Shades of Discipline: Colorism and the Pushout of Black Girls from Schools

Abstract

Nationally, the suspension of Black girls occurs at higher rates (12%) than girls of any other race (The US DOE, Office for Civil Rights, 2014). An analysis of New York City’s public school suspension rates found that Black girls comprise 34% of students, Latinas are 43%, and white girls are 13%, yet Black girls are disciplined at 56%, Latinas at 32% and white girls at 5%.  This study contributes to the research literature on the impact of colorism on the exclusionary discipline of Black girls in schools.  While often explored within communities of color it is essential to examine White colorism and its function as perpetuating institutionalized racism and systems of discrimination in public spheres. The systematic privilege and social capital afforded to lighter skinned women has disproportionately yielded higher rates of education, income and spousal status.  Research has shown that colorism–discrimination based on skin tone— affects the likelihood that Black youth will experience school suspension. Gendered colorism results in darker skinned girls being three times more likely to be suspended than their lighter skinned counterparts.

While my study is aligned with other researchers’ efforts to identify the implicit biases of school administrators’, faculty and teachers’ that disproportionately push Black girls out of schools, I contribute to the field by controlling for additional variables; parental education, socioeconomic status, academic performance and geographic residence.  In addition, I supplement my findings with the results of a qualitative pilot study that explored the lived experiences of adolescent Black girls who have experienced exclusionary school discipline.

Methods: Data and samples: The researcher used the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics

National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY97) which annually surveyed participants from 1998-2014. 8,984 individuals were initially interviewed and 80 percent (7,141) of the sample were interviewed 2014. Semi-structured open ended interview data from a pilot study supplemented the qualitative data.

Measures (the intricacies of our statistical analysis): Skin tone measures were initially scaled from 1-10 (1 being the lightest and 10 being the darkest).  The number of categories for skin tone were recoded into 3 groups for analysis

Results: A logistic regression measured the relationship between the dependent variable school suspension and the independent variable skin tone. A hierarchical logistic regression analysis was conducted to measure additional demographic characteristics on the suspension rates for participants. The study results were consistent with previous studies (on older data) and yielded that lighter skinned girls were almost 3 times less likely to be suspended than their darker hued peers.

Conclusions and Implications: Implicit skin color bias perpetuates systemic, structural and institutionalized forms of oppression in public institutions.  In addition to attending to the significant racial and gendered differences in the rates of exclusionary discipline schools, should closely examine the rates at which colorism informs school pushout rates or Black girls. Race and gender alone do not impact the disparate levels of punishment that Black girls experience in schools.