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Fear Of Black Pre-Schoolers: Halting The Preschool-To-Prison Pipeline
Black Star News ^ | March 28, 2014 | Professor Travis L. Gosa

Posted on 03/30/2014 8:06:49 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet

Why black children are being funneled into the preschool-to-prison pipeline.

Black students, particularly Black boys, are most likely to be suspended, expelled, and referred to law-enforcement. The school-to-prison pipeline has been well documented for middle and high school students: black teenagers are forced out of school, onto the streets, and ultimately become trapped in the revolving door of crime and incarceration. New data issued by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights reveal that thousands of black preschool students are also being suspended from our nation’s public schools. While black students comprise about 18 percent of preschool students, they represent half of the students suspended multiple times. Black boys are the largest victims of racial disparities in pre-K punishment, though black girls are suspended more than girls of any other race. The data also show that punishment begins early and persists in later grades: black students are three times more likely than white students to be suspended or expelled. Black students only represent about one-sixth of all public school students, but account for nearly one-third of those arrested in school. Likewise, the proportion of black student with disabilities being restrained—strapped down, handcuffed, or legs tied—is almost twice that of other special needs children. Calling the police, handcuffing students, and kicking four-year-olds out of school are irresponsible educational practices that contribute to the criminalization of black children. These experiences can traumatize any child, at any grade level, but the stigma of punishment for black kids has been shown to increase the odds of dropout and incarceration. Racial disparities in early childhood education threaten to destroy the potential of black children before they even have a chance to excel. Why are black children being funneled into the preschool-to-prison pipeline? Part of the problem can be traced to the rise of “get tough” and zero-tolerance policies that have become popular in the post-Columbine era of schooling. Far from increasing school safety, these strategies have resulted in kindergarten students being suspended for "Hello Kitty" bubble guns, kissing another student on the hand, or playing cops and robbers.

In Tulsa, Oklahoma, a 7-year-old girl was sent home and banned from school because of her “distracting” locks. Ninety-five percent of school suspensions are for non-violent offenses like dress code violations and tardiness, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. In early 2014, Attorney General Eric Holder and Education Secretary Arne Duncan called for the end of zero-tolerance policies, which disproportionately target black and Latino students, “make students feel unwelcome in their own schools,” and “disrupt the learning process.” Instead, they advocate what good teachers and smart parents would recognize as common sense: clear boundaries, high expectations for students, and caring relationships between teachers and students make a difference—not kicking students out of school. The Obama Administration should be applauded for tackling the misuse of punishment in our nation’s public schools. However, this does not address the main reason why black students are suspended so often. America continues to see our children as natural born criminals.

For example, The National Review offered the following commentary on the preschool discipline gap: “…The black crime rate […] explains the school-suspension rate. Black males between the ages of 14 and 17 commit homicide at ten times the rate of white and Hispanic males of the same age combined. Given such high crime rates, what do the civil-rights advocates and the Obama administration think is going on in the classroom — docile obedience and strict self-discipline? In fact, the same weak impulse control that leads to such high crime rates among young black males inevitably means more disruptive behavior in school.” [Emphasis added]

In addition to the “weak impulse control” of black people, the author blames single black mothers, absentee black fathers, and the “civil rights industry.” Ronald Reagan perfected this kind of fear mongering about black criminality in the 1980s, while the politics of fear fuel Bill O’Reilly and today’s white minority politics.

Let’s be clear, there is no evidence that black four- and five-year-olds are baby thugs. Disparities in school discipline cannot be explained by the behavior of black children, or black boys in particular. This month, Indiana University researchers released an exhaustive review of the published scientific literature on race, behavior, and discipline. The researchers concluded: “Regardless of the source, there is virtually no support in the research literature for the idea that disparities in school discipline are caused by racial/ethnic differences in behavior. Studies comparing the severity of behavior by race have found no evidence that students of color in the same schools or districts engage in more severe behavior that would warrant higher rates of suspension or expulsion.”

Black kids aren’t little gangsters; rather, we have lost the ability to recognize the innocence of black children. Fear of black children can make Trayvon Martin’s Skittles and a hoodie seem like an eminent threat, or cause Jordan Davis’ killer to fire nine rounds over loud rap music. In the classroom, fear results in harsh punishment for behaviors that might be overlooked among white children. Cutting-edge research published by the American Psychological Association confirms the tendency to see black children as older, less innocent, and as potential criminals. “Racist” preschool teachers are not hatching a plot to destroy black people, but it’s not difficult to find teachers who are afraid of and fearful for black children.

