Seeing #BlackGirlMagic in Mathematics

• In Event: 30.066 - Educational Research and the (Re)Construction of Black Educational Opportunity in Public Discourse and Civic Action

Abstract

Archetypes of the strong Black woman (or girl) are intimately woven into various cultural representations, including the popular press. The presumption and articulation of autonomy, strength, and independence in news and entertainment media often results in less attention being given to the social life and relational life of and among Black girls and their peers and what this means for their productive school engagement compared to the more recent popular press focus on their conflicts with school officials. That is, Black girls’ relational life is not explicitly described in research or captured in the media but is often refracted through images of their autonomy, isolation, or exclusion.
Yet there are media platforms that enable us to make sense of harness the relational life of Black girls. The recent popular social media-based phenomena—#BlackGirlMagic—has emerged to counter constructions of Black girlhood, as an individual accomplishment. #BlackGirlMagic is a social media term used to celebrate—or call out—the uniqueness of Black girls and women within their everyday experience. That is, #BlackGirlMagic establishes a social and media space to re-cast the mundanity of Black girlhood and womanhood as a feat in ingenuity, beauty, or comedy through a shared recognition among Black girls and women. In contrast to the dominant proliferation of the image of the independent and strong Black woman, #BlackGirlMagic signifies collectivity, mutual respect, and admiration.
The present study examines the academic affordances of #BlackGirlMagic and considers the shared recognition among Black girls in one math classroom, i.e., #BlackGirlMagic, to be a powerful mediator in mathematics learning opportunities and engagement, as well as discusses why the popular press and scholarly inquiry may have trouble conceptualizing the Black girls as relationally-bound. The present study serves as an example of the complexity and academic and social resourcefulness of 8- and 9-year old Black girls’ social relationships. The study takes place in a large mid-western city and traces the social group dynamics of these girls over an academic year in relation to their mathematics learning and participation. The study relies on ethnographic and qualitative social network analysis of variety of data sources including classroom video data, interview data, field notes, and student artifacts.
Recognition of Black girl identity by Black girls in this mathematics class is found to be related to the intermeshing and interweaving of performances related to race, gender, class, and mathematics ability. The study also found that #BlackGirlMagic is not evenly distributed but contested based on various status markers among the black girls and within the mathematics classroom. This study provides empirical grounding for the #BlackGirlMagic discourse. Further, this study stands as an example of a positive socio-epistemic resource that can be used to make the Black girl experience knowable within the popular press countering impoverished and overplayed constructions of the strong, Black woman.

Author

• Maisie L. Gholson, University of Michigan - Ann Arbor