Black Youth in Foster Care and the School-Prison Nexus

Abstract

The foster care system is not absolved from its role and complicity in the expansion of the shadow carceral state in the U.S. Educational researchers and social scientists alike concerned with the academic, social, and life outcomes and experiences of Black youth in foster care and other racially/ethnically minoritized groups must broaden the aperture in their work to account for the ways which carceral logics permeate the multiply marginalizing structures and systems in which they are positioned.

Full text

APRIL 2021
Feature
THE COMMUNITY COLLEGE CONTEXT
Volume 6 Nº 3
Black Youth in
Foster Care and
the School-Prison
Nexus
By Dr. Royel Johnson

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FEATURE: THE COMMUNITY COLLEGE CONTEXT- APRIL 2021
a disturbing video surfaced of a white male school
resource ocer, Ben Fields, brutally slamming a
16-year-old Black girl, Shakara, to the ground at Spring
Valley High School in Columbia, South Carolina.
In October of 2015
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FEATURE: THE COMMUNITY COLLEGE CONTEXT- APRIL 2021
Fields, a deputy sheri assigned to the
school, was called to the classroom aer
Shakara refused to put her phone away
and leave the room at her teacher’s request.
Deputy Fields is recorded on camera telling
Shakara, “Either you’re coming with me or I’ll
make you.” Moments later, the veteran ocer
is observed violently grabbing, ipping, and
dragging Shakara across the room as her peers
watched. This viral video was instrumental in
fostering naonal conversaons
about policing in public schools
in the U.S. and its complicity in
the overrepresentaon of Black
students in the school-prison
nexus (Love, 2016), referring to
the “web of punive threads…
which capture the historic,
systemic, and mulfaceted nature
of the intersecons of educaon
and incarceraon” (Meiners, 2007
p. 32).
While the video is jarring, there
is one important detail that has
frequently been le out of the
dozens of stories wrien about
the unconscionable situaon at
Spring Valley High School. That is,
Shakara is among the 97,000 Black
youth who are disproporonately
represented in foster care—a system that is
touted as a protecve intervenon for those
who have been subjected to abuse and neglect
(Goldman, 2003; Johnson, 2019). When minor
disciplinary infracons at school are criminalized
among Black children/youth in foster care, as
was the case for Shakara, these youth are oen
labeled as behaviorally or emoonally unt to be
in a tradional school seng.
Black children/youth in foster care are
disproporonately represented among those who
are recommended for and subsequently placed in
congregate care facilies, which provide 24-hour
therapeuc care and treatment for those who
have been idened as having behavioral and
mental health needs (Palmer et al., 2020). Despite
what is known from research about the role of
racial bias in the overidencaon of Black youth
with disabilies (Losen et al., 2014), children/
youth in foster care generally lack the advocacy
of family members and other supporve adults
that is needed to challenge such
(mis)classicaons. In this way,
we see the school-prison nexus
in acon. That is, Black youth in
foster care are funneled out of
tradional school sengs and
into congregate care facilies,
which oen mirror the juvenile
detenons and employ similar
technologies of surveillance,
punishment, and labeling.
Becke and Murakawa’s (2012)
noon of the shadow carceral
state oers a useful heurisc for
considering the role of child welfare
services in the extension of carceral
state power. The shadow carceral
state refers to the ways in which
non-criminal instuons have
acquired the capacity to impose
sancons that mirror the coercive pracces of
penal facilies. I argue that the foster care system,
and more specically congregate care facilies,
are indeed part and parcel to the enhancement
of carceral state power. This is reected not only
in their physical composion, but also within
their culture (e.g., pracces, policies, pedagogies),
which subjects mostly Black children/youth
to hyper-surveillance, hyper-punishment, and
hyper-labeling—what Annamma (2018) refers to
as the “pedagogy of pathologizaon” (p. 13).
I argue that
the foster
care system,
and more
specically
congregate
care facilities,
are indeed
part and
parcel to the
enhancement
of carceral
state power.

