The school-to-prison pipeline affects girls of color, but reform efforts pass them by
June 11, 2015A few weeks ago, a six-year-old black girl named TT was suspended and sent home because she poked a boy with an eraser.
When I asked her what happened, TT told me that the boy was bothering her and wouldn’t stop even after she asked him, so she poked him with an eraser. TT was subsequently suspended from school for two days.
As a mother of a kindergartener, I am very familiar with this type of age-appropriate childish misbehavior. As an organizer for Power U Center for Social Change, a grassroots organization based in Miami, the fact that another student of color was harshly and unfairly punished for age-appropriate behavior also did not surprise me. TT was just one of many girls who fall victim to zero-tolerance and school push-out every day.