Weekly thread for news/updates/discussion of George Floyd protests, racial injustice, and policing policy - week of July 13

Fucking hell, the comments on that twitter thread.

What is America.

This is such a disheartening story, and its arc is unfortunately an all too common one. I don't have time at the moment to give this a comment of my usual length, and I mention that simply so my shorter response doesn't accidentally imply that it's an undeserving subject. Instead, here's a quick scattershot of thoughts:

Negative behaviors from kids of color are disproportionately punished. Even in cases where their misbehavior isn't escalated to the justice system, kids of color also often miss out on a "benefit of the doubt" commonly given to white students. Their behaviors will not be seen as mistakes, a natural part of development, or indicators of a need for support or intervention, but they will instead be pathologized or attributed to a sort of latent malicious "character" of the individual. White students' punishments often get portrayed as a "loss of opportunity" for the individual (c.f. Brock Turner), whereas punishment for kids of color often gets portrayed as "protecting society" from the student's behavior.

This discrepancy is one of the key components of a larger issue called the school-to-prison pipeline, which is well worth looking into for anyone that's interested in one of the ways that systemic racism is embedded into education (to say nothing of others).

This case also has another infuriating wrinkle: the student in question was identified as having a disability and was receiving special education services on account of that. School closures disproportionately impacted these students as well, given that each of them has been identified as needing services above what a school offers by default, so they both require and were cut off from even more support than everyone else. Furthermore, even if they were implemented remotely, these supports were often less effective than in-person ones (e.g. social groups for students with communication disabilities, which are far worse via Zoom than they are in person).

So, not only did this student receive harsh punishment for something many, MANY other students struggled with (I saw a less than 50% completion rate with my remote assignments over the course of the closure, for the record), but this student was also among the most vulnerable to the negative effects of school closure on account of her documented special needs. Maddening.