Why Race Matters: The School-To-Prison Pipeline

Join us for the next episode of the all-new PBS Wisconsin series, Why Race Matters.
Wisconsin has one of the widest achievement gaps in the country. In this episode, Angela Fitzgerald talks to Rudy Bankston, a survivor of the school-to-prison pipeline. Rudy shares his story of being wrongly convicted and sentenced to life in prison at the age of 19. They’ll also discuss intersecting themes of identity, as well as how education gaps and strict disciplinary policies in schools can lead to the suspension, expulsion and incarceration of Black students.
Watch more episodes, find additional resources and listen to podcasts at pbswisconsin.org/whyracematters.

[@KevlarSammy]

I really wish this interview was more direct and had specific questions He could answer to keep the conversation guided because it’s so broad and the conversation goes off into these big over arching ideas that just missed the mark but there is so much material here. You could literally derive 30 interviews from this one, so just narrowing it down and getting specific with examples would’ve been really helpful for me. Thank you.

[@lizcaldwell1130]

Many great and wise insights from Rudy Bankston. He is right about so many things. Children need support and resources not punishment.

[@dianerica432]

"Familiar slavery to an unfamiliar freedom!" Great quote!! Well said!

[@justourthoughts6272]

Anyone know the interviewers name/contact

[@coryfritz9198]

Whyyyyy?!?!?

[@greventlov]

So, he was skipping, left campus without permission, consuming dope if he was kicking and had brought a fake gun to school, but somehow is the system fault he made all these illegal choices in a row.

[@59Gretsch]

I think we have to accept, according to this production, the black students or just not able to abide by the standard rules that schools have in place. Because when they’re held to the same standard at higher rates they break those rules.
And we have no means to to punish them in a different way than the rest of the students. And this is a problem. You simply need different sets of rules for different groups of people. Yeah that’s it.

[@manafly955]

If we as African people just treated ourselves the way we treat white people we'll be on our way to empowerment in America if we just treated black people each other the way we treat white people we would be on top