This week, I read about racial discrimination in punishment in middle and high schools. In a piece about expulsion programs in Canadian schools, Sibblis employs a theoretical framework of race to discuss how expulsion programs are spaces of colonization. Sibblis employs theorists such as Foucault and implicitly touches on the work of DuBois and Fanon when she discusses the “strictly epidermal identity” of black youth that marginalize them based purely on their skin color, (79). Black children were punished more severely for the same violations as white children, being perceived as more of a disruption and a violent threat to the classroom. Sibblis concludes with a discussion about how new racism, or the idea of cultural differences, has led to a neoliberal ideology that denies the function of structures in racism today. Along the same lines, McCarthy and Hodge discuss the reasons for this unfair punishment at the individual level, including the racial prejudice of school officials. Their research showed that students who perform a submissive demeanor, as well as student with a higher GPA, were given more leniency in their misconduct trials. Given the perception of black youths as threatening and disruptive, and that many students of color come from lower SES backgrounds which can impair academic performance, the authors theorize that these are some of the reasons why black students are unfairly punished.
The last article I read for this week was about racial tensions on college campus. The authors found that there is a divide between black and white students, such that they have a difficult time making friends with each other, they perceive their differences to be strong, black students often feel ostracized and excluded by white students, and black students often face racial prejudice. Moreover, the authors characterize the racial climate as one of “distrust and hostility” (124). Therefore, given the lack of understanding and contact between black and white students, it makes sense that racial prejudice may exist in the student body which could affect the reporting of misconduct, as well as the adjudicating process when students are on the adjudicating board, such as at Bowdoin.
The next topic I want to research is faculty bias in reporting, because apparently on 10% of staff at Bowdoin are POC. Given this disparity, it might be that white professors are more likely to report students of color because of their own biases as well as the fact that they rarely encounter POC as their peers or as their students. I also want to do research on Bowdoin’s official policies about misconduct and the J-Board process. Moreover, I found some articles on incidents of racial discrimination at prominent universities and I want to use these case studies to frame some of the anecdotes I’ll get from Bowdoin. I reached out to a few people I want to interview so hopefully I will start that this weekend or next week.
Carthy, John D. Mc and Dean R. Hoge. 1987. “The Social Construction of School Punishment: Racial Disadvantage Out of Universalistic Process.” Social Forces65(4):1101
Carthy and Hoge conduct quantitative analyses on the racial disparities in school punishment
through analyzing a number of related factors, including self-reports of misconduct, GPA, prior
record, and demeanor. This source comes from a peer-reviewed journal and clearly outlines all
methodological tools as well as the limitations of the analysis, and as such it is a credible source.
Coming from a journal, the intended audience of this article is academic peers writing about the
school-to-prison pipeline. This source expands upon other articles I have read in that it includes
qualitative analysis and attempts to delve into the details of why racial prejudice occurs, including
stereotypes about demeanor. This article is useful in contemplating how reporters and school
officials may be biased in misconduct cases.
Fisher, Bradley J. and David J. Hartmann. 1995. “The Impact of Race on the Social Experience of College Students at a Predominantly White University.” Journal of Black Studies26(2):117–33.
Fisher and Hartmann discuss the racial divide on college campuses, including self-segregation,
ostracization, and racial prejudice. The authors conclude that an atmosphere of distrust between
black and white students both creates and perpetuates a racial divide, implying through
comparison to cases of racial bias on campus that the aforementioned atmosphere induces racial
bias incidents and racial prejudice in the disciplining of these incidents. This article come from a
peer-reviewed journal and as such, it can be considered a credible source whose audience is other
academics. This article adds to my other research because it discusses racial prejudice on college
campuses rather than high schools. Although it does not explicitly discuss how administrations
handle misconduct, this article is useful in reasoning why racial bias may exist in reporting
academic and social code violations.
Sibblis, Camisha. 2014. “Expulsion Programs as Colonizing Spaces of Exception.” Race, Gender & Class21(1-2):64–81.
Sibblis utilizes a theoretical framework to discuss school expulsion programs in middle and high
schools, finding that neoliberal ‘new racism’ predicated on cultural differences leads to bias in
school administration officials. Sibblis argues that expulsion programs facilitate the school-to-
prison pipeline for black youths in Canada. This article was published in a peer-reviewed journal so
the source is credible and is intended for an academic audience. This source provides a theoretical
basis for my research paper, grounding my analysis in sociological theorists such as Foucault,
Fanon, and DuBois. This source expands upon literature on school discipline, touching on how
neoliberalism has changed racism in the US and providing a broader institutional understanding of
school discipline, in contrast to Carthy and Hoge, who primarily examine individuals.
Lopez’s Comments:
Aliya, it looks like your continue to make good progress on your project. The piece that you referred to should theoretically be very helpful to you. I agree that looking at faculty might be helpful, bur for the scope of this project, it might be taking you into uncharted territory. I want to make sure that you stick to looking at the experiences of students. Also, yes, the number of POC faculty is quite small. But, it actually even smaller on the staff side of things. I believe that there are 44 self-identified faculty of color on campus (but this also will include visiting folks and postdocs). However, you should ask Belinda Kong (she would know), how many of these are tenure-track and tenured faculty. Of those that are POC, it might be also interesting to see how many of them are international faculty.