Pushout: The Criminalization of Black Girls in Schools

Throughout Pushout, the term Black typically describes the race of the students Morris researches; of course, the term is also of note as it appears in the book’s full title. Black differs from African American because it is a more generalized, inclusive term. While African American refers specifically to Americans with African descent, Black “is a larger umbrella term that captures individuals throughout the African diaspora (e.g., those of Caribbean and/or Latino descent who belong to the racial group indigenous to Africa)” (249). Morris then uses Black because it describes a larger group of Americans with a more varied ethnic background. Nevertheless, Morris acknowledges that some of the research she relies on in Pushout refers to its subjects as African American, so she occasionally uses that term over Black at certain points in her text.

A social theory that rose to prominence in 1989 with Kimberlé Crenshaw’s article “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex,” intersectionality interprets a person’s whole identity as being composed of multiple, interrelated facets such as one’s race, gender, sexual orientation, ableness, etc. The intersection of these different facets of identity creates a unique whole that informs a person’s perspective and how others relate to them, particularly when one or more of these identity facets is of an oppressed group.