LAUSR

ABSTRACT Through an analysis of Black urban high school youth’s critical engagements with literacy, the authors examine school suspensions–particularly disproportionality–as anti-Black symbolic violence. By historically mapping the terrain of discipline, from chattel slavery to The New Jim Crow, the article unearths the connection between racial disproportionality in school discipline and the micro-level context of systemic societal Black exclusion. Gathered from a 3-week summer writing course, the data highlights how Black youth conceptualize suspensions and disproportionality as structurally anti-Black by design. Guided by the triangulation of CRT, BlackCrit, and theories of critical literacy, the data provides an anti-Black specific analysis of school suspensions centered in the voices and lived truths of Black youth. The article concludes by prompting educators to (1) confront antiblackness within disciplinary practices (and schooling at-large) and (2) wrestle with the necessity for school suspensions given the history of being meted out in racially inequitable ways.