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FEATURE: THE COMMUNITY COLLEGE CONTEXT- APRIL 2021
That research has consistently linked placement in
congregate care to elevated risks of dropping out
of high school, experiences with physical and
sexual abuse, homelessness, and contact with the
criminal justice system (Goodkind et al., 2013) is
thus no surprise. Black youth in foster care are
uniquely positioned within a matrix of oppressive
systems (e.g., education, criminal justice system,
foster care) where they experience constant
criminal scrutiny, with the consequences of
sanction in one system reverberating across the
other. A school-foster care-prison nexus, perhaps?
Future Directions for Research
The foster care system is not absolved from
its role and complicity in the expansion of the
shadow carceral state in the U.S. Educational
researchers and social scientists alike concerned
with the academic, social, and life outcomes and
experiences of Black youth in foster care and
other racially/ethnically minoritized groups must
broaden the aperture in their work to account
for the ways which carceral logics permeate the
multiply marginalizing structures and systems in
which they are positioned. Here are four
recommendations I hope scholars will consider in
their research with Black youth in foster
generally, and to illuminate their experiences in
the school-prison nexus specifically:
1. As I have argued elsewhere (see Johnson,
2019), research on the educaonal
experiences and outcomes of Black
youth in foster care is largely race-
evasive. Homogenous representaons
and depicons of youth in care
obscure the ways in which race, and
its intersecon with other systems of
oppression (e.g., ableism, homophobia,
gender discriminaon) coalesce in their
marginalizaon and relegaon. It is
incumbent upon researchers to center
race as a primary axis for interrogang the
lived experiences of Black youth in foster
care.
2. To address and minimize power
asymmetries among researchers
and youth, scholars should consider
employing participatory research designs
that position participants as collaborators
in the systematic examination and co-
creation of knowledge to mobilize change.
3. Merely seeking to understand social
phenomenon is insufficient for
transforming the inequitable structures
and systems that Black youth foster care
navigate. Scholarship in this area much
be anchored in critical and transformative
paradigms that challenge and dismantle
such structures, which maintain white
supremacy and reproduce race-based
disparities among Black youth in foster
care. I advocate for what Denzin (2015)
refers to as “ethically responsible activist
research” (p. 32)—research that makes a
difference in the lives of institutionally
marginalized people (Johnson, Anya, &
Garces, In Press).
4. Tracing and addressing the school-prison
nexus and its impact on Black youth in
foster care will require theoretically
grounded analyses that draw on the
concept of carcerality, referring to the
“social and political systems that formally
and informally promote the discipline,
punishment, and incarceration of
individuals” (Buenavista, 2018, p. 80).
Scholars should pay attention not only to
the social practices that normalize the
criminalization, punishment and
surveillance of Black youth in foster care
but also the spatial contexts in which
these practices are enacted.

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FEATURE: THE COMMUNITY COLLEGE CONTEXT- APRIL 2021

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FEATURE: THE COMMUNITY COLLEGE CONTEXT- APRIL 2021
References
Annamma, S. A. (2017). The pedagogy of pathologizaon: Dis/abled girls of color in the school-prison nexus. Routledge.
Becke, K., & Murakawa, N. (2012). Mapping the shadow carceral state: Toward an instuonally capacious approach to
punishment. Theorecal Criminology, 16(2), 221-244.
Buenavista, T.L. (2018). Model (undocumented) minories and “illegal” immigrants: Centering Asian Americans and US
carcerality in undocumented student discourse. Race Ethnicity and Educaon, 21(1), 78-91.
Goldman, J. (2003). A coordinated response to child abuse and neglect: The foundaon for pracce. US Department of Health
and Human Services.
Goodkind, S., Shook, J. J., Kim, K. H., Pohlig, R. T., & Herring, D. J. (2013). From child welfare to juvenile jusce: Race,
gender, and system experiences. Youth Violence and Juvenile Jusce, 11(3), 249-272.
Johnson, R. M. (2019). The state of research on undergraduate youth formerly in foster care: A systemac review of the
literature. Journal of Diversity in Higher Educaon.
Johnson, R.M., Anya, U., & Garces, L.M. (In Press). Introducon. In R.M. Johnson, U. Anya, & Garces, L.M. (Eds.) Racial
equity on college campuses: Connecng research to pracce. Suny Press.
Love, B. L. (2016). An-Black state violence, classroom edion: The spirit murdering of Black children. Journal of
Curriculum and Pedagogy, 13(1), 22-25.
Losen, D., Hodson, C., Ee, J., & Marnez, T. (2014). Disturbing inequies: Exploring the relaonship between racial
disparies in special educaon idencaon and discipline. Journal of Applied Research on Children, 5(2), 15.
Meiners, E. R. (2017). The problem child: Provocaons toward dismantling the carceral state. Harvard Educaonal
Review, 87(1), 122-146.
Palmer, L., Ahn, E., Traube, D., Prindle, J., & Putnam-Hornstein, E. (2020). Correlates of entry into congregate care among
a cohort of California foster youth. Children and Youth Services Review, 110, 104772.
Dr. Johnson is an assistant professor of higher education at Pennsylvania State University, where is also a
research associate in the Center for the Study of Higher Education and faculty afliate in the Department of
African American Studies. He is also an afliate of OCCRL. Dr. Johnson can be reached at rmj19@psu.edu
or on Twitter at @royeljohnson.

This publicaon was prepared
pursuant to a grant from the Illinois
Community College Board (Grant
Number: D5355). Copyright ©
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