Olayinka Alege, along with his excellent professor, J. Howard Johnston, shook hands to highlight a sensitive issue in the U.S. in the recent past. Through their efforts and this writing, they wanted to deliver the facts & figures about the zero-tolerance policies in the U.S., the reasons behind these policies, and the effects of said policies. It is a thorough discussion about how these policies negatively impacted equity in disciplinary practices. Both writers put all relevant information into the writing very nicely. By reading this thesis, the writers will better inform you about the issues of racial treatment in many schools in the U.S.

The writers start the discussion with the research of almost 40 years ago, which revealed that teachers in many high schools displayed rigorous, even harsh behavior towards Hispanic and dark-skinned high school students. These students would mainly get reprimanded for minor mistakes, expelled from school, and thus also disgusted. Above all, the most terrible thing was, in contrast, to note the tolerance by school staff for the same misconduct when a white student did it. This means that only dark-skinned students were getting punished, and it showed the degree of racism being practiced in educational facilities.

Yinka Alege

After some researchers made these issues known, some other researchers also started studying these issues. Surprisingly, another fact came to the surface: Additionally, gender discrimination contributed a lot to overall discriminatory practices! Male students were the first target of suspension from school, as well as other forms of punishment, as compared to female students. Another revelation that shook up readers was that only dark-skinned students were the ones who had to face such harsh and strict punishments as suspension from school and other measures which led to dreadful personal and societal results.

If we talk about the factors which greatly contributed to such discriminatory and demeaning attitude, the character of school administration and staff involved sadly “normalized” such biased behavior towards dark-skinned students. The writers have also thrown light on the lasting and devastating impacts of all such discriminatory practices, in general, on the students’ individual lives and within the community itself.

Olayinka Alege, along with his excellent mentor, J. Howard Johnston, laid the groundwork for proposing a solution as regards these issues. They concluded that these discriminatory practices could only be reversed by shifting the viewpoint of schools from a disciplinary focus to a developmental one while favoring an academic approach of student behavior. That’s the only way we can save our society, as a whole, from being a suffocating and defeating racist dead end community on a local level.