In today’s society, many believe that racism is not as big of an issue as it used to be in the United States. However, this is far from the truth. Systemic injustice continues to exist in many areas of society, and largely contributes to the institutional racism in our society. The belief that racism only exists in the context of being explicitly discriminatory to someone of another race is false. The reality is that racial hierarchies were embedded in the structure of what makes up our society today. Looking at the historical context, policies and laws created over time have created significant disproportions, more particularly for African Americans. One particular area of concern of these disproportions lies within the education system. In this course, Examining the School to Prison Pipeline: Implications of History, Policy, and Race, we focused on examining these disproportions, or as many refer to it as the school to prison pipeline. In order to do so, we were assigned different texts that framed the discussions surrounding systemic injustice and institutional racism. The literature we were assigned throughout this course was specifically aligned into three parts; framing the issues, examining the outcomes, and alternative approaches and interventions, in order to understand this multi-faceted issue. For this essay, I plan to focus on my personal intellectual development stemming from this course, and how it has shaped my views.
During one of the first classes we were asked to identify what first comes to our mind when you think of prisons. This set the stage for early discussions on the issues surrounding the prison system and institutional racism. We discussed our responses in relation to the focus of the class on race, education, and prison. This class began to shape my views on how the prison system is corrupt, and how institutional racism plays a huge part in the process of who ends up in prison. For this class we were assigned to read Are Prisons Obsolete? by A. Davis. The chapters assigned proposed the ideas of how prisons are portrayed poorly through the media, and how it gives society the false belief that the existence of prisons is to keep those not in prison safe (Davis, 2003). However, the fact is that more than half of our prison population consists of African Americans, which is not a coincidence. Davis goes on to discuss the parallels between slavery and prison and how we have now equated race with criminality (Davis, 2003).
In today’s society we have focused on making important strides in dealing with blatant racism, however while still allowing more subtle forms of this institutional racism to take place. More particularly, when it comes to crime and punishment. In Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow, she argues that legal racial segregation has been replaced by mass incarceration as a system of social control, and how these arrests have mainly targeted poor African American communities (Alexander 2012). Alexander states that the U.S. prison system imprisons a disproportionate number of African-Americans, which in turn creates many economic inequities for these communities (Alexander 2012). This led me to begin to question how society has set it up for us to view race, and how race is a social construct. I think it is important to understand how society has set it up for us to view race. The idea that race stems from how we are socially brought up to view it brings up the question of what we can do to change this. These lingering thoughts continued to stay with me throughout the following classes, and how we as a society need to begin to address and handle the systemic issues regarding race.
A similar pattern of racial injustice has been an ongoing issue in our public-school education system. These particular issues surrounding race have greatly impacted what we refer to today as the school to prison pipeline. This idea refers to “the collection of policies, practices, conditions, and prevailing consciousness that facilitate both the criminalization within educational environments and the processes by which this criminalization results in the incarceration of youth and young adults” (Wikipedia). These particular policies and practices are set up to favor incarceration over education, which is a great injustice to our society as a whole. Education is the main source to not only gain knowledge, but to provide accesses for a successful life filled with opportunities and advantages. However, these systemic injustices make it impossible for equal access to a successful education possible for all. These issues stem from economic to educational disadvantages. Therefore, it was important for me to be able to understand and identify these specific inequalities within the larger system. If I am able to understand them, hopefully I can be able to begin supporting the need for change in these areas.
The book, The Condemnation of Blackness: Race, Crime, and the Making of Modern Urban America, begins to perfectly outline these injustices. Muhammad discusses the outline of the history of how crime and race became to be a part of the African American individual, and the role laws and government played a role. He addresses the issues of how these policies and laws set up to have African Americans to be at a disadvantage when it came to sociocultural factors (Muhammad 2010). These factors greatly contribute to the ability to receive a good education, which tends to not be accessible for many African Americans. This ongoing challenge and trend is due to the inequity in the educational system, discriminatory policies towards students and families of color, and a lack of resources aimed at supporting at-risk youth and the economically disadvantaged within the community.
