12 | BLACK HISTORY BULLETIN VOL. 79, NO. 2 79 No.2 CAN WE LIVE? WORKING TOWARD A PRAXIS OF SUPPORT FOR CAREFREE BLACK GIRLS By Aja Reynolds and Stephanie D. Hicks “My child—and I’m not mad at her—she was brave enough to speak out against what was going on, and didn’t back down. And it resulted in her being arrested. . . . But looking at the video, who was really disturbing the school? Was it my daughter? Or was it the offcer that came into the classroom and did that to the young girl?” —Doris Kenny, mother of Spring Valley High School student Niya Kenny, who spoke out against the forcible restraint and arrest of her SVHS classmate In October of 2015, a Black student at Spring Valley High School was forcibly removed from her desk and thrown across a classroom by Sheriff’s Deputy Ben Fields, a White school resource offcer. The offcer and school offcials contended the student was handled so aggressively because she refused to surrender her cellular phone and leave the classroom when asked. A video of the incident taken by another student went viral on the Internet, commanding the attention of national news outlets, law enforcement offcials and supporters, and political and religious leaders. Reactions ranged from skepticism about the cause of the incident, to defense of the offcer, to questions about why witnesses— school staff and students—did not intervene. Eventually, background research on the offcer revealed that this was not the frst time Deputy Fields used aggressive force with students; he was under investigation for targeting Black and Latino students at schools in which he worked. 1 Outraged students, parents, community members, and activists sounded off online and elsewhere in the media. Why was such force used? Could anything the student have done justify Deputy Fields’s response? Why was the student’s “disruptive” behavior deemed a criminal act and not a school discipline issue? Would the offcer’s action been different if the student was White? Would the offcer have even been called? And what are the ramifcations of having resource offcers (SROs) in schools at all? Scholars and activists who focus on the school-to-prison pipeline broadly, and the criminalization of black women and girls specifcally, were a loud dissenting voice amid the chorus of supporters for SROs and their use of force. We place this incident in the context of the criminalization of Black women and girls with the aim to advocate for changes in Black girls’ schooling experiences. The Criminalization of Black Women and Girls From 1985 to 1997, Black girls were the fastest growing segment of the juvenile justice population. 2 By 2010, Black girls were 36 percent of juvenile females in residential placement. 3 In examining data from the 2011–2012 academic year, the Department of Education found that Black girls were six times more likely to be suspended than White girls. 4 During that academic year, Black girls represented approximately 12 percent of the suspensions compared to 2 percent for White girls. Using the lens of anti-Blackness, intellectuals Connie Wun and Michael Dumas have contributed rich critiques of schooling for Black children. 5 They re-identify educational institutions as prisons, reliant on policing Black bodies and diminishing their sense of agency. Their studies have challenged the school-to-prison pipeline, pointing us to a deeper analysis of the ways schools operate as prisons and as site of trauma for Black students. Literature focusing on the imprisonment and surveillance of Black women helps us understand schools as an apparatus of prison systems. 6 Kimberle Crenshaw’s intersectional analysis intervention provided a method to assess the nuances of oppression