Fear of violent black and brown youth, compounded by high-profile school shootings primarily perpetrated by white youth, led to the rise of zero-tolerance policies in schools beginning in the ’90s. The Gun-Free Schools Act of 1994 mandated a year-long suspension for kids caught bringing a weapon to school. A year-long suspension can be devastating to a child’s educational outlook. And as schools have broadly identified “weapons” as anything from guns and knives to camping forks and “finger-guns,” black and brown children have found themselves disproportionately affected by these rules and
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