Black girls are punished, many times violently so, for questioning and challenging authority, which is something that is often celebrated and encouraged as a sign of intelligence and critical thinking in white boys.
Censorship is certainly not the answer to controversial material and is inconsistent with our most basic constitutional values.
I think it's useful to recall that a lot of these statutes like 'disrupting the classroom' or 'disturbing the peace' have long been historically used to oppress and criminalize black people.
I have a wonderful, diverse, and young staff at the AAPF who pretty much work around the clock trying to figure out how we promote the idea that social justice requires us to be intersectional in our thinking and in our scope of vision.
Antiracists must acknowledge that patriarchy has long been a weapon of racism and cannot sit comfortably in any politic of racial transformation.
The better we understand how identities and power work together from one context to another, the less likely our movements for change are to fracture.
While white women and men of color also experience discrimination, all too often their experiences are taken as the only point of departure for all conversations about discrimination. Being front and center in conversations about racism or sexism is a complicated privilege that is often hard to see.
Suspension and expulsion are tied to a host of short- and long-term consequences. For some students, zero-tolerance policies in schools lead directly to involvement in the criminal justice system.
In a true democracy, there has to be a line between deliberative debate and mob rule. Trump has crossed the line, and much of the media has exacerbated the problem by treating his remarks as entertainment, effectively encouraging his competition to do the same.
We are a society that has been structured from top to bottom by race. You don't get beyond that by deciding not to talk about it anymore. It will always come back; it will always reassert itself over and over again.
There are many, many different kinds of intersectional exclusions - not just black women but other women of color. Not just people of color, but people with disabilities. Immigrants. LGBTQ people. Indigenous people.
It's hard not to question whether the harsh verdict of Winnie Mandela is a reflection of discomfort with women warriors or, more broadly, with the militant ethos that ultimately became a foil for the popularized representation of Nelson Mandela as the open-armed father of a non-racial nation.
We must begin to tell black women's stories because, without them, we cannot tell the story of black men, white men, white women, or anyone else in this country. The story of black women is critical because those who don't know their history are doomed to repeat it.
School is now a place where punishment and discipline are prioritized over serving students and educating them. Any moment where a student falls outside scripted behavior becomes an opportunity for law enforcement to come in, criminalizing ordinary things people do every day.
When we advocate for violence against women to be eliminated on campuses, we say, 'Well, actually, it's not just on campuses we have to worry about.' We might have to worry about high schools. We might have to worry about police precincts and cars. We might have to worry about public housing.
Ideally, schools should be supportive environments for students. Unfortunately, zero-tolerance policies tend to funnel vulnerable students out of schools and into prisons, low-income jobs, and poverty.
Cultural patterns of oppression are not only interrelated but are bound together and influenced by the intersectional systems of society. Examples of this include race, gender, class, ability, and ethnicity.
The way we imagine discrimination or disempowerment often is more complicated for people who are subjected to multiple forms of exclusion. The good news is that intersectionality provides us a way to see it.
All too often, girls are ignored because their challenges aren't thought to be as serious as those faced by boys.
Having a monolithic view of feminism is suffocating.
