FILMMAKER

My iPhone GPS signaled that I was approaching my destination on the right. I was driving on a two-lane paved country road called Peachtree Industrial Blvd. with no streetlights. It was roughly 6:30 a.m. on March 13, 2019, pitch-black and brick outside. All I could think was that I must be lost. This cannot be the place.

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Through the dark nothingness of the morning, the fog appeared to be a forest hidden behind an array of tall trees. Then a dim light crept over a steep hill of grass. Squinting, I finally made out the school's sign, rooted on the declining slope of the grass hill.

 

"GIVE CENTER WEST. Hmm, the school is on its little island," I thought. I turned right as my phone instructed and drove up a steep hill. At first glance, I saw a row of bungalows tucked away to my left that stretched far back into a gloomy cul-de-sac. From a distance, a row of flickering lights faintly illuminated a 160,000-square-foot building through the morning dusk on the top of a hill to my right. Then there was a covered crosswalk a few feet ahead of me, lined with dim ceiling lights that bridged a pathway between the adjacent structures.

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With the only help of my headlights, I saw an unlit road to my immediate right that looked like it could get me up the hill. It did, and I realized the road was a one-way parking lot. The aisle was lined with cars. I parked a distance from the reflection of the lights peeking around the corner of the building. There was no signage to usher me to the entrance, let alone identify that concrete building as a school. "Just follow the light," I thought to myself.

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I walked into the main office and saw a metal detector stationed at the end of the hallway to my right. Students tirelessly walked through what seemed to be their designated main entrance as they proceeded with the same routine of going through the Transportation Security Administration or being detained at the police station. All of the students were in uniform: khaki pants, white or black collared shirts, solid-colored jackets, and black shoes.

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I, too, wore a uniform in middle school, but this was different. None of the students, especially the girls, accessorized their attire. Not like how my classmates and I did. It was our way of rebelling, yet still adhering to the dress code. But at this school, I would later come to realize, any uniqueness could get you in trouble and cause a severe domino effect of consequences.

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The school forbade clothing with a visible logo, jewelry, colored fingernails, false eyelashes, makeup, combs, picks, hairbrushes, and even mechanical pencils. I soon realized no one was wearing a backpack. Instead, they carried only black and white binders and sack lunches in a one-gallon clear zip-lock storage bag, water bottle included. At lunch, the students were required to sit on only one side of the picnic-style rectangular tables. Then they were forced to sit at every other seat, separated but equally enduring the pains of conformity.

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After lunch, I stood outside in the icy Georgia winter for the students' supervised restroom break. I could only allow two students to use the toilet at a time, even though there were more stalls. Then I was required to lock up the restrooms after everyone was finished. This was the only time they were permitted to go unless I called the office to request someone to escort the student. It was not until my final class of the day that I finally asked the teacher I was co-teaching with, 'What kind of school is this?'

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"No one explained to you what this school is?" the teacher asked, both shocked and concerned.

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The teacher waited until all the students left for the day. She then explained that the school was designed as an alternative program for middle and high school students, and most of the students were on probation of some kind. The Gwinnett InterVention Education, or GIVE, Center opened in 1994. It was created by the Gwinnett County Board of Education to "serve the educational and behavioral needs of students who exhibit chronic disciplinary problems at their home schools or who are returning to the school environment from a juvenile justice facility."

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During the 2002–03 school year, the program saw tremendous growth. Nearly 300 students enrolled in the program. So, a second location was opened in the fall of 2003 and became known as GIVE Center West. According to GIVE Center West's most recent Accountability Report, from 2019 to 2020, the total school enrollment was 270. African Americans made up 33% of the school's population, while 51% were Latinx. This was my introduction to the "school-to-prison" pipeline as a substitute teacher.

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Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, regularly says, "We have not ended racial caste in America; we have merely redesigned it." The school-to-prison pipeline is a system designed to funnel kids of color from working-class neighborhoods to the juvenile justice system. I continued to accept eight more substitute assignments at GIVE Center West after the teacher explained the school's dynamics to me. Then I picked up another eight jobs at the GIVE Center East.

