In Support of Black Girls’ Defiance
An Anasysis or the Spring valley Valley High School incident
Much of mainstream America witnessed the police brutality that took place at Spring Valley High School in South Carolina, in which a Black girl was yanked and physically dragged across her classroom by a school police officer because she refused to give up her phone and leave the classroom. #AssaultAtSpringValleyHigh has lead to tweets that re-share and expose data on the discipline rates of Black girls in the United States. According to the NAACP and National Women’s Law Center (2014), during the 2011-12 school year, 12 percent of African-American girls, from pre-K through 12th grade, were suspended. These behavioral management and disciplinary mechanisms create environments by which young people learn that they are the problems – the ones that need to be externally and internally managed.
The important thing to recognize is that the punishment of this young Black woman – a girl – occurred long before Deputy Ben Fields entered the classroom. As Black feminists have urged, others must begin to see the ways that the state agencies – including the criminal justice system and educational system – are a part of a larger structure of anti-black misogyny – misogynoir – that enabled the violence. As we become increasingly enraged by the brutalization in this video, we must consider that we should have been angry even before the video presented itself to us.
http://www.thefeministwire.com/2015/11/in-support-of-black-girls-defiance/
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