Pushout: The Criminalization of Black Girls in Schools

“The central argument of this book is that too many Black girls are being criminalized (and physically and mentally harmed) by beliefs, policies, and actions that degrade and marginalize both their learning and their humanity, leading to conditions that push them out of school and render them vulnerable to even more harm.”

Here, Morris presents her book’s thesis. Pushout argues that schools are harming, not helping, Black girls by marginalizing, targeting, and criminalizing them through harmful attitudes and policies. This results in these students being pushed out of educational spaces altogether, rendering the American education system a pathway to criminal lifestyles and confinement for Black girls.

“This work is intended to encourage a robust conversation about how to reduce the criminalization of Black girls in our nation’s learning environments. The pathways to incarceration for Black youths are worthy of our most immediate inquiry and response. Using gender and racial lenses to examine school-to-confinement pathways allows for an appreciation of the similarities and differences between females, males, and nonconforming students that is essential to shaping efforts that interrupt the pathways to confinement for all youth.”

This quote reflects the larger goals behind Pushout. Morris makes it clear from the start that she intends her book to start discussions in communities around the United States so that collective efforts can be made to revolutionize the American education system. She also wishes to draw attention to the importance of intersectionality in such work, arguing that reading the issue of pushout through gendered and racial perspectives illuminates issues that might otherwise go undiscovered. Morris insists that this intersectional methodology yields solutions that benefit all youth, not just Black girls.

“Few curricula taught in elementary and secondary schools were designed with Black girls in mind, especially those who are living in racially isolated, high-poverty areas. If the curriculum being taught does not even consider the unique needs and experiences of Black girls seeking to climb out of poverty and the ghetto, as is most often the case, do they really have equal access to education?”

This quote encapsulates the concept of “ghettoized opportunity.” Morris points out that curricula are often designed without considering the unique needs of students, failing to give children in high-poverty areas the resources they need for successful futures. Her last line in this quote is an implied reference to Brown v. Board of Education (1954), a historic court case that ended the racial segregation of schools and declared that all American school children deserve equal access to education. Here, Morris criticizes the American school system for failing to uphold the decision and denying Black girls their rightful education.

“Black women and girls, especially those in fragile circumstances, absorb widely accepted distortions of Black American feminine identity (that they are less intelligent, hypersexual, loud, sassy, ‘ghetto,’ or domestic), and it undermines their healthy development and performance in school. In combination with oppressive patriarchal ideologies, internalized gendered racial oppression acknowledges that Black women and girls may appropriate behaviors and ideologies that reflect self-loathing or degradation, reinforcing the very notions of Black feminine inferiority that deny their full humanity.”

Harmful stereotypes surrounding Black femininity pervade American culture. When Black girls watch cultural products like movies, TV, and music videos that reinforce oppressive ideas, they absorb these harmful messages and internalize those ideas in their own thought processes. This effects their behavior (in schools and otherwise), where they may express themselves in ways that reflect the harmful stereotypes they have absorbed from cultural messages. This internalized racist, misogynistic oppression is thus a self-fulfilling loop: Black girls take in harmful ideas, re-enact them in their own lives, and reinforce negative ideas about Black femininity in the minds of biased educators, administrators, and other adults.

“However, from coast to coast, Black girls tell stories of being pushed out of school and criminalized for falling asleep, standing up for themselves, asking questions, wearing natural hair, wearing revealing clothing, and in some cases engaging in unruly (although not criminal or delinquent) acts in school—mostly because what constitutes a threat to safety is dangerously subjective when Black children are involved.”

Black girls are often criminalized in school for simple, even inoffensive behaviors. Morris concedes that girls can be unruly, but there is a widespread issue of Black girls being punished with zero-tolerance policies for behavior that does not warrant such harsh discipline. Educators and school administrators, operating from their implicit biases and prejudices, often interpret the behaviors of Black girls who do not conform to normative, deferential femininity as being “bad”—or even dangerous.

“Yet many schools punish girls who speak out of turn or challenge what they feel is injustice as if it were a violation of law rather than an interrogation of fairness. Punishment often involves removal from class, which facilitates young people feeling disconnected from the material their classmates are learning, exacerbates underperformance on tests or other assignments, or leads to other situations that can and often do escalate to contact with law enforcement and the criminal legal system.”

Black girls are even punished for the simple act of speaking. If teachers or administrators feel a girl is speaking out of turn, they can exact exclusionary punishment that denies that girl her education, contributing to pushout. Morris attributes such harsh responses to Black girls speaking “out of turn” to educators viewing the girls through the lens of the “angry Black woman” stereotype, which interprets Black femininity as purposefully loud, flamboyant, and challenging—even though some students are simply asking questions for clarification.

