Laura: Here’s a number that should stop everyone in their tracks: Black girls are suspended from school six times more often than white girls. Sophia: Wow. Six times. Laura: And not for more serious offenses. For things like being "disruptive" or "defiant." This isn't about bad kids; it's about biased systems. Sophia: That’s staggering. And it completely flips the script, because when we hear about the school-to-prison pipeline, the conversation almost always centers on Black boys. It sounds like there’s a whole other crisis happening that we’re not even talking about. Laura: That is the devastating reality at the heart of Pushout: The Criminalization of Black Girls in Schools by Dr. Monique W. Morris. Sophia: I know this book made huge waves when it came out. It’s considered essential reading. Morris is a major voice in social justice, and I read that she spent four years traveling the country, gathering these stories directly from girls in schools and detention centers. It's not just academic; it's deeply personal. Laura: Exactly. She's a co-founder of the National Black Women’s Justice Institute, and her work is grounded in years of research and advocacy. In Pushout, she exposes this hidden crisis, this invisible pipeline that we rarely talk about. Sophia: And it seems like the first step is just making it visible. Laura: Precisely. And that's the first major idea we have to grapple with: this pipeline is real, but for girls, it's almost invisible.

Laura: While it's true that boys make up the majority of the juvenile justice system, girls are actually the fastest-growing segment of that population. And Morris argues that their pathway there often starts in the schoolhouse. Sophia: So it’s not just happening on the streets or in neighborhoods, but in the very places that are supposed to be safe havens for learning and growth. Laura: Exactly. And the criminalization they face isn't always about a specific school policy. It’s about a societal perception of Black girls as less innocent, less feminine, and less in need of protection. Morris opens the book with a story that perfectly illustrates this, and it didn't even happen at a school. It was at a pool party in McKinney, Texas, in 2015. Sophia: Oh, I think I remember this. The video went viral. Laura: It did. Police were called for a disturbance at a community pool. When they arrived, the scene was chaotic, mostly with teenagers. One of the officers, a white man named Eric Casebolt, immediately began escalating the situation. He targeted a 14-year-old girl named Dejerria Becton. She was in her bikini, clearly a child, and she was just trying to stay with her friends. Sophia: What did he do? Laura: He grabbed her, threw her to the ground with incredible force, shoved her face into the grass, and then ground his knee into her back, restraining her with his full body weight. And all you can hear on the video is this terrified 14-year-old girl screaming for her mother. "Call my mama! All my mama!" Sophia: That's just gut-wrenching. It’s a complete abuse of power against a child. Laura: It is. And while Casebolt eventually resigned after the public outcry, for Morris, this incident is a symbol of the broader issue. Dejerria wasn't seen as a child needing guidance or de-escalation. She was seen as a threat to be neutralized. Sophia: So how does that same level of aggression and criminalization show up inside the classroom, where there aren't as many cameras? Laura: Through the data. Morris points out that while Black girls make up only about 16% of the female student population in the U.S., they account for nearly one-third of all girls referred to law enforcement and more than one-third of all female school-based arrests. Sophia: That disparity is enormous. It can't be because they're misbehaving more. Laura: It's not. It's because their behavior is interpreted differently. Morris introduces a critical concept here: "adultification bias." Sophia: Adultification bias. Can you break down what that actually means in a classroom setting? Laura: It’s the phenomenon where adults view Black girls as being older and more mature than they actually are. They’re perceived as less innocent, more knowledgeable about adult topics like sex, and more responsible for their actions than their white peers. A white girl might be seen as having a bad day; a Black girl is seen as having a bad attitude. A white girl’s enthusiasm is seen as passion; a Black girl’s is seen as aggression. Sophia: So they’re stripped of their childhood. They’re not allowed the grace to just be kids, to make mistakes, to be loud or emotional. Laura: Exactly. They lose the presumption of innocence that is automatically granted to other children. And when that happens, the school’s response shifts from education to enforcement. From support to punishment. Sophia: Okay, so 'adultification bias' is a key reason why this happens. But what does it actually look like day-to-day? What are the specific triggers that lead to a girl being arrested for... a tantrum?

