Pushout
The Criminalization of Black Girls in Schools
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- CHF 21.00
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- CHF 21.00
Publisher Description
The “powerful” (Michelle Alexander) exploration of the harsh and harmful experiences confronting Black girls in schools, and how we can instead orient schools toward their flourishing
On the day fifteen-year-old Diamond from the Bay Area stopped going to school, she was expelled for lashing out at peers who constantly harassed and teased her for something everyone on the staff had missed: she was being trafficked for sex. After months on the run, she was arrested and sent to a detention center for violating a court order to attend school.
In a work that Lisa Delpit calls “imperative reading,” Monique W. Morris chronicles the experiences of Black girls across the country whose complex lives are misunderstood, highly judged—by teachers, administrators, and the justice system—and degraded by the very institutions charged with helping them flourish. Painting “a chilling picture of the plight of black girls and women today” (The Atlantic), Morris exposes a world of confined potential and supports the rising movement to challenge the policies, practices, and cultural illiteracy that push countless students out of school and into unhealthy, unstable, and often unsafe futures.
At a moment when Black girls are the fastest growing population in the juvenile justice system, Pushout is truly a book “for everyone who cares about children” (Washington Post).
Book cover photograph by Brittsense/brittsense.com.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The school-to-prison pipeline has been examined largely for how it affects men, but Morris, cofounder of the National Black Women's Justice Institute, shifts our focus to the deleterious impact on African-American girls in racially isolated, high-poverty, low-performing schools. Morris examines the zero-tolerance policies ("the primary driver of an unscrupulous school-based reliance on law enforcement"), coupled with the increased police presence and surveillance tools (e.g., metal detectors and bag check stations) to show their effects on African-American girls. Through the voices of young girls themselves, she conveys their experiences with teachers and staff at school and in the juvenile correction facilities. She is particularly attentive to the sexual exploitation and abuse of girls, including transgender and special-needs girls. Morris's work, buttressed by appalling statistics and scholarly studies, is supplemented by two useful appendices ("A Q&A for Girls, Parents, Community Members, and Educators," "Alternatives to Punishment") and a list of community resources.
