By The Afro
Women in the Room Productions announced its premiere schedule for “Pushout: The Criminalization Of Black Girls in Schools”, Friday.
The documentary aims to feature “a close look at the educational, judicial and societal disparities facing Black Girls,” the film’s website says. “Inspired by the groundbreaking book of the same name by renowned scholar, Monique W. Morris, Ed.D. The documentary confronts the ways in which the misunderstanding of Black girlhood has led to excessive punitive discipline which in turn disrupts one of the most important factors in their lives, their education.”
Dr. Morris, the Founder and President of the National Black Women’s Justice Institute (NBWJI), is a 2012 Soros Justice Fellow, former Vice President for Economic Programs, Advocacy and Research at the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the former Director of Research for the Thelton E. Henderson Center for Social Justice at the UC Berkeley Law School.
“Black and Brown girls continue to disproportionately experience harsh and exclusionary school discipline for incidents and behaviors that do not pose a critical threat to the safety of the learning environment,” Morris said via an October 11 press release. “Many of these behaviors are fueled by experiences with trauma, much of which is under-reported for girls of color,”
Morris is both executive producer and co-writer of the film.
“Pushout” explores these aforementioned alarming disparities in treatment and outcomes between White and Black girls in school.
Citing 2018 Discipline Data for Girls in US Public Schools, Department of Education office for Civil Rights, study, Black girls are six times more likely to be suspended, four times more likely to be arrested, and two times more likely to receive corporal punishment.
“Pushout” premiered in New York City this weekend, and will continue to premiere across the country. The schedule includes dates in Richmond, Virginia (November 12), Atlanta, Georgia (November 13 and 14), and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (December 6).
The weekend premiere coincided with the “Black Girl Takeover” of The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
This article originally appeared in The Afro.
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