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My last workday at the GIVE Centers was in February 2020, one month before moving back to Los Angeles. I could not forget my unconventional experiences even after my relocation. It provoked me to take an introspective look at my childhood experiences attending high school in the suburbs. I became obsessed with understanding how so many Black and Brown youth could be caught up in the juvenile justice system and deemed the "bad" kid.

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Newly home after seven years opened my eyes to the realization that the pipeline exists in my beloved city as well. I was reminded of my peers who joined me on the long bus commute to school, but our paths ended differently. One of which I saw last November in front of my house, mining our trash cans. Then my dad's mentees, who attended school on the other side of LA County, Inglewood, came to mind. That is when I realized that many moving parts of the pipeline contribute to the deep scars of LA's African American and Latinx youth that can be traced back to the forced disruption of the education and housing status quo.

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To Live and House in LA

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Richard Dahl is a 28-year-old Inglewood native. He attended schools close to his home throughout his childhood. First, Monroe Elementary School then matriculated to Monroe Middle School. He graduated from Morningside High School (MHS) in 2011. Richard was pretty popular, as he remembers. "I was the class president, the class treasurer, and I said the announcements. So, as far as the school politics were concerned, I pretty much ran the school."

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"But high school for me was kind of like I was living a double life."

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MHS was founded in 1951, three years before the U.S. Supreme Court outlawed segregated schools in the landmark Brown v. Board of Education ruling. Unfortunately, this was a bittersweet victory for students in LA because it took another two decades for the West Coast to catch up. LA's courts finally required all schools in LA County to integrate their classrooms in 1970. Up until the 1970s, MHS and the surrounding Inglewood community were dominated by white people. Then "white flight" occurred. According to the U.S. Census, Hispanics currently make up 51% of the city, and Blacks, 37 %. Consequently, one out of every five residents of Inglewood lives in poverty.

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"It's been a situation of me having to overcome different obstacles and adversity that's been put in my path," Richard said. "From being homeless to dealing with gang violence. You know, the streets and then deal with the police, you know, just trying to stay out of the way as a young adult coming up in Inglewood, California, when the odds are against you, you know, just trying to make it out."

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Inglewood is not heavily populated with African-American and Latinx families by happenstance. Moreover, discriminatory housing policies have defined where people of color settle for years. Racial housing covenants started trending in the early 1900s due to the Great Migration, which led African Americans out of the South and into the northern and western states. The covenants were a form of "redlining," keeping people of color from predominantly white neighborhoods.

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"We have created a caste system in this country, with African Americans kept exploited and geographically separate by racially explicit government policies," Richard Rothstein, author of The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America, said. "Although most of these policies are now off the books, they have never been remedied, and their effects endure."

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Where you grow up matters because it determines what school you attend, ultimately shaping a child's life trajectory. Black and Brown families have long been restricted to cities like Inglewood and nearby homeschools. The Rumford Fair Housing Act was passed in 1963 to allow people of color to purchase housing without discrimination. However, the practice of redlining has left lasting marks on LA County and inevitably trickled into the education system.

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Products of Our Environment

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Permits with Transportation (PWT) was created in 1971, one year after the forced integration of classrooms. It was designed as a busing initiative specifically for students of color in working-class neighborhoods. PWT is how I commuted to Palisades Charter High School from ninth to twelfth grade. Without it, I would have had to attend my homeschool, Dorsey High School.

During my 8th grade year, my dad unenrolled me from Frederick Douglass Academy Middle School, then located on 79th St. and Western Ave. His reason for transferring me to Paul Revere was to have a better chance of going to Palisades, the feeder high school, the following year. While my dad was focused on my high school career, I was concerned about leaving my friends behind at the school where everybody knew your name, and saying goodbye to the teachers who were more like mentors.

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By the time the bus got to Pacific Coast Highway most mornings, I was resting my head against the vibrating, cold glass bus window. The soft bus lights always put me to sleep while I drowned out the noisy rattling from the bus's exhaust system with my iPod. But as we exited West out of the encompassing McClure Tunnel that connects the Santa Monica Freeway to PCH, the sunlight beaming through the bus windows was my alarm clock. It was nature waking me up and letting me know I was not in South LA anymore.

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"I tell my students every day that when they walk out of their house, coming to school, they're facing a challenge because they don't know for sure if they're going to make it to school or make it back home from school," my dad told me. "They're challenged with the opportunity to become part of gangs and sell drugs."

