EAST LANSING, Mich. - Black and Latino "hip-hop" students are disproportionately punished in urban schools, finds a two-year analysis that sheds light on some of the unfair disciplinary practices newly targeted by the Obama administration.
Muhammad Khalifa, a Michigan State University assistant professor of education, found that students who identified with hip-hop culture were often removed from school because of their cultural behaviors and dress. His paper, "Creating Spaces for Urban Youth: The Emergence of Culturally Responsive (Hip-Hop) School Leadership and Pedagogy", is published in the research journal Multicultural Learning and Teaching (DOI: 10.1515/mlt-2013-0010) but doesn't actually focus on the negative. The press release by the University of Michigan in 80% white East Lansing, Michigan does, however.
Khalifa, a former Detroit (85% black) school teacher who identified with hip-hop culture as a young man, is happy to play along. "School culture is very hostile toward hip-hop student identities. Teachers possess an impulse to suspend or expel nontraditional students."
So it goes. It is likely that a student who dressed up in camouflage and talked about shooting guns would be unfairly targeted in urban schools also, yet in a rural school in Pennsylvania it's not all that strange.
Hip-hop culture, and its modern day take on ethnicity, art, politics, fashion, technology and urban life, was born in the city, so it seems strange that the city would unfairly discriminate against it if it were as positive a force as advocates contend. It grew up out of the 'politics of abandonment' of the federal government that created projects and believed building minority projects solved problems.
The first hip-hop party, in 1973, charged twice as much for males as it did females, thus setting the stage for the misogynistic tone that has concerned people, including schools.
On Jan. 8th, the Obama administration urged chools to abandon zero tolerance policies that critics have long said discriminate against minority students.
"In our investigations, we have found cases where African-American students were disciplined more harshly and more frequently because of their race than similarly situated white students," the Justice and Education departments said in a letter to school districts. "In short, racial discrimination in school discipline is a real problem."
How did the Justice Department know the motivation was race? Did school administrators admit to that? No, they found that black students were accused more often than whites in the same schools. What they did not determine was how often whites were not punished for things they did versus how often black students were unfairly targeted for things they did not do.
Khalifa's paper was about a bright spot - bright spots aren't important enough to make it into the title of the press release it seems. One urban school principal allowed hip-hop students to exhibit their identities, while at the same modifying what he viewed as negative behaviors. Ultimately, the low-performing students improved their academic performance.
"We now know that it is possible for students to achieve great success, academic or otherwise, all the while keeping their hip-hop identities intact," Khalifa said.
Muhammad Khalifa is an assistant professor of education at Michigan State University and a former Detroit school teacher. Credit: Michigan State University)