African American males in primary and secondary schools were suspended more than twice as often as white males in 1992, according to the Office of Civil Rights.
If national statistics paint a bleak picture of suspensions for African American boys, some district-level figures are even more revealing: In the Minneapolis school system, for instance, enrollment of black and white males is nearly the same, but 43 percent of all students suspended during the 1995-96 school year were black males-as opposed to 14 percent who were white males. And more black boys were suspended in this city for lack of cooperation and disrespect than for various categories of fighting, profanity, and verbal abuse put together.
Derrick Hall is a curly-haired 11-year-old with dark brown eyes and a budding interest in racquetball and golf. When Derrick was in the third grade at an upper-middle-class suburban school in southeastern Texas, a handful of white classmates began taking his backpack and hiding it. Derrick told his parents, who advised him to report the incidents to his teacher. Derrick dutifully told the teacher, but she failed to step in, his father says.
One day, Derrick reached the end of his patience: he hid the backpacks of four of the boys who’d been picking on him. After the white kids found out, they complained to the teacher, who in turn sent Derrick to the principal’s office. When Derrick came home with a discipline slip his parents were outraged. Derrick was, after all, an honor student who they say had never been a behavior problem in school. “We were concerned that the school was going to start a whole discipline file on our son based on this minor incident,” says Derrick’s father.
The school principal said she vaguely remembers the incident but refused to comment on the particulars or on any broader issue of discipline. “Our school does not have a significantly high black population,” she says, “so I don’t think that we’re representative of the rest of the nation.”
This uneven treatment, says Steele, can easily set off a downward spiral of events. “A black student acts out once and is disciplined over and above what the act would reasonably require. In response to how he’s treated, the kid acts out again,” he says. “Now the teacher sees the acting out as a justification for her original assumption. Then, once he’s started to behave badly, he may begin to hang around with other students who also behave badly.”
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Clearly, though, many teachers don’t buy notions that black students are treated differently when they misbehave. If the discipline of black male students is disproportionate to their numbers, says Minneapolis teacher Thurman, it’s because the boys’ behavior warrants it: “Parents tend to see what they want to see,” she says, “but I see a lot of aggressive, off-task behavior. Obviously these children are bringing to school what they have learned at home.”
Other educators contend that some of the problem between teachers and black male students stem more from ignorance than malice. “For many teachers, the classroom represents the first time they’ve ever had close interaction with black boys,” says Jawanza Kunjufu, a national educational consultant in Chicago and the author of a series of books on childrearing and education. “So sometimes they may have problems with the way a seven-year-old might walk or wear his pants, and they make assumptions that this child will be difficult.”
Exert from http://people.terry.uga.edu/dawndba/4500FailingBlkBoys.html
By Celeste Fremon & Stephaine Renfrow Hamilton
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