Troublemakers: Lessons in Freedom from Young Children at School

Content Warning: This section contains discussions of racism, including racialized mass incarceration.

Sociohistorical context for Troublemakers involves ongoing struggles to combat racial inequality and barriers to opportunity in the US education system. Despite the historic 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruling on the need to integrate public schools, patterns of racial segregation endured or intensified over subsequent decades. The reasons for this are multifaceted, though many stem from broader patterns of segregation. Because a child’s address typically determines the school they attend, practices like redlining have historically resulted in de facto segregation; by rendering certain neighborhoods more or less accessible, income disparities between racial groups have had similar effects.

Though sensitive to this context, Troublemakers also concerns itself with the subtler ways in which school culture perpetuates racial segregation. Shalaby suggests that creative, nonconforming students of color are disproportionately deemed “troublemakers” as compared to their nonconforming white counterparts; she also hints that the mere presence of racially and culturally diverse students in predominately white schools may earn them the label of “disruptive.” As “troublemakers” may face suspension or expulsion, the pathologization of nonconformity tends to push students of color out of schools. While the discussion of school segregation often focuses on the unequal distribution of resources to schools that predominately serve students of color, Shalaby’s portraits illuminate how even well-resourced schools can engender racist oppression when rules demand uncritical obedience and conformity.

That said, Shalaby’s discussion of the “school-to-prison pipeline” takes place largely in the context of under-resourced schools attended principally by low-income youth of color. In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, many of these schools adopted “zero tolerance” discipline policies and a police presence. Harsh punishments for minor infractions have resulted in Black students losing tens of millions of days of instruction annually due to suspensions, and these educational gaps contribute to a cycle of poverty and, ultimately, incarceration. Meanwhile, the ACLU reports that schools with police have five times as many arrests for disorderly conduct as schools without police (Whitaker, Amir, et al. “Cops and No Counselors: How the Lack of School Mental Health Staff Is Harming Students.” American Civil Liberties Union, 2019). In this context, the cost of labeling students “troublemakers” becomes even steeper and more immediate.