No Disrespect: A Womanist Critique of Respectability Discourses in Extracurricular Programming for Black Girls

2019 ◽  
pp. 004208591989373 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tiffany M. Nyachae ◽  
Esther O. Ohito
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Black Girls ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Exclusionary Discipline ◽  
Discipline Practices ◽  
Black Girlhood ◽  
Extracurricular Programs

This article explores how extracurricular programs designed as interventions in the criminalization of Black girls may constrict their identities. Through a womanist theoretical framework, authors investigate the discourses about Black girlhood that permeate one extracurricular initiative which aims to counter the effects of exclusionary discipline practices on Black girls. The authors find that these discourses advance respectability politics, thus reinforcing an exclusive model of ideal Black girlhood as one aligned with White, Western, Judeo-Christian, patriarchal, heterosexist, and middle-class values. Authors conclude with suggestions for how extracurricular initiatives may develop programming and curricula that are inclusive of pluralized Black girlhoods.

Towards an Interdisciplinary Field of Black Girlhood Studies

2017 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 116-132 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tammy C. Owens ◽  
Durell M. Callier ◽  
Jessica L. Robinson ◽  
Porshé R. Garner
Keyword(s):  
Black Girls ◽  
Annotated Bibliography ◽  
Interdisciplinary Field ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
Black Girlhood ◽  
Girlhood Studies

Scholarly interest in the experiences of Black girls has grown significantly. Although many scholars, activists, and artists have completed substantial scholarship and creative works that constitute the foundation of Black girlhood studies, their body of work and names are oftentimes omitted from recent scholarship on Black girlhood. In this collectively authored essay, scholars, artists, and activists present an annotated bibliography of historical and contemporary texts, as well as cultural works, that center the voices and experiences of Black girls. This annotated bibliography serves as a resource for activists and scholars alike who are interested in Black girlhood.

Centering “Grace”: Challenging Anti-Blackness in Schooling Through Motherwork

2021 ◽  
Vol 31 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 142-157
Author(s):  
Terri N. Watson ◽  
Gwendolyn S. Baxley
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
School Leadership ◽  
School Leaders ◽  
Black Children ◽  
The United States ◽  
Black Girls ◽  
Racial Biases ◽  
Black Girlhood ◽  
Patricia Hill Collins ◽  
Educational Advocacy

Anti-Blackness is global and present in every facet of society, including education. In this article, we examine the challenges Black girls encounter in schools throughout the United States. Guided by select research centered on Black women in their roles as mothers, activists and school leaders, we assert that sociologist Patricia Hill Collins’ concept of Motherwork should be an essential component in reframing the praxis of school leadership and in helping school leaders to rethink policies, practices, and ideologies that are anti-Black and antithetical to Blackness and Black girlhood. While most research aimed to improve the schooling experiences of Black children focuses on teacher and school leader (mis)perceptions and systemic racial biases, few studies build on the care and efficacy personified by Black women school leaders. We argue that the educational advocacy of Black women on behalf of Black children is vital to culturally responsive school leadership that combats anti-Blackness and honors Black girlhood. We conclude with implications for school leaders and those concerned with the educational experiences of Black children, namely Black girls.

Keeping Black Girls in School: A Systematic Review of Opportunities to Address Exclusionary Discipline Disparity

2021 ◽  
pp. 215336872098889
Author(s):  
Lynn A. Addington
Keyword(s):  
Systematic Review ◽  
Policy Development ◽  
The United States ◽  
Black Girls ◽  
Research Note ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Exclusionary Discipline ◽  
Girls Of Color ◽  
Single Location ◽  
Trauma Informed

A punitive legacy of the responses to school shootings in the United States is the expansion of exclusionary discipline. Black girls have disproportionately experienced this form of punishment as compared to white girls and non-Black girls of color. A small, but growing, body of research has examined the patterns and causes of this disparity. Current studies have made suggestions for possible solutions to address this disparity, but these recommendations are not readily accessible in a single location. A catalogue of these ideas could provide a useful foundation for policy development and evaluation. The present research note seeks to generate this resource by conducting a systematic review to identify and categorize recommendations aimed at reducing the discipline disparity experienced by Black girls. Based on this review, four categories emerged that center around: (1) culturally competent school programs, (2) enhanced teacher training, (3) spaces at school for empowering Black girls, and (4) trauma-informed student policies. This research note discusses these categories of recommendations using an intersectional framework and concludes with a summary of next steps to guide future research and policy work to address the disproportionate use of exclusionary discipline against Black girls.