The vast majority of early childhood teachers are white, middle-class, female teachers who too often enter the profession with little prior experience interacting with black children, families, or communities. Some white teachers are less patient, less forgiving, and underestimate their black students, resulting in black students feeling disrespected and treated unfairly because of their race. Teachers are not immune to the harmful stereotypes of black criminality that circulate in popular culture. Rap videos, such as 6-year-old Albert squirting half-naked women with a supersoaker, or 10-year-old Lil Poopy posing as a drug dealer, contribute to the view that black children need harsh discipline before they grow up to become a real threat. Breaking the supposed “cycle of violence and thuggery” was the motivation behind the Omaha police releasing the video of the swearing toddler. Closing the preschool-to-prison pipeline will require abandoning “get tough” school rules and challenging those politicians and media moguls who profit from the myth of black criminality. We must also address the lack of diversity in the nation’s teaching workforce. Black men represent only two percent classroom teachers. The #Dangerous Black Kids social media movement is flooding the Internet with photos of adorable, innocent black children. This is one example of how everyday folk can fight back. Of course, parents must remain the first and last line of defense by continuing to demand that all children are afforded basic civil rights throughout the entire schooling process.


TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; Culture/Society; Government; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: blackfamily; blacks; crime; education; ericholder
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To: 2ndDivisionVet
Travis L. Gosa, Ph.D., is assistant professor of Africana Studies at Cornell University, where his research focuses on racial inequality

As long as black children are taught racial inequality by our leftist education system, then racial inequality will continue unabated.

I have a dream that one day, America's children will not be taught that they are black or that they are white - that they will not be programmed with feelings of guilt or victimhood based upon the skin pigmentation they happen to be born with. I have a dream that one day liberalism will be eradicated from our education system so that we can truly transcend into a colorblind society.

Unfortunately, a colorblind society means that Travis L. Gosa will have to find a new job. And this explains why liberals like this will do everything in their power to ensure that the guilt-victimhood cycle continues.

81 posted on 03/30/2014 9:43:38 AM PDT by Hoodat (Democrats - Opposing Equal Protection since 1828)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

This guy is detached from reality. He needs to read this real account of blacks in a classroom for some clarity:

http://www.ar15.com/forums/t_1_5/1503253_Craigslist__Essay_by_a_Teacher_in_a_Black_School.html


82 posted on 03/30/2014 9:44:35 AM PDT by Ghost of SVR4 (So many are so hopelessly dependent on the government that they will fight to protect it.)
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To: ProtectOurFreedom
it's called Cornell...
83 posted on 03/30/2014 9:50:11 AM PDT by Chode (Stand UP and Be Counted, or line up and be numbered - *DTOM* -vvv- NO Pity for the LAZY - 86-44)
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To: mrsmel
All-black schools become complete cesspools of malfeasance, corruption and crime. The experiment has already been conducted. We must not look at past experience though. That would be racist.

"Common core" is about equalizing education. It's not fair that black students have an average IQ of 85. It gives higher-IQ kids an unfair advantage. The solution is to stop teaching reading, writing and arithmetic and start teaching global warming and social justice instead.

84 posted on 03/30/2014 9:50:42 AM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum ("The man who damns money has obtained it dishonorably; the man who respects it has earned it.")
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To: ROCKLOBSTER
I agree. He knows, it would undermine his entire agenda to admit it. I've seen these debates on “racial realism” sites-the black debater ignores the evidence and statistics until he's finally pinned down, and then either explodes in rage and leaves, after some choice epithets for whites, or transparently tries to blame whites, or tries to deflect the argument. They always know, they just ignore it for as long as anyone will let them get away with it. In academia and lefty land, that's forever.
85 posted on 03/30/2014 9:52:09 AM PDT by mrsmel (One Who Can See)
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To: Hoodat

I have a dream where I can be as proud to be white, and proud of white history and culture, as other races are now allowed to be of who they are, their culture, and history with all its imperfections.


86 posted on 03/30/2014 9:54:42 AM PDT by mrsmel (One Who Can See)
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To: ROCKLOBSTER

As I said, I prefer not to make assumptions that I know the innermost secrets of his soul. College professors of all colors are notoriously ignorant of real life. And you’d be amazed at how many public school teachers become more conservative the longer they teach, the farther they get from the theoretical nonsense of the college courses they took to get that degree. Real life has a way of taking the blinders off. Professors never encounter this. All the students he’s sounding off to paid to be there. He wouldn’t last a month in an inner-city classroom unless all he taught was hip-hop and there was no written component, no testing, and no rules.


87 posted on 03/30/2014 9:56:34 AM PDT by A_perfect_lady
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To: mrsmel

My history doesn’t have a color associated with it. I am a Virginian, a Southerner, and an American. Skin color plays no role in any of that.


88 posted on 03/30/2014 9:58:09 AM PDT by Hoodat (Democrats - Opposing Equal Protection since 1828)
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To: E. Pluribus Unum

And even so-called “conservatives” are in on this scam. That’s why I truly believe, woth all my heart and soul, that no matter what sacrifices the family has to make, homeschooling is the only answer, especially for white children. Because white children are the only ones taught (inasmuch as they’re taught anything), to denigrate and apologise for their history and just for being alive, while other races and cultures are celebrated above them-even though, to this day, it’s only been a white male who has stepped foot on the moon. But white children are not taught about that achievement, unless it’s to tell them how many poor people the money “wasted” on that advance could have fed.


