RACISM: 12-Year-Old Black Boy Suspended for Looking at a White Girl
The Internet is littered with
tips and tricks for winning that awkward yet endlessly amusing staple of
childhood life: the staring contest. Last year the Dali Museum even made an app that
lets people have a competition with a virtual Salvador Dalí. But if you’re
wondering exactly how the school-to-prison pipeline works,
an incident in Ohio in which a judge has upheld a school suspension of a black
boy who was having a staring contest with a white girl who was a classmate
might provide some insight
.
Last week Patrick
Dinkelacker, a judge in the Hamilton County Common Pleas court, upheld the
September 2014 suspension of the 12-year-old from St. Gabriel Consolidated
School in the town of Glendale, about 20 minutes north of Cincinnati.
“My son stared at a girl who
was engaged in a staring game,” Candice Tolbert, the boy’s mother, told Fox19. “She giggled the entire time,” said Tolbert. She
also expressed concern over allegedly inconsistent application of the school’s discipline
policies.
“The same girl that accused my son of this act
of perception of intimidation, aggressively poured milk on someone else’s
lunch. When she did that, there was no penalties for that. She received nothing
for that,” Tolbert told the station.
Tolbert
and her husband filed suit against the school in an effort to get the one-day
suspension removed from their son’s academic record. The girl said that she
“felt fearful” during the staring contest, according to court documents. The
day after the contest took place, the girl’s parents contacted school officials
about how their daughter was scared of the boy. The administrators talked to
the boy, and he subsequently wrote an apology letter to the girl.
In a
related story: You’ll Never Guess Which Region Suspends Black Kids
From School Most Often
“I
never knew she was scared because she was laughing,” the boy wrote in the
letter, according to Fox19. “I understand I done the wrong thing that will
never happen again. I will start to think before I do so I am not in this
situation,” he added. Tolbert and her husband were not notified
that there was an issue until the day after their son wrote the apology.
According
to Fox19, the school’s handbook states: “The principal is the final recourse in
all disciplinary matters and may waive any and all rules at his/her discretion
for just cause.” The school administration has refused requests for comment,
and a statement from the Archdiocese of Cincinnati seems to support the actions
of the administrators, as well as the court ruling.
“Judge
Patrick Dinkelacker listened to the plaintiff’s arguments yesterday, rejected
them, and dismissed the complaint against the school. We aren’t going to
comment any further on particular issues
concerning our students,” reads the statement.
In recent years black
children have been escorted out of class by police for wearing the
wrong shoes to school and suspended for holding up three fingers in a photo. As
seen in the cases of Florida teen Kiera Wilmot and Texas teen Ahmad Mohamad,
disciplinary action and law enforcement involvement might happen when black
kids choose to demonstrate their scientific knowledge. Indeed,
black students are three times more
likely than their white peers to be suspended, according to data
from the U.S. Department of Education Office of Civil Rights.
What's
driving the boom in suspensions? According to research, black children may not
be seen as innocent in the eyes of teachers or other parents.
A paper published in 2014 in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology found
that black children "as young as 10 may not be viewed in the same light of
childhood innocence as their white peers, but are instead more likely to be
mistaken as older, be perceived as guilty and face police violence if accused
of a crime."
To address the problem, in January 2014
Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and then attorney general, Eric Holder
released a 35-page document of guidelines
on school discipline. The effort was designed to help teachers and principals
pay more attention to the social and emotional needs of students and reduce
their reliance on suspension and expulsion as a punishment.
"A
routine school disciplinary infraction should land a student in the principal’s
office, not in a police precinct,” Holder said in a statement at
the time.
The
"Belief Statement" on the website of St. Gabriel Consolidated School
indicates that the staff is aware of the need to treat students equitably. “We
believe each child has the right and ability to learn,” and “We believe that
cultural diversity is good.” However it seems Candice Tolbert is no longer
convinced that the school has her son's best interests in mind.
“We
invested academically into our son [for] the betterment of his education,“
Tolbert told radio host Joe Madison on his Sirius
XM show, "The Black Eagle," on Tuesday morning. “At the end, they
want to brand him and mark him,” Tolbert continued.
“Now
we’re looking to go to other schools," said Tolbert. She also expressed
fears that transferring might not be so simple for her son who is "a young
black male coming to another school with his suspension on his record.”
This information was gotten
from FOX19 and told verbatim.
RACISM: 12-Year-Old Black Boy Suspended for Looking at a White Girl
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