Antiblack Reliance on Last Resort Sanctions: A Theoretical Perspective on School Discipline

Abstract This article presents a new approach to understanding higher rates of punitive discipline utilized against Black students and in Black schools by combining the theoretical construct of antiblackness with Robert Emerson’s last resort sanctions to create the framework of Antiblackness in Last Resort Sanctions. This article is the first to apply last resort sanctions to the school setting and the first to incorporate antiblackness into the concept of last resorts. This new theoretical perspective is advanced to interpret the consistent findings of disproportionate discipline of Black students across school types; additionally, this perspective can be used to guide future research on racially disparate discipline. As a framework, Antiblackness in Last Resort Sanctions identifies the ways in which the disciplinary decision-making process of educators within schools as organizations is influenced by the antiblackness that is embedded within the U.S. school system. By including analysis of both antiblackness and discipline as an organizational process, this theoretical framework contributes to existing literature on disciplinary disparities by further exploring discipline as its own setting of antiblackness rather than simply a tool of antiblackness within the education system. In doing so, this article and framework discuss how the disciplinary decision-making process reflects the manifestation of antiblackness in both the structure and purpose of disciplinary interventions. This article concludes with an exploration of how Antiblackness in Last Resort Sanctions can be utilized to inform continuing research on the use of school discipline against Black students.