Black Girls in Pursuit of STEM Learning Pathways: The Sinful Curriculum of Being Exceptionally Saved

• In Event: Good, Hood, Bad, and Bougie: Complicating Conversations About Black Girlhoods Lived in Dark Places

Abstract

The literature is rife with narratives of Black girls who are systematically pushed out of schools (Epstein et al., 2017; M. Morris, 2015), tracked into low-level courses (Oakes, Welner, Yonezawa, & Allen, 2005), and/or experience other dehumanizing forms of learning while Black (Dumas & ross, 2016; Evans-Winters & Esposito, 2010; Hale, 2001; Joseph, Hailu, & Matthews, 2019). In response, recent national conversations about curricular and other reforms often focus on “saving” monolithic representations of Black girls from themselves and/or schooling systems. Within STEM education specifically, STEM academies or other initiatives (e.g., Black Girls Who Code) have been offered as ways to “save” Black girls (Bullock, 2017). Critical scholars highlight the pervasive racist ideologies about and practices towards Black girls within these STEM initiatives (Author 5, 2019; Nxumalo & ross, 2019; Sengupta-Irving & Vossoughi, 2019). Relatedly, research has shown how tracking practices and curricula within STEM academies can create particular racialized learning pathways for Black students (Lee, 2012; Nasir, In Press; Nasir & Vakil, 2017). Though we know some Black girls resist or reject taking up STEM identities in these spaces (Gholson, 2016; Sengupta-Irving & Vossoughi, 2019), we know less about the kinds of identities made available to Black girls along these pathways.

Thus, I examine Black exceptionalism (ross & Vakil, Forthcoming)—a racialized learning pathway for “exceptional” Black students in STEM academies shaped by antiblackness, Black suffering (Dumas & ross, 2016), and respectability politics (Higginbotham, 1993). This pathway was made available to me as a “good,” “smart,” light-skinned Black church girl across schooling settings in suburban Atlanta. I employ critical autoethnography (Boylorn & Orbe, 2014; Jones, 2018) and draw upon data sources (e.g., autoethnographic writings, journal entries, pictures) that document my K-16 experiences as a Black girl. Using racialized learning pathways (Nasir, In Press; Nasir & Vakil, 2017) as an analytical framework, I unpack how these experiences informed my identities as a Black woman researcher. I explore what happens when Black girls are denied opportunities to explore who they are/becoming and how the curricular constraints of this learning pathway influence the ways Black girls are raced, gendered, (a)sexualized, and more. Findings from this study reveal how taking up whiteness allowed my intellectual curiosity and achievements to be recognized in exchange for repressing my sexuality, stances on Black liberation, and everyday understandings of STEM concepts. For example, I was constantly surveilled by adults at home, school, and church to ensure I did not befriend any #fasttailedgirls (Citizen Radio, 2013; Nesbitt Golden & Kendall, 2013), loudies (E. Morris, 2007), or “hood” girls. These Black girls, according to respectability politics (Higginbotham, 1993), would ostensibly derail my opportunities to pursue the undergraduate pre-med track. This study’s findings contribute to national and global conversations about disrupting dominant narratives about what counts as successful and scientific in STEM. In so doing, researchers, policymakers, and educators can (re)imagine and (re)design STEM curricula and pedagogies that value and respond to multiple forms of Black girlhood and support a range of identities for Black girls to take up.

Author

• Tia C. Madkins, The University of Texas at Austin