Discussion for article #242471
Post-slaveryhow do you continue to control the bodies of black people? Well, America has figured out a successful formula. The school-to-prison pipeline and the Second Amendment.
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Those arrest and suspensions are believed to contribute to the so-called "school-to-prison pipeline.
Someone has to make sure the white owners of the new private run prison systems have lots of business so they will have plenty of money to donate to the republican politicians they elected and that allow the private prisons. Circle jerk and repeat.
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We went to spoken word performance at the kids´ high school last night. Most the poets (all kids) were black, and many or most of the performances dealt with the fact that they could be at any moment pulled over or stopped on the street, and that during those stops, they could be hurt or killed. Another of the themes was the myriad ways in which they were judged or guided based on the amount of melanin in their skin. I don´t always like the term ¨white privilege¨, in that implies that white skin is all that one needs to be accepted in America - there are enough shit-upon white working class and poor white Americans to give lie to that - but I really can´t imagine the feeling of oppression that a black kid has to deal with in this country.
My kids avoid that form of stress simply by having a few different genes that determine skin color. That, I guess, is ¨white privilege¨, even though walking the streets or the halls of schools without being in danger of officially sanctioned violence or arbitrary discipline should be everyone´s right.
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This country has an irrational fear of Black people…and this is news?
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You can believe 1000% in the school-2-prison pipeline. In 70s as a High School teacher, I was once asked in the teachers lounge why I worked so hard with my class as the school was just a holding area until the kids were old enough for prison. It was not just a black vs white issue either but a class one as well both socially and financially.
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Before we pigeon hole the high school resource officer as a manifestation of racial prejudice and move on to other things, maybe we should examine the entire “school to prison” pipeline thing. There are plenty of “resource officers” assigned to white suburban high schools. I want to know who is assigned, what their duties are and whether their presence is beneficial to learning.
FIFY
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Black Students- this does not come as a big surprise to me. Shocking, yes, surprising, no.
All that security looks expensive. Fear mongering comes with a heavy price, in more ways then one.
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Yes, in that it is confirmed by objective evidence.
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Raise your hand if you see how neatly and conveniently the NRA fits into this.
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I agree. School to prison is beyond my comprehension and the things that could land them in prison are ridiculous. Kids act out in school -= so now we can put them in prison for it? This is insanity. And to think this law has been on the books in SC since the 70s. Do we know how many other states have such a law?
Yup, that’s white privilege. I can walk into a jewelry store, and it never crosses my mind that the employees are suddenly on alert that I might try to steal something, because they’re not. I can be in an elevator and it never crosses my mind that anyone else in there will see me as a threat. Someone can rudely bump into me in the street and I’ll never wonder whether they’re racist or just having a bad day. When I think about even the small indignities one has to live with as a black person in America, not to mention the genuine threats, I’m convinced the relentless need to brush it all off just to get on with my day would leave me with serious anger-management issues and blood pressure in the stratosphere.
And of course those daily slights are just small manifestations of an attitude that produces the pernicious, life-altering results documented in this research. And I’d like to believe – I do believe – that most white people simply aren’t aware of the reality of black lives. Can’t publish too many stories like this.
@redstatewelfarequeen, sadly, yes, it’s news to too many in this country. More research like this, please, and publicized by many, many more news outlets.
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Couldn´t agree more.
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Do Black students break the rules more than White students?
One of my pet peeves is the whole zero tolerance thing for a whole range of what were minor offenses in my day. My hometown school district has a full blown high school (with poor teachers and bad curriculum.) They got money from the department of education for that monster and populate it with kids the police catch doing bad things like having a beer can in the trunk of their car (a capital offense in zero tolerance districts.)
There seems to be some sort of financial connection between the local police department and the local school district.
Probably not. White students are also teenagers with all the same maturity issues as black students.
There are actually numerous studies that demonstrate that both within and without the criminal justice system that blacks are treated more harshly by authority figures. It is a statistically known and trackable behavior pattern. Black kids get referred to the criminal justice system for things that white kids get told is a “prank.”
At one point LA County did a study because they expected to find that black youth were over-represented in the prison system because of their ties to gangs, but after extensive study found that a majority of black youth first contact with the criminal justice system was sneaking onto the back of buses. It turned out that white youth did it just as often or more often, but it wasn’t perceived as criminal, instead merely a “prank.” Something that shouldn’t be “allowed to ruin this promising young person’s future.” It was also found that the number one reason for being in the criminal justice system was contact with the criminal justice system. Because black youths were more often placed into contact with the criminal justice system in ways that white youth are not, it changed the courses of their lives forever.
There is a major story in the NYT right now about the increased incidence of whites using heroin, and middle and upper middle class whites are insisting that it be treated as an illness and not a crime.
There is ample evidence that it isn’t just that black children don’t behave as well as white children. The best is assumed of white children, the worst is assumed of black children. That is what this story is about.
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From the story, quoting the report:
“However, the proportion of African-American students was a significant predictor of security even when controlling for the same background characteristics and crime and misconduct within the school,” the researchers said in their overview. “These results suggest that the implementation of security measures are at least partially based on the perceived threat of the African-American student population rather than any objective dangers within (crime or misconduct), or in the neighborhood (neighborhood crime) surrounding the school.”