Introduction: School-to-Prison Pipeline Special Issue

Abstract

This special issue of Taboo was occasioned by several widely publicized, gutwrenching incidents of physical violence unleashed against Black K-12 students that were video recorded and circulated on social media. In Columbia, South Carolina, a young Black girl was physical assaulted by a brutish and overzealous police officer (aka school resource officer or SRO) in her high school classroom, ostensibly for not responding expeditiously to a directive to leave the classroom. This young girl was aggressively grabbed and yanked from her chair, and violently slammed to the floor in front of her classmates before being detained and arrested. On social media and various news outlets, onlookers shamelessly suggested that the police officer’s malfeasant behavior was logical and justified. When physical aggression towards Black students is publicly condoned and encouraged, it should come as no surprise that schools across the country double-down on punitive practices such as investing considerable financial resources to employ more police officers, officers whose actions have been found to have a disproportionate and adverse impact on students of color (ACLU, 2017). This doubling-down on punitive disciplinary action, which is particularly common in urban schools with predominantly Black and Brown students (ACLU, 2017; Crenshaw, Ocen, & Nanda, 2015; Morris, 2016), engenders a school climate where antipathy and psychological, emotional, and physical disregard are comAhmad R. Washington & Malik S. Henfield Taboo, Fall 2018