Lesson Overview Featured Article: “‘A Battle for the Souls of Black Girls’” by Erica L. Green, Mark Walker and Eliza Shapiro For years, education reform has looked at discipline disparities between Black boys and white boys. However, recent cases have brought to the forefront the ways in which Black girls are disciplined at rates close
The NWLC released a 2018 report titled “Dress Coded: Black Girls, Bodies, and Bias in D.C. Schools” that detailed their findings from interviews with Black girls in D.C. public middle or high schools and summarized reviews of schools’ publicly available dress code policies. They found that many of the schools banned traditionally Black hairstyles or head coverings
Black girls are viewed by educators as more suspicious, mature, provocative and aggressive than their white peers, said Rebecca Epstein, the executive director of the Georgetown Law Center on Poverty and Inequality and an author of the first robust study of “adultification bias” against Black girls. The study found that Black girls as young as 5
MadameNoire, Natalie Petit-Frere In this same era, enslaved women could not testify against their masters when they raped them because they’d been deemed inherently promiscuous and therefore incapable of sexual assault –a stigma that still follows us today. Georgetown Law’s Center on Poverty and Inequality conducted a study on the “adultification” of Black girls in
The two-minute long video was created by the US’s Georgetown University Law Center for an initiative called “Gender Justice and Opportunity” that works to support low-income girls and girls of color. “In the US, adults view black girls as less innocent and more adult-like than their white peers starting as young as five-years-old,” the voiced-over
A 2017 study, co-authored by Jamilia Blake, a professor from Texas A&M University, and Rebecca Epstein of the Center on Poverty and Inequality at Georgetown University Law Center, found that Black girls between the ages of 5 and 9 are perceived as being much older than they actually are. And, when compared to white girls
In this historic moment, cities across the nation are recognizing the damage caused by police presence in schools. From disproportionate action in response to small offenses, to police involvement in tantrums and dress code violations, officers militarize school environments in ways that harm all students, but especially students of color. In New York City, the
It is increasingly clear to all Americans what Black communities have known for generations: Systemic racism not only persists throughout our institutions, laws, and policies, but it negatively impacts physical, psychological, and emotional health. Less evident, however, is that the over-policing and systemic racism we see playing out in the streets, has occurred for decades
In a study by Georgetown Law, they found that adults see Black girls as less innocent and more adult-like than their White peers. It is not a privilege that Black girls are seen this way, in fact it is the direct opposite. Because there are already discrepancies in law enforcement, the idea that Black girls
Sexual abuse and fatal violence are only part of the many facets of the injustices Black women face. A 2017 report from Georgetown Law’s Center on Poverty and Inequality found that adults view Black girls as more “adult or mature, sexual, and promiscuous” than white girls. Furthermore, there is a perception that Black girls need