Disrupting Black Girl

• In Event: Examining Girlhood Across Contexts

Abstract

This paper explores how certain words are guiding metaphors that perpetuate tropes and elicit microaggressions. Though girl and her childhood are socially constructed ideas molded in the direction of social influence, there is a metaphorical difference in how a girl and the Black girl have been characterized in cultural artifacts. The social construction of the Black girl is buttressed by historical literature and photographs and fixed in cultural memory. This paper argues that the Topsy caricature is the quintessential Black girl characterization, and as a fact of blackness, views the Black girl as a problem, results in her marginalization in girlhood (femininity and humanity) and places of childhood (schools), but has sparked several movements to recoup and embolden her image.

Author

• Marquita Delorse Foster, Baylor University