Theorizing Black Girlhood: Expanding Black Feminism as a Pedagogy of Love for Black Girls

• In Event: Pedagogies of Love to End Black Girls’ Suffering in Schools

Abstract

As schools are becoming more harmful spaces for Black girls (i.e. via school discipline), it is critical that scholars explore other ways to address the struggles they face. Black girl’s voices, experiences, intersectional identities and oppressions have been overshadowed for far too long in education discourse. Research that centers adolescents, childhood studies, and Black youth both essentialize and ignore black girl’s educational and developmental experiences. As a result, scholars and educational researchers have relied on Black feminist theory to explain and theorize about the nuances of black girls and black girlhood.
While Black feminism is a useful theoretical and conceptual tool to understand the oppression Black women and girls face, much of the literature has centered the experiences of adult Black women in the political, economic sphere of society. The lack of theorizing and articulations that are specific to early childhood (ages 3-9) and adolescent girls (ages 10-18) in Black feminism also results in an over-essentialized and homogenized description of Black girls’ experiences. Brown (2009) argues, “Academically, we lack a viable framework created from Black girls’ lived experiences to name and to critique the kinds of Black girl subjects they willfully resist” (p.40).
As a result, this theoretical paper calls for the expansion of Black feminist theorizing to include the experiences of early childhood and adolescent Black girls. In the paper, Black feminism is positioned as a theoretical, analytical, and pedagogical tool used to understand and enhance the experiences of adolescent Black girls. First, I explore Black feminist theory and seminal texts from its inception and move on to explain how scholars use Black feminism to theorize about Black girlhood. I address the benefits of using Black feminist theorizing to understanding educational research, policies, and practices as they impact Black girls specifically. In order to do so, I center educational research of scholars who implement frameworks grounded in Black feminism to show how both fields are useful when highlighting Black girl’s narratives in diverse educational spaces (Brown, 2009; 2013; Cox, 2015; Jacobs, 2016). This paper also highlights the limitations of Black feminism and its risks in perpetuating the adultification and heteronormative positioning of Black girls via its limited analysis of Black girlhood and the complexities of their race, gender identities and expression, and sexuality. Lastly, I provide a case that calls for further theorizing about the multi-faceted and complex realities of Black girls and give them the power and agency to claim, create, and develop in their self-defined identities. Developing theories of Black girlhood result in a pedagogy of love that requires working alongside them, uplifting their narratives and voices, giving them the power to define their own lives, encouraging political education for resistance and empowering positive identity development as they navigate harmful educational spaces.

Author

• Ashley L Smith, University of Wisconsin - Madison