Next Week at the Woodson Institute
Engaging Race-- A Carter G. Woodson Forum: “BLACK GIRLS MATTER”
Thursday, November 12, 2015—4:30 PM—123 Robertson Hall
We invite you to the second forum in the year-long “Engaging Race” series sponsored by the Carter G. Woodson Institute for African American and African Studies. Focused on black girls, the forum is largely inspired by “Black Girls Matter: Pushed Out, Overpoliced and Underprotected,” a report released by the Center for Intersectionality and Social Policy Studies at Columbia University and the African American Policy Forum. Authored by Kimberle Crenshaw, Jyoti Nanda and Priscilla Ocen, the report, based on a review of national data and on personal interviews with girls in selected regions of the country, is but one in a growing number of such reports, all describing a disturbing national trend: the percentage of girls in the U. S. juvenile justice system is rapidly on the rise. The excessive disciplinary measures they face in schools lead to escalating rates of violence, arrest, suspension and/or expulsion. Girls of color, in particular, face much harsher school discipline than their white peers. For example, Black girls are suspended six times more than their white peers (while black boys are only suspended three times more than white males).
According to Kimberlé Crenshaw one of the study’s authors, “As public concern mounts for the needs of men and boys of color through initiatives like the White House’s My Brother’s Keeper, we must challenge the assumption that the lives of girls and women—who are often left out of the national conversation—are not also at risk.”
Please join us for this roundtable/discussion on black girls with a panel of experts:
- Lindsey Jones (PhD candidate, the Curry School of Education)
- Priscilla Ocen (Loyola University Law School)
- Tammy Owens (Ph.D. Candidate, University of Minnesota and Pre-doctoral Fellow at the Carter G. Woodson Institute)
- LaKisha Simmons (University of Buffalo)
- Joanna Williams (Associate Professor in Curry School of Education).
Read a copy of the “Black Girls Matter” report here.
This event is free and open to the public.
