WISE
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Black Children Will Be the Victims of Armed Teachers
Arming school teachers is a disastrous and terrifying proposal, and we know it would create and even more dangerous environment for children of color. Sherrilyn Ifill, President and Director-Counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, explains in her article in Time that “Children as young as 5 or 6 years old have been handcuffed in schools and even arrested…The children subjected to this kind of harsh treatment are almost always children of color. It does not take a great deal of imagination to contemplate instances in which armed teachers dealing with recalcitrant children will react out of fear and racial stereotype and discharge their weapons as they do the disciplinary code. Police officers — ostensibly trained in the use of firearms and the observation of criminal behavior — have shot and killed black children at an alarming rate, often citing their fear of the child or mistaken belief that the child was armed. They rarely, if ever, pay the consequences. We have every reason to believe that armed teachers will react similarly and keep their jobs with impunity.” Read her full article here to learn more about the school-to-prison pipeline, systemic racism in the school system, and how we cannot ignore the terrifying suggestion that teachers carry weapons.
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