Innocence Denied: 
Elementary Black Boys Under Surveillance and Inequitably Disciplined (Again)

Kazaam is a 5-year-old kindergarten Black male. He is a happy, energetic child. However, his teacher often has to tell him to sit down and stay on task to do his work. He is what Boykin calls ‘vervistic’. Rather than trying to understand his learning style, the teacher assumes he is acting out and defying her directions. She writes a referral, and Kazaam ends up in the office with the principal and being reprimanded for his behavior. He is required to serve one day of out-of-school suspension to ‘learn his lesson’.

Research on Racism, Anti-Blackness, Deficit Thinking, Adultification

Dr. Donna Y. FordKazaam’s story is by no means unique, which is quite unfortunate. To state the obvious, this is troubling, unjust, and must change to improve the educational experiences of Black students, Black boys in this case. In a new 2024 report, the ongoing, excessive, and inequitable over-disciplining of Black students, especially boys, is discussed. The study focuses on very young Black boys, which speaks again to the policing of Black bodies of all ages. The report has found what national data reveal from the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC), the largest database nationally, on school districts and buildings.

The OCR’s CRDC gathers and publishes key information about student access to educational opportunities and school climate from public schools (pre-K through 12th grade) in all 50 states, Washington, D.C., and the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico. In this 2022 snapshot of the 2017-18 school year, OCR found stark differences in suspensions between Black boys and all other student groups. Table 1 presents findings from the CRDC. Boys of all races were disproportionately disciplined, but Black boys were suspended and expelled at proportions that were three times their school enrollment. To this point, in each year of data Zimmermann (2024) analyzed, Black elementary students were more likely to be suspended than white secondary students. For more information, we refer readers to Figure 2 in the report, titled “Trends in Out-of-School Suspension Rates, by Race and Ethnicity and School Level, 1973, 2011–12 to 2017–18.”

Office for Civil Rights CRDC Overview of Student Discipline K-12Zimmermann (2024) found that “the suspension gap between Black students and their peers in other racial and ethnic groups, regardless of their disability status, also saw little progress over the 6 years of data we analyzed. For example, in 2011–12, Black students with disabilities were suspended at 2.5 times the rate of White students with disabilities (23% vs. 10%), a 13 percentage point difference. By 2017–18, this disparity had only decreased slightly to 11 percentage points (19% vs. 7%).”