Archive
Black Girl Punished For Wearing Brown Leggings: the Policing Of Our Daughters’ Bodies In School
by Denene@MyBrownBaby
An 11-year-old black honors student in California was booted out of class for wearing… wait for it… leggings. Not just any old leggings, mind you. But—gasp!—dark brown leggings that, in one teacher assistant’s eyes, made the tween look so much like a hottentot that she needed to have a seat in the principal’s office for being “racy.”
Mind you, Daja, a student at Mount Gleason Middle School, is about fiftyleven shades lighter than the chocolate leggings the teacher’s assistant pegged “skin-colored,” and about as big as a twig; nothing about her outfit or the way it looks on her appears inappropriate. Still, the teacher’s assistant insisted the leggings made the little girl look like she had on no pants—a punishable offense in her book.
Now, Daja’s mom, Yolanda Tunstill, is mulling a discrimination suit against the Los Angeles Unified School District, arguing that her daughter was singled out because of her skin color. Tunstill points out that her daughter wears leggings to school “all the time” and that school officials never had a problem with her wearing them “until she wore the brown ones, and then it became a problem.” Deja’s mom told KTLA news, “I felt discriminated against. Shocked… like, I mean, are you serious?” Read more…
Police Officer Sprays Arkansas Students With Pepper Spray to Clear the Halls
By Denene Millner

Clearly this officer is not the brightest porch light on the block, but the entire episode brings up something we’ve written about on MyBrownBaby on more than one occasion: Police officers and kids just do not go together. It’s simply asking for way more trouble than it’s worth. Read more…
A Middle Schooler Strip Searched in Front of Classmates? This Needs to Stop

By NICK CHILES
The family of a middle school student in Georgia has filed a lawsuit against the school district because administrators, suspecting that the 7th grader was in possession of marijuana, forced the youngster to strip down to his underwear in front of classmates. The boy had no drugs—but he was wearing Superman underwear. In the year since the traumatic incident occurred, the boy has acquired a new nickname throughout the school. You guessed it—Superman. His mother said his interest and commitment to school has suffered a severe blow. Read more…
Too Short Is Too Outrageous in Advising Little Boys to Commit Sexual Assault

By NICK CHILES
Outrage doesn’t begin to describe my reaction to the “advice” column by Too Short on the website of the hip hop magazine XXL. In the ridiculous video feature, the aging rapper basically advises middle school boys to commit sexual assault to hasten their relationships with their female schoolmates. The most astounding thing about this column, beyond the fact that somebody thought it was a good idea to select the notoriously raunchy rapper to give advice to anybody, was that the editors of XXL actually put it on their website and sent it out into the world.
As the father of a middle school girl (and a second one who is just two years away), I was so enraged and disgusted when I read the text of his XXL video that I wanted to run to their corporate offices and create a huge bonfire of XXL magazines in the lobby. I know if some little boy ever put a hand on my daughter and they found evidence of this video anywhere within sniffing distance of his dumb behind, XXL would need a building full of attorneys to fight all the lawsuits I would send their way. Read more…
{On The Parenting Post} Grown Too Soon
By Denene Millner
