(Un)Doing Hegemony in Education: Disrupting School-to-Prison Pipelines for Black Males

Abstract

The school-to-prison pipeline refers to the disturbing national trend in which children are funneled out of public schools and into juvenile and criminal justice systems. The purpose of this article is to theorize how this pipeline fulfills societal commitments to black male over-incarceration. First, the author reviews the troublesome perceptions of black boys and men in educational settings throughout the educational pipeline. Next, the ways in which black American boys are scripted out of childhood humanity are discussed, drawing upon tenets of discipline and punishment theory. Second, drawing from additional theories of power, the article re-interprets school discipline and achievement data in the educational pipeline as tools of containment that support school-to-prison pipelines for black males. The third section synthesizes the literature on black male behavioral responses in disempowering educational settings. The article closes with discussion and implications for schools and society.

Notes

¹It should be noted that Latino males had the lowest the graduation rates in the other 11 states (Schott Foundation for Public Education, 2012).

²Jim Crow laws were racialsegregation laws enacted between 1876 and 1965 at the state and local level in the US. They mandated dejure racial segregation in all public facilities in Southern states of the former Confederacy with a separatebutequal status for AfricanAmericans (Alexander, 2012).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

T. Elon Dancy

T. Elon Dancy, II, PhD, is Associate Professor of Higher Education, African & African American Studies, & Women's and Gender Studies at the University of Oklahoma. His research investigates the experiences and sociocognitive outcomes of students, particularly related to the nexus of race, gender, and culture.