Pushout: The Criminalization of Black Girls in Schools

This next chapter begins with a 14-year-old student named Diamond, who tells Morris about her employment as a sex worker, her 24-year-old boyfriend, and how her work led to her missing school. Diamond’s story transitions into one of Chapter 3’s primary topics: Black girls being sex trafficked and the effect on their education.

Working class and working poor Black girls can be driven into trafficking because sex work provides immediate financial support and material gains that school does not. Morris writes, “Choosing a life on the street is ultimately about survival—and that’s what schools are up against” (100). Worse still is the troubling relationship between sex trafficking victims, the criminal justice system, and schools. Instead of supporting victims, schools often criminalize girls who are trafficked, placing them in detention, child welfare, or even reporting them to the law for truancy. This dynamic—involving enticing profits and unwelcoming schools—is one that Morris terms a “pullout,” where sexually exploited Black girls are pulled out of school by forces beyond their control. Morris then casts a critical eye at the American school system, which is extremely ill-equipped at dealing with sex trafficking of students, both in terms of systemic and personal scales.