Equating Black Girls With Bad Attitudes Is Not the Answer
Black girls are disproportionately penalized for arbitrary infractions like having a ‘bad attitude’
I met Stephanie Patton, the principal of a public middle school for girls in Columbus, Ohio, in 2016. At a community meeting, she announced that after a lot of deep reflection and discussion about the criminalization of Black girls, she and her faculty would no longer punish their students for having a “bad attitude.” She had noticed that responding to her mostly African American student body with exclusionary discipline was only contributing to the harm these girls were experiencing.
Instead, she developed a school discipline continuum that included mentoring, positive behavioral interventions and supports (PBIS), restorative conferencing, and an advisory program that starts girls off each day by promoting their self-worth, communication skills, and goal-setting. Only if absolutely necessary — after everything else had been explored and exhausted — were suspensions used as a last-resort intervention. Ms. Patton and her team were committed to doing everything they could to avoid punishing girls in a way that would make future contact with the juvenile court or criminal legal system more likely. They began by building an infrastructure to support this…
