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"My Sister, Myself": Defining Space and Place for the Healing of Black Girls

Tue, April 12, 8:15 to 9:45am, Convention Center, Floor: Level One, Room 149 B

Abstract

Identity development is a critical process shaping life trajectories of adolescents and can present unique challenges for Black adolescent girls, who are positioned in society to negotiate ideals of self when presented with hegemonic language and images representing Black girlhood (Sanders & Bradley, 2005; Lindsay-Dennis,2009; Evans-Winters, 2005; Townsend, Neilands,Thomas,& Jackson, 2010). Based on Black girls’ unique racialized-gender position, pedagogical spaces are needed that enable girls’ to decipher the racial and gendered grammar and structure, and narratives of society. The double-jeopardy of being both Black and female in society has continued to create, and reinforce, an American culture sated with derogatory representations of Black women and girls, evidenced through popular culture. Therefore, education needs to cultivate a critical literacy which can be espoused through the analysis and critique of the popular culture youth engage.

Working with eight Black girls, the author led a fourteen week media literacy collective with the intention of providing an avenue for them to voice and write the ways in which their real lives disrupt the dominant narrative presented by the media. The author interviewed each participant reflecting on the primary question: What does it mean to be a Black girl? One participant, Sy, responded:

"Black girls are broken. We wanna, be accepted. So we have to go through this whole identity crisis type thing and some people don’t make it out of that. Like, they don’t end up finding out like who they really are. ‘Cause they feel like they always have to try to conform, but that is a, a huge problem. ‘Cause the media is only making us look worse. And we don’t have that many people attempting to uplift black females in general."

It is this same participant who penned a poem which speaks to our collective being a space and place of healing for Black girls. After each session, we closed with the affirmation, “My sister, myself,” in which while holding hands in a circle, we each made a statement that affirmed an individual in the group, the group itself, or we shared what the group or that particular session meant to us. After each sister’s statement she would conclude by stating, “My sister” to which the group would respond, “Myself.” Sy’s poem reinforces her idea that Black girls’ identity construction needs to be included in the holistic instruction of youth. Black girls need a pedagogy that embraces their experiences outside the classroom and challenges the metanarrative on Black womanhood. This study is concerned with examining the identity construction of Black female youth from a perspective which analyzes the social context by which these girls find themselves.
When educators discount the importance of identity development, especially, through media consumption, they fail to equip students with the knowledge that they can, and should be, critical consumers and that they can create their own definitions of self (Steinberg & Kincheloe, 1995; Hobbs, 1997).
This presentation discusses how the author created a space and place of healing by highlighting the experiences of one of the youth participants, Sy, who will participate on the panel.

Author