Green Party National Women’s Caucus addresses systemic racism against Black women and girls in the areas of policing, criminal justice, and education

Police brutality, criminalization, and other types of systemic racism have created an especially lethal combination for Black women and girls who face multiple threats to their lives and health in proportion to the general population. In order to address state violence and racism against Black women and girls, the Green Party National Women’s Caucus recommends policy changes in the following areas:

Policing
Criminal justice
Education

Green Party of the United States
www.gp.org

For Immediate Release:
Thursday, March 4, 2021

Contact:
Monica James, National Green Party Women’s Caucus Spokesperson, [email protected]

Caucus spokesperson Monica James said, “As a black woman who has personally been subjected to police brutality as a teenager and adult, I often wondered if we would ever have a political party that has safe spaces and is willing to speak out on these tragedies happening to Black women, in Black communities across the U.S. The National Women’s Caucus has highlighted three key areas that need to be addressed.”

STATEMENT

POLICING

Despite representing 13% of the female population, Black women comprise 20% of the women shot and killed by police and 28% of the killings without guns.¹ Black women are more likely to be killed by the police than white women, particularly women between the ages of 20 and 35.² Black girls as young as seven years old have been killed by the police.³ Black girls face multiple threats to their health and safety.⁴

“When I was a teenager, my friends and I saw a man shot and killed right in front of us. We wanted to report it but it was the police that killed him. We agreed we weren’t going to say anything. But one of the girls told what happened. They found her body in a dumpster. It’s been years and I’m still afraid. We were witnesses; they took our names. Most Black people have stories like this, but we don’t talk about it.” — Anonymous, Chicago

The African American Policy Forum, in its report on the marginalization and vulnerability of Black women and girls, states that the continued lack of accountability of police killings in the last 20 years has “left Black women unnamed and thus under-protected in the face of their continued vulnerability to racialized police violence.”⁵ Much of the public attention in police killings is focused on male victims, but women also suffer a disproportionate level of violence.^6,7,8

“I personally witnessed police brutality at a very early age. This continuing behavior of police departments across the country has created PTSD in Black Communities. We cannot continue to justify police not being held accountable for the brutality and murder of Black women and girls in the U.S.” — Monica James, Spokesperson, Green Party National Women’s Caucus

The Green Party National Women’s Caucus recommends that police departments make the following policy changes that will benefit Black women, girls, and families affected by police brutality and murders:

Provide monetary reparations to victims and their families
Provide mental health and prescription coverage for victims and their families
Arrange for weekly discussions with community members and police to set expectations and implement improvements
Establish elected/appointed community review boards for police oversight
Require all police officers to carry professional liability insurance
Require all police officers to undergo a mental health examination annually
Require all police departments to conduct annual statistical analyses of police shootings of Black people in order to develop data driven response methods and trainings
Establish a national database to record excessive force complaints, to be used in hiring decisions of police officers

CRIMINAL JUSTICE

The proportion of women in the criminal justice system has increased exponentially in the last few decades. A 2017 study published by the Georgetown Law Center on Poverty and Inequality revealed that Black girls are 2.7 times more likely than white girls to be referred to juvenile justice and 3 times more likely to be removed from their homes and placed in custody in a state facility.⁹ In 2019, the imprisonment rate for Black women (83 per 100,000) was over 1.7 times the rate of imprisonment for white women (48 per 100,000).¹⁰

The Green Party National Women’s Caucus endorses the following policy recommendations from The Sentencing Project¹¹ that will benefit Black women, girls and families impacted by the criminal justice system:

Revise policies and laws with disparate racial impact
Address implicit racial bias among criminal justice professionals
Reallocate resources to create a level playing field
Revise policies that exacerbate socioeconomic inequalities and redirect public spending toward crime prevention and drug treatment

EDUCATION

Educational reforms are crucial to dismantling systemic racism. While the issue of violence against Black Women and girls must come to the forefront through policy reform and education and training of law enforcement officials, healthcare providers, and the criminal justice system, the educational system must lead the way in providing methods of educating students and educators to end the criminalization of Black girls in America’s schools. Discriminatory and punitive practices in schools ultimately lead to the vulnerability of Black girls, rendering them ill equipped to protect themselves after leaving the school system.

The disparities in treatment are stark. Black girls in high school are 6 times more likely to receive out-of-school suspensions than white female students, 3 times more likely to receive one or more in-school suspensions than white female students, 3 times more likely to be restrained than white female students, 2 times more likely to receive corporal punishment than white female students, 4 times more likely to be arrested than white female students and 3 times more likely to be referred to law enforcement¹².

The Green Party National Women’s Caucus endorses the policy recommendations from The National Black Women’s Justice Institute that address the injustices against Black girls in schools. The recommendations, some of which are highlighted below, target federal and state lawmakers, as well as local policymakers and school districts.¹³

Support congressional legislation designed to address disparities associated with existing policies that unnecessarily criminalize students of color and hinder their connections to and performances in schools
Protect immigrant youth and families by eliminating and preventing the presence of Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers in school communities
Eliminate zero-tolerance policies
Develop state laws that encourage a robust continuum of alternatives to suspension and expulsion, and that require the exhaustion of these alternatives prior to the use of exclusionary discipline; eliminate the use of suspension and expulsion for pre-K and grades K-2
Remove all police from schools and do not support arming school-based personnel
Review and develop codes of conduct, dress codes, and other related school mandates to include equity policies with a robust articulation of gender and sex equity and student-focused responses to sexual harassment and assault

Contact:

Green Party National Women’s Caucus (email)

Visit:

Green Party National Women’s Caucus website

Green Party National Women’s Caucus Facebook Page and Twitter

References

Green Party of the United States

www.gp.org
202-804-2758
Newsroom | Twitter: @GreenPartyUS
Green Party Platform
Green New Deal
Green candidate database and campaign information
Facebook page
YouTube
Green Pages: The official publication of record of the Green Party of the United States
Green Papers

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Green Party National Women’s Caucus addresses systemic racism against Black women and girls in the areas of policing, criminal justice, and education

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