{"id":2192,"date":"2018-09-21T08:00:43","date_gmt":"2018-09-21T13:00:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/trot\/?p=2192"},"modified":"2018-09-21T12:25:16","modified_gmt":"2018-09-21T17:25:16","slug":"policing-the-behavior-of-minority-girls","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/trot\/2018\/09\/21\/policing-the-behavior-of-minority-girls\/","title":{"rendered":"Policing the Behavior of Minority Girls"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Photo by Mike Baird, Flickr CC<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The recent treatment of superstar tennis player Serena Williams provides plenty for discussions of discrimination against women of color in sports and more broadly, in public. Even before this most recent incident involving her technical violations for supposedly \u201caggressive\u201d behavior against the match\u2019s umpire, Williams received a violation in the French Open for her black athletic catsuit, despite numerous instances of white players sporting similar wear at the French Open in prior years. Serena Williams\u2019 experience is not only familiar to adult women of color, but also to girls of color. Social science research highlights how enduring patterns of policing and regulating racial minorities begins at an early age — often within educational institutions <\/span><\/p>\n

Schools have long served as sites for social control and discipline that hinder the educational attainment of minority youth. Girls of color experience a unique set of institutional discriminatory practices that are coded in both racialized and gendered controlling images. All too often, these images depict girls of color as overly aggressive, hypersexual, and too adult-like. One two-year ethnographic study showed that while some teachers appreciated Black girls\u2019 assertiveness in the classroom, by and large, teachers and administrators discouraged Black girls from talking in \u201cloud\u201d or aggressive manners, especially when such behaviors threatened teachers’ authority. They attempted to incentive Black girls into more quiet and docile behavior in order to achieve status as young \u201cladies\u201d — a status shrouded in ideals of white female innocence.<\/h5>\n