Not Suspended but Not Protected: Challenging School Discipline Reform in the Name of Restorative Justice for Young Adult Black Girls

Abstract

This interpretive case study examines the impact of one high school’s mediation process, which is intended to be a restorative practice, on the schooling experiences of three “overage, under-credited," young adult Black girls. Using critical race theory, this study explicates how the school’s approach to mediation fails to protect these students from both physical and structural violence. While it is important that the findings lay a foundation for understanding the contexts of anti-Blackness in restorative practices in schools, insights from this study can also help establish culturally and contextually specific approaches to mediation for young adult Black girls in high schools.

Keywords

• Black girls
• school-based mediation
• critical race theory