Not only is access to getting a successful education a disadvantage for some, but the policies within the school system create barriers as well. The policies surrounding handling misbehavior has be shown to be racially discriminatory as well. In the same way that poor men of color are targeted for arrest and incarceration on a societal level, boys and young men of color are in much greater danger of experiencing disproportionate discipline and exclusionary or repressive punishment in our schools. In fact, a number of studies have found that African American males students tend to experience the highest rates of exclusionary discipline. For example, African American boys have experienced the greatest risk of suspension, with the number of suspensions increasing annually (Losen, 2012). This problem with how students of a certain race seem to be targeted as “criminals” though the education system follows them and begins to set a pattern for the rest of their lives.
More to my point, the chapter from Review of Research in Education, addresses how the United States education system is set up from the beginning to fail those struggling with sociocultural issues. Students who come from low SES populations are not given the means to succeed, and often struggle in finding a way out of where they came from (Winn et al., 2011). It is very apparent that even at the young age of 3, when we start school we do not begin on equal playing fields. This is idea is very much left out of the conversations when it comes to the justice system and understanding why certain populations are more likely than others to end up in prison. Therefore, we must address the systemic injustices many races face that leave them at a disadvantage from the time they are born.
When looking at the policies set up within a school handling discipline that effect African American students poorly, we see how the effect of zero tolerance policies have against this specific race. Zero tolerance policy is a policy that “imposes strict punishment for infractions of a stated rule, with the intention of eliminating undesirable conduct” (Wikipedia). This being said, this policy tends to leave out the vital information that Muhammad (2012) points out, that is the circumstances in which one brings. For example, many zero tolerance policies are racially biased because they tend to ignore the environmental conditions or factors that many African Americans face due to things like poverty. Therefore, in an effort to eliminate crime, we are in turn directly targeting a population without meaning to do so. This policy does not benefit the good of all, just the good of some. Most likely those not effected by race. Muhammad argues that taking these circumstances into account, due to the history of policies being racially biased, our society has been set up for this policy to not be accepting to all (Muhammad 2012). This idea is conducted directly to the idea of the school to prison pipeline, and how these types of “zero-tolerance” policies have made it more than likely that African American individuals will end up in prison.
This has also created an issue surrounding the labeling of these students as trouble makers, that tends to follow with them into adulthood. This is an issue of racial disparity that accompanies these labels that often gets left out of the conversation when discussing the school to prison pipeline. From these texts, I have been able to see the correlation between the systematic racism that occurs in the education system, and its heavy effects it has on the African American student. This has helped me to shape my thinking of discipline within the school system. When reading an article by Noguera, I saw how it is important that schools “must accept responsibility for racial disparities in discipline patterns” and seek alternative sources of handling student misbehavior (Noguera 2008). The author focused on how the “Get tough” approach fails to create a safe environment because of how the coercive strategies interrupts learning, and that it produces an environment of mistrust and resistance. More importantly, how we must better approach these situations in schools and address the conflicts. Instead of using discipline as a way to get rid of troubled kids, we need systems and policies in place that help to steer them toward responsible decision-making and not towards the prison pipeline. Hopefully through putting new practices of handling discipline in place, we can move to ending the school to prison pipeline.
This course offered me the opportunity to explore the effects of institutional racism and how it has impacted our educational system. Over the course we were able to explore and assess new interventions that are in place to help counter these issues. We explored interventions used in prison systems now that focus on restorative justice. Many of these interventions helped me to think of ways that I can use my role as a future school counselor to implement interventions to deter the school to prison pipeline. One in particular that stood out to me was President Barrack Obama’s My Brother’s Keeper. This initiative was implemented to encourage communities to implement a college-and-career strategy for improving the life outcomes of all young people, specifically males of color, in order to make sure they can reach their full potential (My brother’s Keeper, 2010). This program is one that is of importance when taking proactive approach to the school to prison pipeline. I believe that many of these types of programs are vital in begging to invoke change within the system. Giving supports to those effected by systemic oppression is important and can hopefully begin to disrupt these oppressions.
While we were able to address new ideas and policies surrounding the issues of the school to prison pipeline, it has occurred to me that there is still much work needed to be done. We must focus on identifying and addressing the systemic injustices in order to create change. These injustices that are embedded in our laws and policies are not going away, therefore need to be addressed. Overall, I believe that this course has brought to light the importance of our future roles in being the ones to provoke these changes.