Black US Americans’ emotions are subject to stereotypes about the anger and aggression of Black people. These stereotypes are readily applied to Black adolescents’ emotions. The purpose of this conceptual paper is to operationalize racial oppression in the emotional lives of Black adolescents through an application of García Coll et al.'s (1996) ecological model for minority youth development. We specify emotionally inhibitive features of Black adolescents’ schools, the adaptive culture of Black Americans in the United States that responds to emotional inhibition, Black families’ emotion socialization processes, and Black adolescents’ emotional flexibility behaviors. Throughout, we integrate findings from research on Black adolescents’ emotional adjustment with research on cultural values, emotion and racial socialization, school‐based racial experiences, and theory on emotion and cultural navigation.

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The number of days missed due to suspensions (DMS) was analyzed in a national sample of K‐12 public schools in the U.S. In the 2017–2018 national sample, about 11 million days of school were missed due to suspension. Rates of DMS varied across the regions of the U.S., from state to state, and from school to school (greater in nonelementary and non‐charter public schools). Additionally, disparities were found with higher rates found for boys relative to girls and for Black children relative to White children. Regression analyses revealed that school characteristics explained the greatest amount of variance in rates of DMS, although enrollment characteristics also accounted for a significant amount of the variance. It was concluded that there is a need to for more research to better understand the factors that predict DMS and its adverse outcomes for students and to help develop effective prevention and intervention efforts to reduce its use, especially to reduce disparities in its use.

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