INSTITUTE INDEX: The harsh treatment of black girls in the South's public schools
The brutal arrest of a student in a South Carolina classroom this week has sparked outrage over the treatment of black girls in public schools across the South. (Image is a still from a cellphone video shot by a student.)
Date on which the FBI and the Justice Department announced they were opening an investigation into the violent arrest of a 16-year-old African-American girl identified as Shakara at Spring Valley High School in Columbia, South Carolina after the student didn't comply with the teacher's order to leave the room for using her cell phone: 10/27/2015
Price of the personal recognizance bond charged to a second African-American girl, Niya Kenny, who was in the classroom and arrested after filming the incident and speaking out in defense of her brutalized classmate: $1,000
Date on which the white police officer involved in the incident, Senior Deputy Ben Fields — referred to by some students even before this incident as "Officer Slam" — was fired: 10/28/2015
In South Carolina, where blacks make up 36 percent of public school students, percent of students referred to law enforcement who are black: 49.5
Rank of South Carolina among the states where referrals of black public school students to law enforcement is highest: 6th
Of the 10 states where the percentage of black students referred to law enforcement is highest, number in the South: 7
According to U.S. Department of Education data for the 2011-2012 school year, number of times more likely black male students were to be suspended than their white male counterparts: 3
Number of times more likely black female students were to be suspended than their white female counterparts: 6
Year in which a study found that teachers perceived black girls as being "loud, defiant, and precocious" and that black girls were more likely than their white or Latina peers to be reprimanded for being "unladylike": 2007
Age of an African-American girl in Henry County, Georgia who faced expulsion and criminal charges last year because she wrote "hi" on her school's locker room wall: 12
In Hoover, Alabama, year in which a black teenage girl with chronic health problems including sleep apnea filed a lawsuit after she was arrested and beaten in school for falling asleep while reading: 2013
Age of a black girl who in 2007 was handcuffed and arrested on a felony charge for throwing a tantrum at her Avon Park, Florida school: 6
Age of an autistic African-American girl who had an outburst in her classroom earlier this year in Louisiana's Jefferson Parish, jumped out of a window, climbed a tree and was confronted by five police officers who arrested and handcuffed her face down on the ground: 10
Number of students arrested in Jefferson Parish during the 2013 school year: 600
Percent of those arrested who were African-American students, who make up about 42 percent of the parish's public school population: 80
Percent who were African-American girls: 23
Percent who were white girls: 6
Rank of black girls among the fastest-growing segment of the juvenile justice population: 1
(Click on figure to go to source.)
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Sue Sturgis
Sue is the former editorial director of Facing South and the Institute for Southern Studies.