The stigmas many attach to black girls has far-reaching and damaging consequences, Morris writes, with devastating effects on their academic, social, and emotional lives. As Pushout documents, these are hardly isolated cases. This inclination to judge and condemn black girls is also seen in recent examples that sparked national outrage, including Kiera Wilmot, the 16-year-old Florida girl expelled for a harmless science experiment Dajerria Becton, the 15-year-old girl tossed and pinned to the ground by a McKinney, Texas, police officer during a pool-party squabble and Shakara, the 16-year-old girl dragged out of her seat and thrown across a South Carolina classroom over a cell phone. According to elders within Montgomery’s black community and others, these factors, taken all together, made Colvin unsuitable as a standard-bearer for the civil-rights movement. She was also working-class, dark-skinned, and pregnant. Yet Colvin was feisty and argued with the white policeman before getting arrested.

Colvin was seemingly an ideal role model against segregated busing-she was an A student who had studied Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, and Jim Crow racial injustices. As evidence, Morris offers the historical account of a black teen named Claudette Colvin, who refused to relinquish her bus seat to a white passenger in March 1955 before Rosa Parks made history with the Montgomery Bus Boycott. In short, black girls are devalued based on how others perceive them. Society’s deeply entrenched expectations of black girls-influenced by racism and patriarchy-has led to a ritual whereby these young women are often mischaracterized, and mislabeled because of how they look, dress, speak, and act. Morris in Pushout: The Criminalization of Black Girls in Schools, is a condition that has plagued black girls and women for time immemorial.

The “good girl” and “bad girl” dichotomy, as chronicled by Monique W.

Monique morris pushout