School discipline punishes identical child behavior differently by race

Evidence

Scientists know that, developmentally, when children are sick or hurt, or confused or angry, one of the ways they express those feelings is through acting out, because children have difficulty identifying and communicating complex feelings (over things like hunger or parental incarceration or police harassment). While misbehaving White children have received compassion and tolerance—as they should—misbehaving Black children have been more likely to hear “No Excuses” and to be on the receiving end of zero tolerance and handcuffs. More than 70 percent of students arrested at school during the 2009–2010 school year were Black or Latina/o, according to Department of Education statistics. — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 1187

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s earlier notes on institutional bias structurally encoded in rules, complementing that systemic design creates disparate outcomes regardless of intent. — connects to: Everyday teacher bias and structural school resourcing interact to accumulate racial disadvantage. — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on…, 423; Children of Color suffer simultaneous special-education, gifted, and discipline inequities.; Racial bias distorts early childhood schooling outcomes for children of color — James D. Kirylo (ed.), Reinventing Pedagogy of the Oppressed:…, 261 (+1 more)
• SEED: Angle: ‘zero tolerance’ as a code phrase that inverts child-development knowledge into criminalization — how policy vocabulary launders a racist practice as strictness.