Pushout: The Criminalization of Black Girls in Schools

by Monique W. Morris

As Khalil Muhammad notes in The Condemnation of Blackness, “Black women’s perceived moral shortcomings or racial ‘defects’ disqualified them from the protective status of the law . . . the problem was ‘located in Black women themselves.’”17 Never mind that many Black women, including educators and political activists such as Fannie Barrier Williams, Nannie Helen Burroughs, and Mary McLeod Bethune, were calling for an elevation of Black girls’ dignity not through the policing of their sexuality (and incarceration) but rather through the implementation of equal rights and economic or educational opportunity. To say these women were facing an uphill battle understates the case.