The Disestablishment of African American Male Compliant Ambiguity: A Prison Pipeline Essay (original) (raw)
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Equity & Excellence in Education, 2019
This study adds to the extant research on the school-to-prison pipeline by investigating how school-based service providers and administrators conceptualize the causal mechanisms constraining and enabling the school-to-prison pipeline in a large urban district. Thirty-three schools were selected for the study based on their suspension rates. Support staff and district partners (n=36) participated in focus groups guided by semi-structured protocols. Most participants emphasized structural and systemic causes of the school-to-prison pipeline, such as institutional racism and poverty. To minimize the school-to-prison pipeline, participants highlighted the importance of relationship building and non-punitive practices in response to misbehavior, although solutions offered limited evidence of promising interventions. Given strong research indicating that racial disparities cannot be explained by differential behavior, scholarship in this area emphasizes the need to increase school-level practices that promote positive school climate. The persistence of exclusionary and punitive attitudes among a subset of the sample suggests a need for differentiated professional development to address competing frameworks for understanding the root causes of, and solutions to, the school-to-prison pipeline.
Breaking the Cycle of Incarceration: A Young Black Male's Journey from Probation to Self-Advocacy
2017
The prison-industrial complex penetrates the public sphere through enhanced and militarized police presence in poor neighborhoods, thereby playing a key role in mass incarceration, and intersects with public schools via zero-tolerance policies that push students out. The purpose of this article is to examine how the Juvenile Justice System (JJS) impacts the educational experiences of Black males. Specifically, we present a case study of Malcolm, a multiracial (Black, Latino, and Native American) male who had been part of the JJS for the last five years. We articulate Malcolm’s schooling and JJS experiences to discuss how the prison industrial complex and school-to-prison pipeline intersect to push marginalized youth of color out of schools. We conclude by listing a set of recommendations in which Malcolm provides key strategies to reform the JJS and school-to-prison pipeline.
Drawing upon the authors’ experiences working in schools as teachers, teacher educators, researchers, and community members, this study utilizes a Critical Race Theory of education in examining the school-to-prison pipeline for black male students. In doing so, the authors highlight the particular role educators play in the school-to-prison pipeline, focusing particularly on how dispositions toward black males influence educator practices. Recommendations and future directions are provided on how education preparation programs can play a critical role in the transformation of black male schooling.
Villanova law review, 2017
His work focuses on examining levels of resilience and exposure to structural violence in street identified Black populations. Also, Dr. Payne developed Street PAR methodology to train street identified Black people to do research and activism in and with street identified communities. ** Tara M. Brown is an assistant professor of education at the University of Maryland, College Park. She holds a doctorate degree in education from Harvard University and is the recipient of a Spencer Research Fellowship and a Jacobs Foundation Dissertation Fellowship. Tara is a former classroom teacher in secondary alternative education. Her research focuses on the experiences of lowincome adolescents and young adults of color served by urban schools, particularly as related to disciplinary exclusion and high school non-completion. She specializes in qualitative, community-based, participatory, and action research methodologies.
Seen But Not Heard: Personal Narratives of Systemic Failure Within the School-to-Prison Pipeline
Taboo: The Journal of Culture and Education, 2018
The school-to-prison pipeline (STPP) involves harsh discipline practices and exclusionary processes that disproportionally effect students of color by excluding them from K-12 education and increasing the likelihood of their involvement with the criminal justice system. To curtail these unjust practices and end the negative effects of the STPP, much of the academic literature provides insight into the causes of the STPP and proposes solutions to this problem. However, the voices of those who have experienced the STPP are largely missing from the literature. Specifically, the perspective of academically capable but historically unsuccessful incarcerated adults is largely unknown. This paper uses first-hand narratives developed using evocative autoethnographic methodology to describe the K-12 experiences of currently incarcerated college students. The STPP literature and two developmental theories (Bronfenbrenner (1979); Maslow (1971)) frame the narratives that explore A) interpersonal and intrapersonal experiences within the STPP; B) the complex interplay of the systems the authors interacted with; C) unmet needs that prevented educational attainment; and D) unanswered questions such as: "Who could I have been if someone had intervened?" This article concludes with questions that challenge readers to become engaged in social justice actions that can prevent current and future K-12 students from becoming oppressed and controlled by the STPP.
