Post #4: Unfair Opportunity

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Today I will be discussing the evolution and importance of in my opinion, the key argument that the author is trying to stress throughout Pushout. Morris makes a lot of valuable arguments worth regonitition, however throughout the past four chapters I've read there is one argument that is clearly the foremost of importance she wants to convey to the reader. This being, that Black girls from difficult backgrounds or that show “ghetto behavior” do not receive the same oppertunities or treatment as their white counterparts in school. Specifically in chapter four, Morris focuses on this argument’s evolution through time and its presence in various types of situations.

For example, let's start in the past.

In 1936, legendary jazz artist Ella Fitzgerald was assigned to an all girls correctional institution in New York for being a “ungovernable teen.” (143) Most schools like this one in the 1930s still segregated the black children from the white. So as a result, Ella was blatantly denied equal opportunities and treatment as to what was being given to the other students. The argument here proves true as Morris’ argument here is supported by the law.

Later on, these segregational rules caused Ella to be “excluded from participating in the choir.” (143)

The pure irony of this situation is just amazing.

We all might have liked to think what could’ve become of that school to this day if they were the ones to first discover and nurture the talents of Ella Fitzgerald. Fame, praise and status would be associated with the institution, quite the opposite from the memory of being known as the school that hindered a music legend’s voice on the grounds of racism.

Even in today’s 21st century correctional institutions, “(Black) Girls dismissed as delinquents struggled to be included in discourses on correctional education and its role in returning then to their home communities and rebuilding their lives.” (141)

No matter your This “dissmissive” attitude doesnt just prove true in the 1930s and in juevenile centers, it's present in our very own public schools.

Thus, hindering the equity of oppertunity.

Today it might not be as obvious as it was in the 1930s, but still in 2019 black girls face numerous obstacles to receiving equal opportunities in their very own education. An education that is their American right. One of the most prominent points Morris makes in her argument is that in school, black girls don't receive the same opportunities as white girls in many “nuance ways”. In other words, very small, but impactful differences in the ways in which black girls are percieved in school.  One of these nunances includes the implicit bias teachers associate with a black female from a more complicated background. Morris states “teachers [...] are committed to supporting the education of all their students, but their unconscious associations between black girls and underperformance [...] leads them to assume that these girls are not capable of performing.” (51) Small things like the implicit biases teachers have from their own personal experiences around black female students, are pretty hard to control. This is an unfairness in the system, a subtle distinction that could make or break the overall performance of black girls in schools across the country.

This is not something that should be negotiable, this an education that is supposed to be an equal chance of success, for everyone. It may not be written on bathroom doors, the public water fountains, or bus seats anymore.

However just because we cannot see something doesn't mean that it isn't there.

To improve the fairness of opportunities distributed throughout American school systems, we must be aware of the small injustices that still linger in the most secretive of places, one being, in the assumptions we make in the back of our very own minds.