Wrongness Is Not Her Name: Educative Possibilities in Black Girl Embodiment

• In Event: Fashioning New Grammars: Black Survival, Critical Educative Spaces, and Knowledge Production

Abstract

Nearly 50 years ago, Sara Lawrence Lightfoot declared Black girls need more attention in educational research. Preoccupation, however, has only been within the last 12 years and focused on presumed pathology, teachers’ perceptions, and comparative analyses between Black girls and her white girl and Black boy counterparts in the areas of academic achievement and discipline. Continuing this work set forth by Lightfoot, I situate Black girlhood studies as germane to shifting educational experiences and framing of Black girls while utilizing it to examine zero tolerance policy’s implicit assertion of Black girls as wrong.

What entanglements exists between zero tolerance policies, bodies, and Black girlhood? How do Black girls’ narratives interpreted through a Black Girlhood Studies paradigm highlight and challenge implicit codes and sociohistorical commitments embedded in educational policy? Interested in highlighting the knowledge produced and utilized by Black girls navigating anti-black contexts, this essay facilitates a dialogue between de jure and de facto policy, bodies, and schools. Specifically, to illustrate systemic and cultural barriers facing Black girls, it employs Black feminist epistemology and critical discourse analysis (Fairclough, 2003) to examine undue punishment endured by two Massachusetts high school students, Maya and Deanna Cook, for wearing braids in conversation with current research on Black girls and zero tolerance. This essay accomplishes three key things in relationship to Black girlhood: a) it advances Black Girlhood Studies as a paradigmatic shift in how Black girls are read and positioned, b) it critiques shortcomings of zero tolerance implementation through Black girls’ experiences, and c) positions Black girls’ transgressiveness as fundamental to enhancing Black girls’ livelihood in and beyond schools.

Author

• Dominique C. Hill, Colgate University