Are Black And Hispanic Kids Are Required To Wear School Uniforms More Than White Children

    Hispanic and black students in Georgia and throughout the U.S. are more often required to wear school uniforms than white students. Across the metro Atlanta region, about half of black students and one of every four Hispanic students wear uniforms, while about one of every 20 white students do, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution found. That means nonwhite students are more likely to face disciplinary action that can include missing classroom lessons.

    Racial disparities in school discipline have drawn federal attention, and uniform rule violations have become one more reason students can be taken out of classrooms for minor, non-violent offenses. The U.S. Department of Education and the Department of Justice warned schools last year of plans to review disparities in school discipline nationally.

    “You’ve basically got a different set of rules than you do for white kids,” said Mike Tafelski of the Georgia Legal Services Program, a nonprofit law firm serving low-income clients.

    In Cobb County, where about half of students are black or Hispanic, every school that requires uniforms is majority black and Hispanic.

    In Georgia and nationally, black students are suspended and expelled for all offenses at higher rates than other students. In Georgia, 37 percent of students are black, but they account for 67 percent of suspensions and 64 percent of expulsions, according to federal data.

Uniform violations don’t often bring days-long suspensions or expulsions. But students can be pulled out of class for being out of uniform. In Atlanta and Cobb County public schools, about one in five dress code violations, which can include uniform infractions, were punished with in-school suspensions.

Public schools in poor, often mostly minority neighborhoods began adopting uniforms in the 1980s, to identify people who didn’t belong in the school and cut down fights and gang disputes. Other schools adopted them hoping to improve discipline and academic performance. Research has been largely inconclusive, however: Some studies find uniforms can help improve academic performance and reduce discipline problems; others find little effect.

“The (uniform) policy itself is not a racist policy. But it is being implemented in a racist fashion,” said David L. Brunsma, professor of sociology at Virginia Tech, who’s written extensively about school uniforms. “Uniforms within the public school system have actually ended up being a kind of marker of disadvantage. Meanwhile out in the suburbs or the predominantly white schools … the student bodies are kind of free to express themselves at a time … when expressing their identity is a super important part of becoming who they’re going to become.”

The racially disproportionate application of uniform requirements unfairly penalizes minority students, and may violate the federal Civil Rights Act, said Daniel Losen, director of the Center for Civil Rights Remedies at the University of California at Los Angeles.

“What they’re teaching kids is the most important thing is to be obedient, and the non-obedient ones, who are often the brightest … free-thinking, critical-thinking, they’re essentially beating them down unless they’re obedient,” said Losen.

Read more here - The Atlanta Journal-Constitution