OPINION: Mad science or school-to-prison? Criminalizing black girls



High stakes test question: A female science student conducts an experiment with chemicals that explodes in a classroom, but it causes no damage and no injuries. Who gets to be the adventurous, teenage genius, mad scientist and who gets to be the criminal led away in handcuffs facing two felonies to juvenile hall?

If you’re a white girl check box A. If you’re an intellectually curious black girl with good grades check box B.

When 16 year-old Kiera Wilmot was arrested and expelled from Bartow High School in Florida for a science experiment gone awry, it exemplified a long American-as-apple-pie tradition of criminalizing black girls.

In many American classrooms, black children are treated like ticking time bomb savages, shoved into special education classes, disproportionately suspended and expelled, then warehoused in opportunity schools, juvenile jails and adult prisons.   [Read more…]