Racial disparities push schools to overhaul approach to discipline

[Igel]

2. Old news.

The referrals for behavior are usually attributed to cultural differences. The kids have their own culture and it's racist to expect them to act in accordance with school culture.

Even after 10 or 11 years of being exposed to it.

Again, we think that somehow skin color is the guiding factor in culture and behavior. It's a pervasive misunderstanding.

In a linguistics course in which you take pains to point out, with examples, that language and culture aren't racial attributes, but merely correlated with race, kids nod and spew the right answer for test.

Then you hear them talking and they ask why a 3rd-gen Japanese-American is learning Russian and not "their" language, "Japanese." Why the grandchild of Central American immigrants is studying Chinese and not "his" language, Spanish. "Don't you want to know your own culture?" As though the kid doesn't already know *his* own culture--it's his great-grandparents he doesn't know.

Similarly with this. You penalize a student for acting inappropriate and it's racism because it disproportionately impacts blacks. In many cases, it's a low SES/family education problem., one that disproportionately impacts blacks and Latinos. Go to in-school suspension and there'll be a smattering of kids from all SESs for a variety of infractions--most commonly tardies. But the kids referred for honest infractions of the rules are almost all low SES. Blacks, Latinos, whites, and all low SES. Disproportionately black and Latino, but not that far off from proportionate if you look at SES first. After that you get "black culture" and "Latino culture" overlays.