“Zero-tolerance discipline policies, specifically the controversial category of willful defiance, have become a routine way by which to punish and marginalize Black girls in learning spaces when they directly confront adults or indirectly complicate the teacher’s ability to manage the classroom—not necessarily actions that pose a threat to the physical safety of anyone on campus.”

Educators use zero-tolerance policies in highly subjective, often questionable ways to punish students whom they interpret as a “danger” to the school community. Morris argues that biased educators routinely employ zero-tolerance policies in situations with Black girls, marginalizing them from their own educations by removing them from classrooms. Worse still is the fact that educators rely on zero-tolerance disciplinary policies (e.g., suspensions, even expulsions) in response to Black girls who dare to speak out against an adult in power. Morris points out that the act of speaking—while often harshly punished—is not a criminal, violent act.

“What can (and should) be developed and nurtured in educational settings, but almost never is, is a deeper awareness of the numerous social factors—related to race, gender, sexuality, disability status, or other identities—that have the power to trigger Black girls and shape their interactions with people in schools. Every girl is unique, but understanding widely shared experiences connected to structural forces bigger than us all would go a long way toward supporting the success and education of Black girls.”

Intersectionality is more than a theory or scholarly methodology for Morris. With her work, she emphasizes the importance of applying intersectionality in practical solutions as well. The current educational system does not allow room for fully understanding individual circumstances, unique identities, or particular emotional triggers. However, race, gender, sexuality, etc. are all facets of identity that must be acknowledged, understood, and supported by our educational system so that students from all backgrounds can gain the resources that they need to go on and lead fulfilling lives.

“Dress codes do more than slut-shame Black girls. They marginalize and criminalize them. They cast them as deviant and reinforce social ideas about Black girls’ identity in a way that can be very destructive. Getting turned away from school for not wearing the ‘proper’ clothing—however that is defined—feels unconscionable in a society that, at least on the surface, declares that education is a priority. This practice is primarily about maintaining a social order that renders girls subject to the approving or disapproving gaze of adults.”

Pushout names dress code enforcements as a specific example of racial, gendered oppression in everyday classroom instances. Morris argues that in addition to sexualizing girls, dress codes give educators justification for excluding girls from their own educations. Pushout insists that dress codes only function to reinforce oppressive ideologies that harm Black girls, and that they must be re-examined and rewritten.

“In other words, for girls who have a history of sexual exploitation and abuse, school cannot ignore them or what they experience outside school walls. […] Our public schools—especially for these girls—need to be a place of stability and consistency, a place where new norms can emerge. For too many kids, school is the only place they can learn how not to play the circumscribed role the rest of the world casts them in.”

Because sexual exploitation causes girls to miss class, schools currently function to criminalize and punish girls who are victims. Morris asserts that schools cannot neglect Black girls’ lives outside of the classroom, as life outside of class informs one’s behavior inside. Further, school administrators and teachers must educate themselves on red flags for sexual exploitation so that schools can be resources of support for the victims—not sites of punishment and further shame.

“The educational domain today is infused with the prevailing stigma of ‘jezebel’—primarily in the form of concerns among school officials about the moral decency of girls. The regulation of this so-called decency often happens through dress codes and other comments and behaviors that sexualize Black girls in schools. […] Teen girls who wear tight or revealing clothing, who are parenting, who are ‘slut shamed’ and bullied, who express gender along a continuum, and/or who are sexually assaulted are all living under the cloak of jezebel.”

Chapter 3 discusses the role that the slavery-era stereotype of the hypersexual jezebel plays in contemporary classrooms. Morris argues that administrators and officials rely on stereotypical conceptions of Black female sexuality to view, judge, and punish Black girls in school. This ideology is particularly present in dress code enforcement, because students who do not adhere to normative (i.e., white, “modest”) femininity are punished and even bullied for their gender expressions.

“Whether in the community or at school, age compression […] is a phenomenon that is often thrust upon Black girls. However, these girls are girls, not fully developed women in younger bodies. They are adolescents, and like most in their age group, they may test boundaries—particularly with respect to clothing—that are established by those with authority or by institutional rules. Yet they have seen that by doing this, the normal stuff of teenagers, can make them targets for exclusionary discipline or additional surveillance. Unless they fight back.”