Sanctifying the expansion of carceral control: Spiritual Supervision in the religious lives of criminalized Latinas

2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (5) ◽  
pp. 681-702 ◽  
Author(s):  
Melissa Guzman
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
State Power ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Religious Organizations ◽  
Religious Participation ◽  
Rehabilitation Services ◽  
Bay Area ◽  
Ethnographic Data ◽  
And Control

Drawing from ethnographic data and interviews collected in a Latina/o Pentecostal organization based in Northern California’s Bay Area, this paper analyzes how a religious street ministry that offers rehabilitation services and spiritual aid to criminalized individuals enacts spiritual supervision. Spiritual supervision refers to the process by which religious organizations incentivize middle-class individuals to participate in the construction of a criminalized class of individuals, as part of how they practice their Christian identities. This article analyzes how middle-class congregants supervise the actions and behaviors of criminalized individuals who perform gendered physical labor and participate in public dramatizations of their criminal stigma in exchange for housing, food, and religious participation. Spiritual supervision provides a novel theoretical framework for analyzing how carceral state power spreads through the institutional missions and practices of institutions that aim to rehabilitate but also reinforce racialized, gendered, and classed hierarchies that further stigmatize and control criminalized people. As a less visible form of punishment imposed outside formal criminal justice institutions, spiritual supervision illuminates how carceral control operates and affects spiritual and religious landscapes.

Sex-Role Preference and Parental Imitation within Groups of Middle-Class Whites and Lower-Class Blacks

1972 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 651-654 ◽  
Author(s):  
William D. Ward
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Sex Role ◽  
Lower Class ◽  
Black Children ◽  
Black Girls ◽  
Second Grade ◽  
Black Boys ◽  
White Children ◽  
White Girls ◽  
Role Preference

32 second-grade children were assessed on measures of sex-role preference and parental imitation. The middle-class white boys were more masculine in preference than the middle-class white girls were feminine ( t = 3.43, p < .01), and lower-class black girls tended to be more mother imitative than the lower-class black boys were father imitative ( r = 2.09, p < .06). No such differences were found in sex-role preference for blacks or in imitation for whites. The results indicated that there was a dominant masculine influence in the development of sex-role preference among middle-class white children and a dominant feminine influence in parental imitation among lower-class black children.

Black Girl Cartography: Black Girlhood and Place-Making in Education Research

2018 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
pp. 28-45 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tamara T. Butler
Keyword(s):  
Education Research ◽  
Black Girls ◽  
Place Making ◽  
Black Girl ◽  
Black Girlhood ◽  
Girlhood Studies ◽  
Research In Education

Drawing on research in education, Black Girlhood studies, and conversations connected to girlhood and cartography, this chapter calls for transdisciplinary analyses of Black girls’ sociocultural and geopolitical locations in education research. In reviewing education research documenting the practices and interrogating the experiences of Black girls, I propose the framework of Black Girl Cartography. In addition to an analysis of education research, I offer a series of theoretical and methodological openings for transformative and liberatory work grounded in Black Girl knowledge and practices.

Black Girl Thought in the Work of Ntozake Shange

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 32-47
Author(s):  
Naila Keleta-Mae
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
The United States ◽  
Black Girls ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Ntozake Shange ◽  
Black Girl ◽  
Civil Rights Era ◽  
Spheres Of Influence ◽  
Gender And Age ◽  
Black Girlhood

In this article I examine the performances of black girlhood in two texts by Ntozake Shange—the choreopoem “for colored girls who have considered suicide when the rainbow is enuf” (1977) and the novel Sassafras, Cypress and Indigo (1982). The black girls whom Shange portrays navigate anti-black racism in their communities, domestic violence in their homes, and explore their connections with spirit worlds. In both these works, Shange stages black girls who make decisions based on their understanding of the spheres of influence that their race, gender, and age afford them in an anti-black patriarchal world dominated by adults. I draw, too, from Patricia Hill Collins’s work on feminist standpoint theory and black feminist thought to introduce the term black girl thought as a theoretical framework to offer insights into the complex lives of black girls who live in the post-civil rights era in the United States.

Envisioning Black Girl Futures

2017 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 65-77 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aria S. Halliday
Keyword(s):  
Hip Hop ◽  
Sexual Politics ◽  
Black Girls ◽  
Sexual Pleasure ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Black Feminist ◽  
Black Girl ◽  
Black Vernacular ◽  
Black Girlhood ◽  
Fertile Ground

Black girlhood exists in a world that is constantly trying to negate it. Black vernacular traditions, too, allow girls to be considered “fast” or “womanish” based on their perceived desire or sexuality. However, Black girlhood studies presents a space where Black girls can claim their own experiences and futures. This essay engages how Nicki Minaj's “Anaconda” is fertile ground to help demystify Black girls’ possibilities for finding sexual pleasure and self-determination. Using hip-hop feminism, I argue that “Anaconda” presents a Black feminist sexual politics that encourages agency for Black girls, providing a “pinkprint” for finding pleasure in their bodies.

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