Critical Media Literacy as Afro-Futurist Pedagogical Method

• In Event: Afro-Futurisum: Girls of Color Reenvisioning "Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness"

Abstract

The media has been used throughout history to perpetuate limited tropes of Black femininity. However, in the contemporary moment, it can also be used as a site for Black girls to express their literate practices, ways of being and knowing. Moreover, the documented experiences of Black girls in schools, particularly the phenomenon of pushout (that is the policies and practices that marginalize and push Black girls out of schools), are especially significant because despite the disproportionate rate of criminalization in schools and pushout rates, Black young women continue to show up to schools every day. The NCES reports that high school dropout rates for Black youth have declined from 13.1% in 2000 to 6.2% in 2016. Further, the NCES reports that 41.6% of Black young women ages 18-24 years old were enrolled in degree-granting postsecondary institutions in 2016. While Black girls are seven times more likely to face suspension than White girls and more than twice as likely to be expelled, many Black girls are continuing to show up to schools not only surviving but thriving.

This project did not seek to explore the ways that Black girls are being pushed out of schools; this has and is being thoroughly documented (Crenshaw, 2015; Epstein, Blake & Gonzalez, 2017; Morris, 2016; Onyeka-Crawford, Patrick, Chaudry, 2017). This project focused on the girls who remain in schools, despite efforts to push them out, and sought to understand, from the girls’ perspectives, how they negotiate the complicated and multifaceted terrain of schooling for Black girls in varied geographic contexts within a southern state. Through the narratives of diverse Black girls’ educational experiences, this presentation explores the centrality of media in Black girls’ experiences and offers the use of critical media literacy as a paradigm to usher afro-futurist realities.

Media culture saturates human experience. It intersects with political and social realities to shape everyday life and is a powerful purveyor of identity through its ability to shape what we think about, what we know, and how we see ourselves (Hammer & Kellner, 2009). For Black girls, the centrality of the media in youth experience cannot be understated. It has been used throughout history to prescribe Black femininity (Bogle, 2016), but has always served as a simultaneous site of peril and possibility (Cooper, 2017). In as much as the media perpetuates limited tropes of Black girlhood, it also offers space for Black girls’ literacies (Muhammad & Haddix, 2016), ways of being and knowing. From the narratives of Black girls across urban, suburban, and rural contexts and among those along a spectrum of resilience, this presentation will show the ubiquity of media in Black girls lives, particularly how it influences their experiences in schools. Working with 45 Black girls across the state of Georgia, critical media literacy was used to support Black girls in the afro-futurist project of envisioning and creating possibilities that are rooted in the fullness and beautiful complexity of Black history, heritage, and culture (Nelson, 2002).

Author

• Sherell A. McArthur, University of Georgia - Athens