Laura: That's the most chilling part of the book. The examples are so mundane, so rooted in normal childhood behavior, that they become absurd. In 2012, a 6-year-old kindergartener in Georgia named Salecia Johnson had a tantrum in the principal's office. She threw some books and toys. Sophia: A normal 6-year-old meltdown. Laura: The school called the police. They handcuffed her and took her to the police station. Her mother said Salecia woke up screaming at night for weeks, yelling, "They're coming to get me!" Sophia: They handcuffed a six-year-old. For a tantrum. I can’t even wrap my head around that. Laura: And it’s not an isolated case. In 2007, another 6-year-old, Desre'e Watson in Florida, was arrested for a similar tantrum. The police chief at the time defended the arrest, saying, "When there is an outburst of violence, we have a duty to protect... regardless of the age." Sophia: He called a kindergartener’s tantrum an "outburst of violence." That’s adultification bias in action, right there. He’s not seeing a scared little kid; he’s seeing a threat. Laura: Precisely. And it extends beyond tantrums. Morris tells the story of Kiera Wilmot, a 16-year-old honor roll student in Florida. She was curious about science and mixed some common household chemicals in a plastic bottle on school grounds. The bottle popped and created a small puff of smoke. No one was hurt, no property was damaged. Sophia: A science experiment gone a little wrong. Sounds like something that should land you in a conversation with the science teacher, maybe a detention at worst. Laura: She was expelled and charged with two felonies, including "possessing or discharging a weapon on school property." Sophia: A felony? For a science experiment? It sounds like any expression of curiosity or even just normal childhood emotion is being interpreted as a criminal act when it comes from a Black girl. Laura: That's the core mechanism of pushout. It’s the subjective interpretation of behavior. The book is filled with stories of girls being punished for their "attitude." One administrator is quoted as saying Black girls get referrals because "They're Not Docile." A 14-year-old girl named Latisha says, "A lot of people say I got an attitude, but I don’t really see it. The only reason people be saying I have attitude is because I stand my own ground." Sophia: So assertiveness is recategorized as aggression. Speaking up is defiance. Having a strong personality is having a "bad attitude." Laura: And this policing extends to their very appearance. Morris has a whole chapter called "Jezebel in the Classroom," which explores how Black girls' bodies and styles are hyper-sexualized and regulated. Think about school dress codes. Sophia: Oh, I can see where this is going. The rules about skirt length or tank top straps. Laura: Exactly. But they are often applied with a clear bias. Morris tells the story of Deja, a student who was sent to the office for wearing shorts that were deemed too short. While she was waiting, she saw a white girl wearing even shorter shorts get a pass to class without a word. When Deja pointed this out, the principal’s response was to warn her not to let boys "feel all on her." Sophia: Wow. So the responsibility for preventing sexual harassment is placed on the girl being harassed, not on the boys or the school culture. And her body is seen as an inherent provocation. Laura: It’s a classic example of victim-blaming, rooted in historical stereotypes of Black women as hypersexual. This also applies to hair. Remember the story of Tiana Parker, the 7-year-old in Oklahoma who was sent home because her charter school’s policy banned "dreadlocks, afros, and other faddish hairstyles." Sophia: They banned Afros? That’s not a hairstyle, that’s just how hair grows out of some people's heads. It's literally policing their natural being. Laura: It is. And when you combine these things—zero-tolerance policies that punish normal behavior, adultification bias that removes the presumption of innocence, and the constant policing of their attitude, bodies, and hair—you create an environment that is hostile to their very existence. Sophia: So it's a perfect storm. The school stops being a place of learning and becomes a place of surveillance and punishment. It’s no wonder they get "pushed out." The environment is actively pushing them away.

Laura: That’s the term Morris uses, and it's so important. It’s not "dropping out." Dropping out implies a choice on the student's part. "Pushout" correctly places the responsibility on the system that is failing them. And the consequences are devastating. Morris cites a statistic that nearly half of all Black girls who are expelled nationwide do not receive any alternative educational services. Sophia: So they’re just… discarded. Thrown away by the system that was supposed to educate them. That’s a direct path to the juvenile justice system, to poverty, to exploitation. Laura: It is. The book details how many girls who are pushed out become vulnerable to sex trafficking. Diamond, a girl profiled in the book, was expelled for writing on a wall after being teased for being "on the track." The school punished the symptom—the graffiti—without ever asking about the cause, which was that she was being trafficked. Her expulsion made her even more dependent on her pimp. Sophia: This all feels so huge and systemic. What does Morris say we can actually do? Does she offer any hope? Laura: She does. The final chapters are dedicated to solutions. The key is a fundamental shift in mindset, from punishment to transformation. She champions alternatives like restorative justice. Sophia: What does that look like in practice? Laura: Instead of just suspending two students who fight, a restorative approach brings them together in a circle with a trained facilitator. The goal isn't to assign blame, but to answer three questions: Who has been hurt? What are their needs? And whose obligation is it to meet those needs? It’s about repairing the relationship and the harm, not just punishing the act. Sophia: It’s about teaching conflict resolution instead of just exiling the problem. Laura: Exactly. It’s about creating healing-centered environments. It requires training teachers to be culturally competent, dismantling biased dress codes, and, most importantly, listening to the girls themselves. One of the most powerful moments in the book is when a girl in a detention facility tells Morris, "Just tell the truth." Sophia: And the truth is that these aren't "bad girls." They are girls who are being failed by a system that refuses to see their humanity. Laura: That's the heart of it. Morris forces us to ask a fundamental question: Is the goal of school to create compliant bodies, or to nurture curious minds? For Black girls, the answer they receive is often the former. Sophia: A powerful and necessary question for all of us to consider. Laura: This is Aibrary, signing off.