In this article, we explore the interrelated phenomena of teachers’ paternalistic aims and their misattributions of the agency of their students within particular schooling contexts of systemic racial injustice in the United States. We argue that, because teachers in these contexts assess agency in patterned, predictable ways that stem from – and reify – preexisting unjust patterns of oppression, teachers are unreliable evaluators of the conditions necessary for just punishment. To build this argument, we explore a complex case in which authorities regularly fail to meet these conditions: the punishment of Black girls in low-income, urban, predominantly non-White primary and secondary schools in the United States. Through our analysis, we offer a new concept, excess agency misattribution, which raises serious questions about subjective justifications for punishment in contexts of entrenched injustice. By delineating how the perceptions of teachers influence both the putative justifying aims and targeted recipients of punishment, we demonstrate how the existing terrain of school punishment practices ought to affect our normative reasoning about the fairness of punishment in these contexts.
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