black, he also provides a more extended story, which focuses on the experience of Shaquanda Cotton, a fourteen-year-old Black girl in Paris, TX who was arrested for shoving a hall monitor. Cotton was convicted of assault on a public servant and sentenced to a prison term of up to seven years. Her family, outraged, noted that the judge who sentenced her had just given probation to a fourteen-year-old White girl who was convicted of arson.
While the author provided these startling cases to buttress the statistics regarding racial disparities, the framing message of this article remains that school discipline is irrational, and all students are impacted. Herbert does not provide much analysis as to why students of color are disproportionately suspended or expelled, nor does he contextualize Cotton’s experiences as a Black girl. Furthermore, by using Cotton’s case as an example of potential racism in the justice system, Herbert engages in a long-held practice of using the experiences of Black girls and women to highlight the experiences of Black people in general. According to bell hooks (Reference hooks2015), this rhetorical move extends back to the 1960s movement toward Black liberation when activists were so concerned with promoting the interests of Black men that they failed to draw attention to the dual impacts of sexism and racism on women. While Herbert’s writing does not explicitly construct Black boys as the primary victim of the school-to-prison pipeline, readers may contextualize this story/issue with others that they have heard about Black boys suffering at the hands of the criminal justice system and in schools.
Black Male Students Matter
The final manner in which Black women and girls are erased is rooted in the utilization of the Black male crisis narrative. In 2013, Courtland Milloy published an article in The Washington Post titled, “Needed: More Black Men in School.” As a structural element, this title draws on well-entrenched rhetoric that suggests that Black men are missing and/or not doing their job when it comes to educating Black youth. In the first paragraph, Milloy poses the question, “Where are the African American male schoolteachers and administrators?” He then goes on to claim,
It has been pretty obvious for years that if you really want to do something about high rates of truancy and suspensions among black students—to cap that ‘school-to-prison pipeline’—put more black men in classrooms and principals’ offices.
In this passage, Milloy reiterates the assertion from the title that Black men are missing—as teachers and administrators—within Black boys’ schooling experiences. He then argues that these men are the answer to closing the school-to-prison pipeline. This argument is problematic for several reasons. First, the assertion that Black men are both missing and the solution to the problems of suspensions and truancy negate the contributions and efforts of Black women teachers. Second, he ignores that Black girls face similar rates of suspension and truancy. Milloy does not provide evidence that Black boys are the only ones facing truancy and suspension, yet suggests an intervention aimed solely at Black boys.
Also in this article, Milloy offers statistics regarding the racial make-up of faculty and student populations and juxtaposes the absences of Black men with truancy and suspension rates. For example, he writes:
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• In Montgomery County there are 148,000 students, 21% (31,000) are Black, yet there are only 282 African American male teachers, 38 assistant principals, and 19 principals.
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• In Prince George’s County truancy and suspensions are chronic, (with) only 983 Black men as teachers out of 7,772.
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• (The) Fairfax County suspension rate for White students (is) 1.5% (and) 7% for Black students—out of 14,728 teachers only 231 are Black men.
While there appears to be a correlation between truancy/suspension and Black male teachers based on the statistics that Milloy presents, this does not mean that there is a causal relationship. Simply putting Black men in schools will not ameliorate structural problems that confront boys in schools. Furthermore, this strategy fails to take into account both the Black female teachers and administrators who work in these schools and the Black girls who attend these schools and their unique challenges. In this article, Black girls remain erased in both the framing of the problem and in the proposed solutions.
CONCLUSION
The manner in which journalists for major newspapers in the United States construct the school-to-prison pipeline draws on popular and dominant narratives surrounding race and gender and erases the experiences of Black girls. There are three primary narratives utilized in national media coverage of the school-to-prison pipeline. First, and most popularly, the school-to-prison pipeline is framed as an issue that impacts all students. Secondly, the school-to-prison pipeline is framed as an issue impacting all Black students. Finally, it is framed as an issue impacting Black male students specifically. Each of these narratives disregards, erases, and silences the experiences of Black girls and women through the use of raced and gendered frames and language.
The “all students matter” frame draws on colorblind rhetoric and presents an overarching narrative that school discipline is irrational and problematic while ignoring racial disparities in school discipline. While school disciplinary practices are problematic, explaining them as irrational is overly simplistic. Within the “all students matter frame,” authors such as Nussbaum present seemingly gender-neutral examples of student behavior such as brandishing a handgun-shaped cigarette lighter and bringing items such as toenail clippers and swiss army knife keychains to school. These types of behaviors are not characteristic of Black girls’ experiences. Instead, they are routinely associated with male behaviors and reflect the narrative utilized in the 1990s to construct Black boys as a threat to public safety and to justify zero-tolerance policies (Morris, Reference Morris2012). Furthermore, this framing ignores that Black girls face exclusionary discipline for behaviors such as defiance, “bad attitudes,” disrespect, profanity, and wearing revealing clothing (Annamma et al., Reference Annamma, Anyon, Joseph, Farrar, Greer, Downing and Simmons2019; Blake et al., Reference Blake, Butler, Lewis and Darensbourg2011; Morris 2015).
In addition to overlooking the reasons that Black girls are disproportionately impacted by exclusionary discipline, framing of the school-to-prison pipeline, at times, has relied on the experiences of Black girls to highlight the general experiences of all Black students. This is particularly apparent in the “All Black students matter” frame. When using the case of Shaquanda Cotton, Herbert’s article does not speak to the underlying causes of Black girls’ disciplinary experiences. In several cases, journalists decide to make gender-neutral claims or focus on boys and their behaviors. Much like we have witnessed in cases of the past, this framing renders Black girls and women invisible. While Black boys and girls both contend with stereotypes within schools, their experiences are not mirror images. Focusing exclusively on the contours of the school-to-prison pipeline as it affects Black boys ignores the raced-gendered dynamics that Black girls experience.
Finally, within the “Black male students matter” frame, authors relied upon the widely accepted belief that Black males are in a constant state of crisis and need special attention. This belief is used to justify race-gender specific programs directed toward Black males (Brown and Donner, 2011; Dumas Reference Dumas2016). Journalists, such as Milloy, are able to suggest Black male role models to remediate disciplinary issues because the Black male crisis narrative is well established, meaning that many believe Black boys just need more positive male influences in their lives (Nicolas Reference Nicolas2014; Strauss Reference Strauss2015). Similarly, journalists can claim that schools are suspending Black male preschoolers disproportionately while presenting data aggregated by gender because the Black male crisis narrative ensures that we do not need to make the case that Black boys are in trouble. Meanwhile, Black girls and their experiences are rarely discussed alone. In fact, when their disciplinary experiences are discussed, they are used as a representation of Black students' experiences overall.
I suggest we must “ring the alarm” about Black girls’ erasure from the framing and social construction of the school-to-prison pipeline. Journalists, policymakers, and practitioners must be intentional about disrupting dominant frames in defining social problems and promoting solutions. When stakeholders, such as the writers identified throughout this study, frame the school-to-prison pipeline, Black girls are left out of view. This exclusion could lead to disproportionate allocation of philanthropic and public dollars towards addressing the needs of boys and young men of color while the needs of Black girls continue to go unmet. The framing of the school-to-prison pipeline relays a significant gap in what the data reveal, how we read and report the data, and interventions established and espoused to create “solutions.” While the scholarly literature has begun to acknowledge the impact of the school-to-prison pipeline on Black girls, a similar trajectory is missing from popular discourse.
APPENDIX
Articles Mentioning Race
