When Black Girls Fight

Interrogating, Interrupting, and (Re)Imagining Dangerous Scripts of Femininity in Urban Classrooms

Bibliographic Data

ID9728630
AuthorsJennifer Esposito (0000-0001-8074-6715, Georgia State University, Atlanta, USA, corresponding author), Erica B Edwards (0000-0001-9871-1991, Georgia State University, Atlanta, USA)
Year2018
Volume50
Issue1
Pages87-107
Publication date2018-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueEducation and Urban Society (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0013-1245 • E-ISSN: 1552-3535
PublisherSAGE Publications (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/0013124517729206
OpenAlexW2753882844
LanguageEN
Citations received14
References cited33

The recent death of Amy Joyner, a promising Wilmington, Delaware, high school sophomore demonstrates very clearly the ways in which Black girls are made vulnerable in urban schools. Joyner, an honor roll student, was jumped by a group of girls in the bathroom just before classes began. The alleged cause of the fight was jealousy over a boy. Black girls are bombarded with popular culture messages defining Black femininity along narrow notions of sex appeal, maintaining romantic relationships, and having the ability to fight. Black girls are neither invited in the process of critically examining their popular representation nor supported in thinking through its impact in their own lives. This aspect of the null curriculum, coupled with Black girls’ persistent criminalization, makes schools risky places for Black girls. They are left to navigate a society which misunderstands their gender performance without the support or opportunities they need to develop authentic definitions of self, all the while being held subject to beliefs, policies, and practices which surveil and contain them. Despite the neoliberal assault urban educators face, this article argues that urban educators have an epistemic responsibility to critically examine the denigration of Black womanhood in society, incorporate critical media literacy lessons as one response, and pedagogically support Black girls in the creation of counternarratives as a matter of ethical import. Without such practices, urban schools remain complicit in the physical and civic deaths of Amy Joyner, the girls who attacked her, and all other Black girls caught in the web of risk many urban schools leave unexamined

Curriculum · Face (sociological concept · Femininity · Masculinity · Pedagogy · Social science · Sociology · Critical Race Theory in Education · Diverse Education Studies and Reforms · Gender Studies · Psychology · Themes in Literature Analysis

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