The Ethnography of Social Death in San Francisco

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The essay “Black Girl Ordinary: Flesh, Carcerality, And the Refusal of Ethnography” is written by Savannah Shange. It is comprehensive and enlightening because the author provided a robust analysis of the ethnography of social death in San Francisco. Black girls are frequently misjudged and mislabeled because of their actions, and they are also undervalued and disregarded because of the way people perceive them. The stigmas associated with black girls are damaging in many aspects.
The author argues that school discipline’s gendered and race patterns at a school in San Francisco help us perceive the afterlife of slavery. The essay focuses on two young women who are subjected to school dropouts (Shange 3). They were called names and were treated poorly because they behaved and spoke. The text was structured so that there was an introductory essay divided into three parts. The first section focuses on Black embodiment, the second section on the description of carceral geographies of San Francisco and Robeson Justice Academy, and the last section on our perception of the Black girl methodology (Shange 4). After the essay, the sections were divided thematically. The author uses the first-person point of view, mentions characters’ names, recounts their stories, and cites works throughout.
Schools are institutions that should protect the students’ well-being. However, in the article, the school is the one that downgrades the students, specifically the black girls. Cyarea, a black girl from Robeson Justice Academy, received complaints regarding her loudness. She is also said to never stop moving and dancing. She is a musically inclined young lady (Shange 6). However, unfortunately, her traits were used against her. As we can recall in the opening part of the article, Cyarea was being called to the office because of the disrespect and the misbehavior that she had shown. If she does not behave in class, she will sit again in the office (Shange 7).
Moreover, Cyarea is not alone because almost four to five black kids were sent to the office daily (Shange 7). The exclusion was revealed because of the policy on the use of referrals. Referrals are given once you have visited the office. It seems like it is a record for the offenses that one has made. Black kids received the most ...