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Unfortunately, where you live and what school you attend determine how susceptible you can become to the school-to-prison pipeline. The constant distractions of South LA's street life make Black and Brown youth susceptible to becoming a product of our environment. Forced busing was considered the court's attempt to level the educational playing field. As if giving us access to a shiny new school was enough.

 

When the clock struck 3:08 p.m. and I walked through the underground "STADIUM BY THE SEA" pedestrian tunnel, it was like the "Tunnel of No Return." Tumbleweed school buses towered over me as I made my way through the yellow maize. When I spotted my bus number, I presented my laminated credit card-sized bus pass. Then I boarded the school bus and awaited my daily fate back home in South LA.

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Concrete Roses

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Since the Great Migration in the early 1900s and the forced desegregation of schools in 1970, several laws were introduced that eliminated money to LA's schools. Proposition 13, passed in 1978, capped property taxes in the state at one percent. Unfortunately, that meant a considerable reduction in tax revenue. As a result, California's per-student funding of schools' ratio declined by more than 15 percent. Then, legislation was also passed in 1979 that ended forced busing. This has left two options to LA youth of color: attend their homeschool like Richard or hope to be selected as a lottery candidate for a school in an affluent neighborhood.

 

There have also been several laws passed that focus more on criminalizing students of color than educating them. For example, Proposition 21, which passed in 2000, increased various criminal penalties for crimes committed by youth. It was the direct result of John Dilulio, a professor at Princeton, coining the term "superpredator" in 1995. He predicted that the number of juveniles in custody would increase threefold in the coming years. The "superpredator" myth led nearly every state in the country to expand laws that exposed children to adult sentences.

 

"The superpredator language began a process of allowing us to suspend our feelings of empathy towards young people of color," Kim Taylor-Thompson, a law professor at New York University, said in an article in The Marshall Project.

 

During my senior year in high school, I naturally paid a visit to the college counselor, who was white. I explained to her that I was interested in attending an HBCU. She explained that she had no information to give to me about any of the Black colleges. She looked at my 2.75 GPA and then assured me that there was no possible way to get accepted into any CAL State or UC schools. So, she politely offered me information about Santa Monica Community College.

 

My educational experiences may have allowed me to see another side of LA County that, up until seventh grade, I only knew existed on TV. As students of color, we were at Palisades because of a court-ordered mandate, but the mentorship was not. I am forever grateful for the wisdom my grandfather shared with me before he passed my 8th-grade year: "Go to an HBCU your first year and at least go for a year." This was my guiding force to figure out how to get to Clark Atlanta University. For Richard, it was the mentorship and extra level of attention he received at school.

 

Richard joined my dad's mentoring organization at PHS called Omega Gents, Inc. during his freshman year. This is how our paths crossed. Richard went on to attend Tuskegee University. Then he graduated in April 2017, defeating all the odds of a Black male from Inglewood. When he first left LA, he had barely been outside California – “definitely not to live for years,” he says.

 

"It was a culture shock," Richard said. I had to get used to it."

 

Two months after earning his bachelor's degree, Richard was shot when someone tried to rob him while visiting a friend in Jacksonville, Florida.

 

"Coming up in Inglewood, California, when the odds are against you, and you're just trying to make it out, that's no different than what I'm doing now, having to persevere through my everyday situation of being in a wheelchair," Richard said. "So, life for me is pretty much the same and, you know, me having to overcome those obstacles every day."

 

Resilience, determination, and resourcefulness are at a minimum required of a child of color to simply be a child. Black and Brown youth are pawns of the school-to-prison pipeline because of the inevitable systemic pressures. But as rapper, actor, poet, and activist Tupac Shakur said in a musical rendition of his "The Rose That Grew from Concrete" poem,

 

"You try to plant somethin' in the concrete,

If it grow, and the rose petal got all kind of scratches and marks,

you not gon' say, look at all the scratches and marks on the rose that grew from concrete.'

You gon' be like, 'A rose grew from the concrete?!'"

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From California to Georgia and worldwide, Black and Brown youth are the prolific roses that Tupac's poem references. The broken systems are the concrete, and the current demographics of juvenile halls are the damaged petals.

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