American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 2010
or the past 30 years, the United States has experienced a steady increase in the number of persons incarcerated in federal, state, and local prisons. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, the number of persons incarcerated in the United States almost tripled between 1980 and 1994. Between 1994 and 2008, this number continued to expand at a rate of 2.4% each year. With the widening trend toward privatization of prisons, the business of corrections has stood out as a reliable growth sector in the American economy. This industry thrives on a steady supply of African American males, who account for 10% of all youth but 60% of incarcerated youth under the age of 18. Incarceration is a much more common experience for African American males than White males. For example, White males are incarcerated at a rate of 8.5 per thousand, but that figure for African American males is 48.3 per thousand. The Department of Justice reported that in 2007 approximately 815,000 20-to 50-year-old African American men were in U.S. jails. As a consequence of these high rates, the ''school-to-prison'' pipeline is often invoked as a metaphor to capture the seemingly inexorable progression of African American boys. African American men figure so prominently in the correctional system that the number of African American 4-year-old males can be used to model the number of people who will be incarcerated 15-20 years in the future. The rationale for this approach is that the more African American preschool males there are in the United States, the more prisons that will be needed when those young children become young adults. Of the approximately six hundred thousand 4-yearold African American males growing up in the United States in 2008, prisons are being planned to house 28,134 of them by 2029. the community In The Community...
Taboo: The Journal of Culture and Education , 2018
Given that Black students are more likely to be suspended from school than their White counterparts, researchers, educators, policymakers, activists, and parents have forced national attention onto the need to disrupt the school-to-prison pipeline (STPP). A perspective that needs to be further explored is that of district and school leaders who have the challenge of making leadership decisions that influence the STPP. In this article, we take the position that district and school leaders must be provided tangible solutions to dismantle the STPP for Black students. Thus, we use Du Bois’ (1903) notion of double consciousness as a conceptual lens to examine the STPP and the dilemma Black school leaders face in dealing with disciplinary infractions. We then present a case from the second author’s experience as a practicing school leader to explore how school leaders are often presented with complicated choices when it comes to making decisions that potentially send a student into the STPP trajectory. Due to the fact school leaders are rarely provided tangible solutions for disrupting the STPP, we provide recommendations for school leaders on how to disrupt the STPP.
Clues to Reversing the School-to-Prison Pipeline: Portrait of a Scholar
Urban Review (online first), 2019
The purpose of this article is to make an overlooked source of knowledge accessible to school teachers and administrators in order to challenge the prevalent discourse of cultural deprivation in urban schools and thus provide a more equitable education for all. Little is known about rich knowledge and self-education practices within prisons which could contribute to culturally relevant pedagogy as well as decrease the stigma of prison contact. Using portraiture methodology, we present a portrait of EL'YAH'el, a formerly-incarcerated African American man who participated in self-education in prison as both a student and a teacher. Framing our work with reality pedagogy, we contend that understanding the traditions of self-education in prison can provide clues for teacher education programs committed to acknowledging and building upon their students' realities. We suggest the flow of knowledge from prisons to schools as the prison-to-school pipeline and conclude with recommendations for pedagogy and policy.
Equity and Excellence in Education, Special Issue: Breaking the Pipeline: Understanding, Examining, and Dismantling the School-to-Prison Pipeline, 2014
This article illuminates the ways in which resistant youth challenge attempts toward cultural homogenization within public school systems. We trace how youth from historical and lived traumatic experiences such as African American, Native American, and youth with histories of domestic violence, navigate the dominant narrative of pity and punishment in public schools. We argue that these resistive youth have been tagged with constructed identities as “broken youth.” The article situates the practice of school discipline in terms of traditional and neoliberal agendas that seek to throw away noncompliant students and label them as deviant and/or disordered. Drawing from Bauman’s (2009) conception of a world where vast numbers of human beings are increasingly seen as expendable and unworthy of a dignified existence, this article seeks to uncover how disciplinary and labeling practices become a vital part of the school-to-prison pipeline.We trace how deficit oriented discourses of historical and familial domestic violence help shape the often-unintentional violent discourses of pity and punishment towards resistant youth in public school settings.