Aaron Kupchik is a professor of sociology and criminal justice at the University of Delaware and author of “Suspended Education: School Punishment and the Legacy of Racial Injustice.”
Kupchik joins the Exchange to talk about the rise in suspensions of Black students in schools, which he tracks back to the response by White schools to the 1954 Supreme Court ruling in Brown v Board that ordered schools to desegregate "with all deliberate speed." They didn't. Instead, they found a wide variety of ways to stonewall.
But in the schools that did integrate, data reveals that suspensions rate for Black students skyrocketed. Kupchik provides details of how suspension became a tool for abuse of power in some schools.