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Most pragmatic responses to school violence seek to assign individual blame and to instill individual responsibility in students. The authors of this article argue that school violence is the result of the structural violence of oppressive social conditions that force students (especially low-income, male African American and Latino students) to feel vulnerable, angry, and resistant to the normative expectations of prison-like school environments. From the vantage point of the intersection of critical race theory and materialist disability studies, the authors examine the impact of social, political, economic, and institutional structures on the social construction of the "deviant" student. They raise questions regarding violent "normalizing" structures and argue for more empowering alternatives.
KEYWORDS: critical race theory, disability studies, internal colonization theory, school violence.
Schools, these days, look like prisons, complete with police officers, security cameras, security wands, metal detectors, and the institution of dress codes that demand conformity. This transformation occurred in response to the recent massacres in public schools in rural and suburban areas and the hysteria that followed. Although students in urban "ghetto schools" (Anyon, 1997) have encountered violence regularly for as long as the inner city has experienced social exploitation, high unemployment, and economic underclevelopment, that violence has earned little attention. However, now that school violence has spread to the suburbs and rural areas-formerly presumed to be safe havens-is it recognized as a critical issue in American public education. The new focus is evidenced in the spate of national conferences, workshops, and institutes addressing safety in schools and antiviolence education, organized by universities and private organizations with active encouragement from the federal government.
Educational researchers have also responded to this crisis, publishing research in special journal issues (Harvard Educational Review, 1995, no. 65; Law and Policy, 2001, no. 23); books (Devine, 1996; Burstyn, Bender, & Casella, 2001; Casella, 2001a, 2001b; Spina, 2000; Dunbar, 2001; Webber, 2003) and journal articles in a variety of academic venues. This research, for the most part, focuses on identifying school violence as a critical issue in schools (O'Donnell, 2001); describes, analyzes, and critiques the various strategies that school districts use to combat violence (Furlong, Morrison, Austin, Huh-Kim, & Skager, 2001; Peterson, Larson, & Skiba, 2001); and examines federal, state, and local policies that mandate specific procedural responses...