Jail Bait, by Martha Thomases – Brilliant Disguise | @MDWorld

December 13, 2014 Martha Thomases 2 Comments

The media has been focused, rightly, on the killing of unarmed black men (often teenagers) by white police.  This is a tragedy and a disgrace, and it is appropriate that we talk about it.

However, more quietly, there has been a similar (if less overtly lethal) trend aimed at black girls.  According to a recent study, African-American girls are much more likely to receive harsher punishments in school, including suspensions, than their white counterparts for the same infractions.

If you read the story (and I hope you will), you’ll notice that the reporter uses a framing device, citing specific people and a specific incident as an example of the thousands — if not millions — of other cases.  This is a common journalistic practice, one that humanizes the story.  However, in this case (as in many others) if you read the comments (always a recipe for aggravation) you will see that those who disagree with the premise pick apart the example, rather than the statistics.\

The statistics say that in one year (2011 to 2012), African-American girls in public schools were suspended “at a rate of 12 percent, compared with a rate of just 2 percent for white girls.”  It goes on to say that, in the state of Georgia, “the ratio of black girls receiving suspensions in the same period compared with white girls was 5 to 1.”

I suppose it’s possible that 2011 was just a strange year, and African-American families living in Georgia were just five times as likely to be horrible parents raising lawless bands of girls, modeled after Tina Turner in preparation for the coming Zombie Apocalypse.

But I doubt it.

For one thing, the darker a girl’s skin, the more severe her punishment.  Skin color can vary widely within the same family, and I think it’s unlikely that these negligent parents neglected their darker children more just for being darker.  For another, our society is racist, often unconsciously, and the people who run our public schools are overwhelmingly white.  Their default assumption about a student is of a white kid.  Any deviation from that assumption makes the child “other,” and subject to stereotypes.  According to the link, “Jamilia Blake, an associate professor of educational psychology at Texas A&M University, said that while black boys are seen as threatening, black girls are often seen as ‘unsophisticated, hypersexualized and defiant.’”

Those girls aren’t shot down dead, but they are damaged.  They are made to feel less than worthy, less than human.  Society tells them they can be thrown away, and it’s no surprise when that is the way they live their lives.

By the way, it’s not just African-Americans who suffer from those stereotypes.  If you look at the history of bigotry, you’ll see the same traits ascribed through the centuries to Jews, Irish, Italians, Asians and gypsies.  And that’s just for a start.

When I read stories like these, or about Trayvon Martin or Michael Brown or Tamir Rice, I ache.  I know people who have lost children to cancer, and that is horrifying enough.  I can’t imagine how much worse it must feel to lose your child to other people’s hatefulness.

The fact that those other people don’t even understand that they are being hateful would not make me feel any better.
Martha Thomases, Media Goddess, hopes everyone has a lovely Hanukkah, because this is a great time of year for fried things.