Refusals Reframed: Cultivating a Black Girl Chosen Space

• In Event: Fostering Black Space in Education: Co-Constructing Futures Through Community Collaboration and the Reimagining of Schools

Abstract

Objectives
As we continue to live in the “afterlife of slavery” (Hartman, 2007) schools/compulsory learning settings persist as sites of the wake or the “belly of the slaveship” for Black children (Sharpe, 2016). There exists a need to address how Black girls are rendered illegible in these contexts due to the intersecting oppression of antiblack racism and sexism. This study explores how a group of young Black women co-construct a chosen learning space by reflecting on their K-12 learning experiences to reimagine visions of justice based education.

Theoretical framework
Using a critical analysis of Black girls’ and women’s framing as “illegible” in the context of the U.S., based on their ontological position (Spillers, 1987), this paper draws on notions of refusal (Simpson, 2007; Shange, 2019) to theorize specifically on Black girls’ refusals in chosen spaces. I build with chosen spaces (Moore & Paris, 2021) and Black educational fugitive spaces (ross, 2019) to theorize the concept Black girl refusals. These refusals have the power to disrupt ways Black girls have historically been framed as illegible in U.S. schools and society.

Methods
This study drew on ethnographic (Bhattacharya, 2017), arts-based (Barone & Eisner, 2012), and youth-participatory action-research methods (Caraballo et al., 2017) with a group of young Black women who are college students and community educators in Chicago, IL. Over a seven month period, the participants/co-researchers and I met weekly to co-construct a Black girl chosen learning space for reflection, dialogue, and artistic expression that centered our learning experiences as Black girls across various learning settings.

Data sources
Data sources for this study include recordings and field notes from weekly Black Girl Chosen Space group meetings, one-on-one semi-structured interviews with participants/co-researchers, and samples of participants’/co-researchers’ poetry, collages, and related arts-based artifacts created throughout the study. During cycles of coding, I created initial inductive codes, consolidated codes and identified patterns, and then integrated theory to generate themes. Throughout this process, themes were also shared with participants/co-researchers to member-check the representation of ideas and stories shared in the data.

Results
One major finding of this study is that Black girls’ refusals are fundamentally different in chosen spaces than compulsory learning spaces. The purpose of refusals in chosen spaces is to create a radical act of change and possibility, whereas in compulsory learning settings refusals are often enacted as a means of surviving dehumanizing environments.

Scholarly Significance
Educational research on Black youth frequently excludes the experiences of Black girls, therefore this paper builds with the burgeoning field of Black Girlhood Studies to address this. In doing so, this study highlights the creative potential of Black girlhood (Brown, 2013), deepens understandings of refusals as navigational practices of Black girls across learning spaces (Butler 2018), and discusses nuanced ways meaning is made by Black girls in chosen spaces via the refusals they enact. In turn, this knowledge can be used by educators in chosen and compulsory learning settings to create more justice based learning experiences for Black girls.

Authors

• Jazmen Moore, University of Washington
  Presenting Author

• Jala Johnson
  Presenting Author