In 2012, for instance, the Department of Education Office for Civil Rights found that the Christina School District in Delaware had violated Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
“Our investigation identified examples where African American students engaging in virtually identical behavior to white students were punished more harshly than white students (who had the same or worse disciplinary history),” the department wrote in a letter to the district. “A statistical analysis of all students referred for discipline for the first time, based on the District’s own records and categorizations, found that African Americans were at least twice as likely to receive a suspension … than white students for violations of similar severity. Moreover, African Americans experiencing their first referral were over three times more likely than white students to have the suspension be [out of school] rather than [in school]. For students whose first disciplinary referral was for Inappropriate Behavior, African American students were nearly seven times more likely to receive [an out-of-school suspension] than white students.”
The investigation also revealed that the district allowed administrators to apply penalties in excess of the provisions outlined in the Student Code of Conduct, and that the imposition of higher penalties fell disproportionately on African-American students. And: “at every school level, and in every year examined, the disparities in disciplinary referrals between African American students and white students were statistically significant. “
As Education Secretary Arne Duncan put it when heannounced the resolution of the case: “Discrimination in the application of discipline policies is inherently wrong and all too common.”
“Common” is right. The Christina district case isn’t that unusual; there are many other examples of disparate treatment.
It is unlikely that the school officials who inflict these cruelties on children wake up in the morning consciously intent on doing harm. But the effect of these disparate policies is in fact racist. Racism, after all, is in the very air that we breathe as Americans. It filters the way many of us see the world (whether we know it or not) and shapes decisions of all kinds: Who gets hired at the white shoe law firm; who gets sentenced to death; and who gets turned away from school and shunted into the streets.