89 posted on 03/30/2014 10:01:01 AM PDT by mrsmel (One Who Can See)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet
Let’s be clear, there is no evidence that black four- and five-year-olds are baby thugs.

Let's be clear, anyone can say the same thing about grossly disproportionate crime rates by blacks of jr. high and high school age, perhaps even worse than the adult male black population.

There are zero facts supporting the pollyana arbitrary assertion that black male pre-schooler behavior is any different.

90 posted on 03/30/2014 10:01:49 AM PDT by publius911 ( At least Nixon had the good g race to resign!)
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To: Paladin2
prolly the same difference as b'twn Colored People and People of Color... none
91 posted on 03/30/2014 10:02:36 AM PDT by Chode (Stand UP and Be Counted, or line up and be numbered - *DTOM* -vvv- NO Pity for the LAZY - 86-44)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet
Black students, particularly Black boys, are most likely to be suspended, expelled, and referred to law-enforcement.

True. And the reason is black parents do a horrible job socializing their sons. This has nothing to do with the schools...

92 posted on 03/30/2014 10:06:15 AM PDT by GOPJ (Save Your Country , Fire A Democrat - freeper molso209)
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To: Behind Liberal Lines

Ithaca - The City of Evil Bump


93 posted on 03/30/2014 10:07:00 AM PDT by Incorrigible (If I lead, follow me; If I pause, push me; If I retreat, kill me.)
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To: Hoodat

I am a Mississiippian, a Southerner, an American, and white. My skin color plays a role in who I am, and even if I didn’t want it to, this government would make sure that I knew it. I consider it only making a virtue of necessity, when the government singles me out as a white in negative ways, to counter with the positives of the fact of my whiteness.


94 posted on 03/30/2014 10:08:46 AM PDT by mrsmel (One Who Can See)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

Non-PC logic tells me that either black parents, through lack of discipline and poor example, are responsible for the behavior of their kids,or there really is a genetic predisposition that causes blacks to act out more than their asian and white contemporaries.

Since asians, who have been persecuted and abused just as much as blacks in the post Civil War period, do not have this problem, quite the opposite in fact, one wonders what the real cause is.

Charles Darwin please pick up the white courtesy phone...


95 posted on 03/30/2014 10:09:00 AM PDT by Chuckster (The longer I live the less I care about what you think.)
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To: A_perfect_lady
I prefer not to make assumptions that I know the innermost secrets of his soul.

His credentials and his words tell most of us about all we need to know. He ain't no Walter Williams or Herman Cain.

Do you assume a mosquito will not bite you until you "know the innermost secrets of his soul"?

96 posted on 03/30/2014 10:10:57 AM PDT by ROCKLOBSTER (Celebrate "Republicans Freed the Slaves" Month.)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet
He got a B.A. in 2002, and from his photo he is fairly young. I'm guessing early 30s. No mention of a Master's Degree, so he was pipe-lined straight into a Ph.D. program (a short cut usually reserved for minorities in extremely soft subjects, from what I have seen, reflecting the university's eagerness to produce minority doctorates. I may be wrong, of course.) No mention of any other languages so that requirement was perhaps waived, or maybe it doesn't exist for Sociology. To get into the Ph.D. program in anthropology, I had to demonstrate proficiency in French and take two years of a third language.

So this fellow has been lobbed educational softballs since 1998, it looks like. No mention of any professional experience other than lecturing college kids and opining in think-tanks. No mention of any real contact with the kinds of children he's writing about. I'll stand by my diagnosis of chronic insular ignorance and reiterate that actually being responsible for teaching one full year of, say, history in South Central, or inner-city Chicago, would absolutely finish him off.

97 posted on 03/30/2014 10:12:22 AM PDT by A_perfect_lady
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To: Chuckster

One study has shown that black males from upper middle class two parent families in Prince George’s Co, had lower school scores, higher drop-out rates, and higher crime rates than their white male peers from poor families in an area of West Virginia.


98 posted on 03/30/2014 10:15:13 AM PDT by mrsmel (One Who Can See)
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To: GOPJ

If you follow the link to the original article and look down to where the comments are, there’s an interesting remark by a teacher. She says she taught AP classes at a 98% black school (AP are the advanced kids) and that her kids were the ones with two parents in the house. Pretty much a direct correlation.


99 posted on 03/30/2014 10:16:30 AM PDT by A_perfect_lady
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To: A_perfect_lady

i’d like to know app where he lives-if he runs true to form, it’s in a safe, majority-white upper middle class enclave.


100 posted on 03/30/2014 10:18:07 AM PDT by mrsmel (One Who Can See)
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