Pushout: The Criminalization of Black Girls in Schools

by Monique W. Morris

Black girls have been our forgotten daughters in responses to the global convergence of racial and gender inequality. Black girls are fully human—they are more than “hos” or a “thing” to break and/or take.15 For many girls, unwanted sexual attention in their early years sometimes leads to premature sexual behaviors. When a little girl who has been sexually assaulted is told and taught through children’s rhymes passed through generations to “shake it to the East, shake it to the West, shake it to the one that she loves the best” and is routinely singing lyrics from songs that objectify Black girls’ and women’s bodies, her spirit is further fed with ideas that affect her understanding of relationships and her perception of herself. For many girls who have survived sexual victimization, these revelations may not come right away in part because of the ways their social world reinforces the idea that they are their sexuality—rather than the idea that they own and control their sexuality. Their personal acknowledgment of their true potential is further obscured when sexual victimization goes unchallenged, or worse, is embedded in schools.