Nationally, black girls are suspended six times more than white girls, according to a new study, and black boys are suspended three times more than white boys.
Things are slightly better here in Hamilton County. But only slightly.
Black girls in Hamilton County are suspended from school at five times the rate of white girls. Black boys here, as nationally, are suspended three times more than white boys.
The student population in Hamilton County Schools is about 57 percent white and 31 percent black. Yet black students account for 63 percent of all the suspensions handed out so far in the 2014-15 school year, according to the Hamilton County Department of Education.
When this is broken down by gender, black girls have received 69.8 percent of all suspensions given to female students this school year, while black boys have received 60.4 percent of suspensions given to males.
There are two things going on here:
"Because black boys are disciplined in greater numbers than any other group, a lot of people infer that black girls aren't impacted," said Rachel Gilmer, associate director of the African American Policy Forum, which co-authored the recent study by the Columbia Law School's Center for Intersectionality and Social Policy Studies. "But we found that black girls actually face a greater risk."
But the second, and unfortunately bigger, issue is that on the whole, both black and white races are being cheated by school officials' unintentional resistance to color blindness. Blacks are being hurt because they are being drummed out of school and tracked toward failure. Whites are being harmed because they are being duped to think they are superior. (Recall the Oklahoma frat-boy racist chant that, in its blatantness, shocked the nation recently.)
The study's authors think racial bias is to blame for the chasm in national school discipline figures. Luke Harris, program director at the African American Policy Institute, said the gap is too wide to be explained away and biases can influence all decisions -- whether or not the decision-maker recognizes the bias.
"The whole social-psychological phenomenon of implicit bias is [that] people don't realize they're acting on it," he said. "It's something that is acted on not just by whites but by people of color as well. You have to dig deeper."
Let's be clear: Hamilton County school officials deny there is racism at work in the local suspension numbers. Lee McDade, assistant superintendent of the Hamilton County Department of Education, told Times Free Press reporter Shelly Bradbury that the circumstances of each suspension are unique.
"I don't care if they're purple, if they are disrupting class and the teacher can't teach and the kids can't learn, then we need to deal with them," McDade said. "To say I lumped one ethnicity or race in together is just not the case."
But the local black community isn't convinced that we are doing all we can to ensure fairness.
"The disparity levels and disproportionate rates experienced by African American and minority students in terms of suspensions, expulsions, reassignment to alternative schools and other disciplinary infractions [are] funneling our students out of the schoolhouse and into the jailhouse," says Elenora Woods, president of the Chattanooga-Hamilton County National Association for the Advancement of Colored People President.
We can hope she is not right. But statistics and simple logic would combine to show she is.
When suspended youngsters lose too much school and self-esteem to stay current in school -- they fail. When they fail, they act out more. When they act out more, they usually wind up being expelled or just dropping out.
When that happens, all too often the only job they can find is in the drug trade.
A study several years ago highlighted the connection, and in January of 2014 Education Secretary Arne Duncan and Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. unveiled what was then-described as the first national guidelines on school discipline.
Conservatives immediately jumped to condemn the Obama administration -- including two minority columnists who regularly appear on the editorial page opposite from this one.
Walter Williams wrote a column headlined "Equality in discipline in schools ridiculous," and he went on to opine that it would mean racial quotas and more whites would have to be unfairly disciplined to make school numbers balance out.
Of course, he missed the point. Punishment equality isn't what's needed.
Punishment inequality -- and our wishful and naive denial that racism still exists -- are what need to end.