Students as risk objects: Willful White ignorance in the school policing debate

Abstract

Activists in K-12 educational settings have challenged the reach of the criminal legal system into school contexts through the pervasive use of school resource officers (SROs). Community organizations, student leaders, and teachers (among others) have challenged the ways in which SROs perpetuate systemic racism and structural injustice in schools, highlighting the carceral dimensions present in school disciplinary policies. However, within this debate administrators and policy makers often invoke a safety narrative which must override concerns about the harms produced by use of police in educational contexts. In this paper we apply the lens of epistemic injustice to the school safety debate, examining the ways in which willful White ignorance plays a role in the continuation of structural racism in the school policing debate. We introduce two alternative conceptual frameworks for understanding school policing—the universal safety narrative (USN) and the institutional protection and societal stability framework—to illuminate the ways discourse around school safety neglects the historical legacy of school policing, research on the efficacy of SROs, and overarching concerns around how carcerality undergirds school disciplinary systems. We argue that willful White ignorance plays an important role in maintaining the epistemic conditions that both create and sustain the USN.