Aja Reynolds, visiting assistant professor of Urban Education & Critical Race Studies in the College of Education, quoted in Chicago Sun-Times, "At CPS high schools, a stark racial divide on when cops are called on students and arrests"

Chicago Sun-Times, 8/21

At CPS high schools, a stark racial divide on when cops are called on students and arrests

By Nader Issa

Black girls face one police notification per 100 students — eight times the rate of white girls, 14 times more than Asian American girls and about 21⁄2 times more than Latina girls. Aja Reynolds, a visiting assistant professor of urban education and race studies at Wayne State University, says Black girls routinely are seen as troublemakers because they don’t conform to the idealized version of white girlhood or womanhood. That leads to higher rates of police intervention. “Oftentimes, they’re kicked out of class, or they’re in trouble because they may talk back,” says Reynolds, a former Chicago community organizer working with Black girls on the South Side. “And their talk-back may be them advocating for themselves. But, because it comes through a Black girl’s body, it’s seen as talking back. The basis of how we understand womanhood, who represents that, who represents femininity, is really boxed into this cisgender, white, middle-class woman,” Reynolds says. “And then Black girls and women aren’t often seen in that same way.”

https://chicago.suntimes.com/2020/8/21/21372784/chicago-public-schools-cps-high-school-cops-racial-disparities-schurz-roberto-clemente-john-marshall

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