Age compression is a studied dynamic where adults judge Black children as fully grown, using this incorrect metric to punish them as if they were adults. Slavery-era attitudes that view Black girls’ assertions of agency as punishable behavior still informs current social attitudes and school discipline. These oppressive attitudes often dovetail with age compression to harmful effect; when Black girls experiment with self-assertive actions like testing boundaries of authority, they are harshly punished—more so than their peers.

“Black girls in trouble with the law have a long history of being assigned to institutions that fail to adequately respond to their marginalization from school. The institution of slavery constructed a social and penal environment that reinforced the idea of Black female inferiority, and this setting primarily allowed for the development of a girl’s domestic skills rather than the development of her intellect. This focus has maintained its imprint on the quality of education that girls receive in confinement—girls who are disproportionately Black.”

The pushout phenomenon is particularly dangerous because even when Black girls are pushed out of public schools and into schools in confinement, their quality of education only worsens. In Chapter 4, Morris explores how institutions such as juvenile court schools have historically denied Black girls the proper resources they need to create fulfilling futures for themselves. Instead, they push girls down narrow paths of domestic labor and service that reinforce stereotypes of Black females’ inability and inferiority. Such institutions provide an especially potent example of how systemic oppression exerts itself in racial, gendered ways.

“The popular perception of Black children as unruly, incorrigible, or inherently ungovernable has affected society’s conscious and unconscious responses to Black girls who get in trouble with the law. Black girls are at once female and Black, and their presence in correctional facilities has always been informed by their status as both.”

This quote illustrates how pushout and the criminalization of Black girls is an intersectional issue. Black girls’ experiences in the classroom, on the streets, and in confinement are all informed by their Blackness and female-ness. The racial and gendered aspects of identity are also used against Black girls when they are punished. Adults in power rely on both sexist and racist ideologies when they punish and persecute these students, viewing Black girls as inherently out of control and dangerous. 

“As described in earlier chapters, schools’ punitive response to girls’ truancy, experience with bullying, and learning disabilities reinforces relationships that further marginalize girls who are struggling to survive. For girls who live in poverty and who have a history of contact with the criminal legal system, schools reproduce dominant ideas of power and privilege in ways that push them away from school and toward other environments that increase their risk of confinement.”

One of the functions of Pushout is to critique the current punitive philosophies of the American education system and to offer alternatives to punishment. As Morris expresses here, when schools punish Black girls for missing class, struggling with class material, or having tumultuous social relationships, they further marginalize already-marginalized students who need support, not punishment. Instead of perpetuating harmful power structures that isolate Black girls and encourage their pushout, schools must offer support and empathy.

“Being excluded from their learning environment for asking questions or challenging authority—rather than for posing an actual physical threat to their own safety or to the safety of other students—further criminalizes Black girls in their learning spaces. Worse, it fuels them being disproportionately labeled as ‘defiant,’ ‘disruptive,’ and ‘uncooperative,’ all of which may result in a written reprimand that can lead to more severe sanctions in the hall, including solitary ‘room time’ or loss of recreational privileges. The exclusionary discipline that is often indirectly related to school pushout becomes more direct and pronounced in juvenile court schools.” 

When Black girls are punitively removed from the classroom for speaking “out of turn” or asking questions, there is very little good (if any) that results. Such punishments only harm Black girls: Not only are they isolated from their educations and peers, but disproportionate punishment of Black girls also fuels harmful stereotypes surrounding Black femininity and behavior. Chapter 4 sheds light on the concerning fact that confined spaces such as juvenile court schools—which should act as supportive facilities, not detrimental ones—only serve as hyperpunitive, hyper-exclusionary spaces that fuel pushout.

“These girls’ stories remind us that a classroom inside of a locked facility is not exempt from being a location for the use (or abuse) or suspension and other disciplinary actions that remove children from their learning environment. We are also reminded that for girls accustomed to using violence as a response to feeling disrespected, being in a hyperpunitive environment may only reinforce negative behaviors that result in marginalization from schools. For Black girls, the juvenile court school can further alienate them from their education […] The problem is that this hyperpunitive classroom management structure affects girls’ perceptions about the function of school and their relationship with it.”

Chapter 4’s investigation into juvenile court schools reflects the tense relationship between environment, emotional triggers, and behavior in the discussion of Black girls and school. Hyperpunitive juvenile court schools do not respect Black girls’ humanity or emotional trials, administering harsh punishments to already traumatized girls who may have mental illnesses and whose struggles are only exacerbated by their environments. These schools’ hyperpunitive approaches trigger emotional responses in Black girls, making them targets of harsh punishment, leading to further emotional responses. Instead of fostering Black girls’ relationships with their education, juvenile court schools do harm.

