The video of a South Carolina school officer flinging a young black girl out of her desk and across a classroom shows how black children are viewed by American society today. As HuffPost's Zeba Blay wrote: "Black children, simply through the act of existing, are somehow more dangerous, more unpredictable, more worthy of violence."
Black children face discrimination in the classroom at a disproportionate rate to their white counterparts. They are given harsher punishments and are reprimanded more frequently than other students. Earlier this year, a Stanford University study found that teachers of all races are more likely to punish black students than white students. A 2012 Department of Education study found that black students are three and a half times more likely to be suspended or expelled than white students.
Although studies show how wide this gap is, they don't often show the personal stories of the children. Here are six instances of black children who've faced unfair punishment in their schools:
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