The Department of Education's Obama-Era Initiative on Racial Disparities in School Discipline: Wrong For Students and Teachers, Wrong on the Law

Establishing whether specific laws impact rates of firearm homicide in adolescents is critical for identifying opportunities to reduce preventable adolescent death. We evaluated Florida’s Stand Your Ground law, enacted October 2005, using an interrupted time series design from 1999 to 2017. We used segmented quasi-Poisson regression to model underlying trends in quarterly rates of adolescent (15–19 years) firearm homicide in Florida and disaggregated by race (Black/White). We used synthetic and negative controls (firearm suicide) to address time-varying confounding. Before Florida’s Stand Your Ground law, the mean quarterly rate was 1.53 firearm homicides per 100 000 adolescents. Black adolescents comprised 63.5% of all adolescent firearm homicides before and 71.8% after the law. After adjusting for trends, the law was associated with a 44.6% increase in adolescent firearm homicide. Our analysis indicates that Florida’s Stand Your Ground is associated with a significant increase in firearm homicide and may also exacerbate racial disparities.

Download Full-text

You Can’t Fix What You Don’t Look At

Urban Education ◽

10.1177/0042085916660350 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 52 (2) ◽

pp. 207-235 ◽

Cited By ~ 85

Author(s):

Prudence L. Carter ◽

Russell Skiba ◽

Mariella I. Arredondo ◽

Mica Pollock

Keyword(s):

Racial Disparities ◽

Black Male ◽

School Discipline ◽

Implicit Bias ◽

Board Of Education ◽

Ethnic Stereotypes ◽

Racial Ethnic

Racial/ethnic stereotypes are deep rooted in our history; among these, the dangerous Black male stereotype is especially relevant to issues of differential school discipline today. Although integration in the wake of Brown v. Board of Education was intended to counteract stereotype and bias, resegregation has allowed little true integration. Thus, old patterns continue to be reinforced through the ongoing processes of implicit bias, micro-aggression, and colorblindness. Thus, to effectively address inequity, the role of race must be explicitly acknowledged in addressing racial disparities in discipline. We close with a set of recommendations for talking about and acting on racial disparities.

Download Full-text

Lessons from the Law and Empirical Research Addressing School Segregation and Diversity

10.1093/oso/9780190633639.003.0006 ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

Roger J.R. Levesque

Keyword(s):

Racial Disparities ◽

Empirical Research ◽

Legal System ◽

Ethnic Disparities ◽

Lessons Learned ◽

School Segregation ◽

Racial And Ethnic Disparities ◽

Legal Responses ◽

The Law ◽

Color Blind

This chapter presents the overall conclusion that emerges from the book, which is that empirical findings may play a role in shaping legal responses to segregation and diversity in schools, but the bulk of current research increasingly becomes irrelevant. The legal system and researchers appear to be moving in opposite directions in what they identify as problematic and what to do about it. This chapter sorts through the lessons learned about the legal system’s evaluation of empirical research. It highlights the problematic nature of legal approaches, which now focus on remaining neutral/color-blind with regard to racial disparities. It then details how the legal system can better benefit from research that addresses racial and ethnic disparities.

Download Full-text

Mass Imprisonment and Trust in the Law

The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science ◽

10.1177/0002716213502928 ◽

2013 ◽

Vol 651 (1) ◽

pp. 139-158 ◽

Cited By ~ 23

Author(s):

Christopher Muller ◽

Daniel Schrage

Keyword(s):

African American ◽

African Americans ◽

Racial Disparities ◽

Family Member ◽

Close Friend ◽

White Americans ◽

Incarceration Rate ◽

Mass Imprisonment ◽

The Law ◽

The Relationship

This article examines the relationship between two facets of mass imprisonment—its novel comparative and historical scale and its pervasiveness in the lives of African Americans—and surveys respondents’ beliefs about the harshness of the courts, and bias in the courts or among police. Analyses of national survey data show that as states’ incarceration rates increased, so too did the probability that residents believed that courts were too harsh. However, while white Americans’ opinions about the courts were sensitive to changes in the white incarceration rate, African Americans’ opinions were not sensitive to changes in the African American incarceration rate. African American respondents who had been to prison or who had a close friend or family member who had been to prison were more likely to attribute racial disparities in incarceration to police bias and bias in the courts. The article concludes with a discussion of the possible consequences of declining trust in the law for the future of American punishment.

Download Full-text