“These girls’ narratives illustrate for us that it’s crucial for the learning environment to be a place where openness and respect can flourish in order for children to trust that education is their pathway to success. Each girl I spoke with signaled in her own way that she wants to be treated as a human being who is capable of thinking on her own. Her ideas are not lost, her consciousness does not subside, and her hopes may not be quashed simply because she is in juvenile hall.”

Schools must be places that affirm Black girls’ significance and make them feel heard. The Black girls whom Morris worked with throughout Pushout acknowledged the importance of education, signaling that Black girls actively desire a healthy learning environment. Girls’ agency and individual hopes and dreams must be nurtured and supported by schools and educators, not controlled and punished—even if they are attending school in confinement.

“Black girls internalize very early on the idea that their well-being comes secondary to others’. Our policies, our public rhetoric about healing, even our protests all make the pain of Black females an afterthought to the pain of Black males. […] The idea that Black girls have to hold the pain of Black boys, even at their own expense, is a form of internalized sexism.”

The exclusion of Black girls from social justice efforts is harmful in multiple ways. Not only does it deny Black girls the infrastructures of support that they need, but it sends the message that their well-being is secondary to that of Black men. Girls internalize this sexist message and use it to guide their own lives, just as Heaven described in Chapter 5 when she told Morris that she put her own education on hold to ensure her older boyfriend graduated high school. In this way, even well-meaning activists can perpetuate harmful ideologies. Inclusive, intersectional forms of social justice are ever-important in instituting lasting, truly progressive changes to society.

“The criminalization and social marginalization that have been described throughout this book go hand-in-hand with society’s expanding prison-industrial complex and the increased abandonment of the basic tenet associated with juvenile justice: redemption. […] When we take education away from them, Black girls are exposed to more violence, and they are more likely to be victimized and exploited, to become incarcerated, and to experience a lack of opportunity overall. When we prioritize discipline over learning in our educational institutions, we engage in a reactive politics that maintains a status quo of inequality.”

Morris situates the pushout phenomenon within a larger systemic picture, aligning it with similar, interrelated issues such as the prison-industrial complex. Denying Black girls equal access to quality educations contributes to issues that disproportionately affect Black American communities, including sky-high rates of incarceration. As a result, the American education system is contributing to—and actively constructs—the systems of inequality that plague the United States.

“We must also consider how expressions of Black femininity (e.g., how girls talk, dress, or wear their hair) are pathologized by school rules. In our haste to teach children social rules, we sometimes fail to examine whether these rules are rooted in oppression—racial, patriarchal, or any other form. Ultimately such a failure undermines the full expression and learning of Black girls.”

School rules function to socialize children and prepare them for adulthood, reflecting dominant social values in the process. Morris prompts an investigation into how Black femininity is targeted and punished by American schools’ rulebooks, arguing that they perpetuate sexist, racist ideas and socialize children to internalize such harmful ideologies. Black girls are harmed in both the short and long-term as a result, as school rules contribute to both their relationships in school and, on a larger scale, the complex network of systemic oppression that they must deal with in American society.

“Sociological theories about the ways in which violent conditions flow between institutions and public spaces suggest that our society may need to reconsider how it views the school, its function, and its relationship to the community in which it is located. As a locus of learning, our schools can serve a greater purpose than just indoctrinating our girls with the politics of surviving racial, class, and gender bias. These institutions can be bastions of community building, where healing is at the center of their pedagogy and where our girls learn more than just how to behave in the presence of adults to be considered ‘acceptable’ in a school environment.” 

Morris concludes her book on a positive note, emphasizing the significant untapped potential in American schools. After pointing out that schools currently support harmful power structures that oppress and traumatize Black girls, Morris states that through collective, collaborative efforts, this dynamic can be changed. Schools can be revolutionized to be sites of support, empathy, and community-building, where Black girls gain not just an academic education, but a personal one.

“History has taught us that civil rights are but one component of a larger movement for this type of social transformation. Civil rights may be at the core of equal justice movements, and they may elevate an equity agenda that protects our children from racial and gender discrimination, but they do not have the capacity to fully redistribute power and eradicate racial inequity. There is only one practice that can do that. Love.” 

This quote critiques the popular narrative that civil rights marches and demonstrations are the sole solution to systemic issues. While Morris acknowledges that civil rights efforts play a role in gaining equality, they do not have the power to revolutionize structures, social practices, and ideologies. Morris prompts for a comprehensive, collaborative—and most importantly, loving—approach to fighting for systemic change that will address pushout from an educated, active, and empathetic perspective. With Pushout, Morris wishes to be a voice in the collective efforts to achieve this goal.