Seeing Black Girls in Their Glory: Cultivating Spaces That Facilitate Black Girls' Psychological Safety

• In Event: "I'm Trying to Get Free": Black Girls' Resistance and Reclamation in Educational Spaces

Abstract

Purpose

Black girls attend schools where their physical, emotional, and psychological safety is consistently compromised due to inhumane educational policies and disproportionate disciplinary practices that target their ways of showing up in the world (Annamma et al., 2019; Wun, 2016). Amidst school-based assaults on their personhood, Black girls deserve spaces where they can be psychologically safe – where they can show up and spotlight their brilliance, complexity, strength, and vulnerability in ways that are authentic to who they are (Girls for Gender Equity, 2017; Butler, 2018; Morris, 2019)

This study leveraged semi-structured interview data from 16 Black adolescent girls (ages 15-18) who participated in the Black Girl Magic Crew (BGM), an after-school space in the Southeastern U.S., to explore how Black girls experience psychological safety within a space designed to honor their healing and liberation. We employ Black Girl Cartography (Butler, 2018) and the Psychological Framework of Radical Healing (French et al., 2020) to consider how Black girls develop their identities and maintain a sense of psychological safety as they navigate oppressive geopolitical places and systems. Data were analyzed using a flexible coding approach (Deterding & Waters, 2018).

Perspectives

Findings suggest that Black girls felt psychologically safe in BGM because they were able to: (1) Receive Validation, (2) See and Reclaim their Glory, and (3) Show Up Authentically.


1. Receive Validation: Participants celebrated each other’s accomplishments. In each session, Black girls and Black women co-facilitators participated in an icebreaker, Rose and Thorn, where everyone shared something going well (a rose) and something that was bothering them lately (a thorn). Ashley described how this practice offered a space to discuss her accomplishments and irritations because she felt people affirmed her and "cheer[ed] her on."

2. Seeing and Reclaiming their Glory: BGM participants regularly discussed how Black girls resisted the stereotypical images that other people used to describe them (e.g., loud, ratchet) and embraced positive descriptors (e.g., natural, caring). Toni described BGM as “a place to express your Black girlness in all of its glory. No matter how it’s different or it compares to somebody else’s definition of being a Black girl, you get to express your own definition of it.” Toni recognized BGM as a Black girl space wherein she could define herself on her terms.

3. Showing Up Authentically: Black girls safely practiced their emotional responses authentically and in the moment. For instance, Marissa described how being in BGM taught her that it was okay to express her feelings: "[In] this space, [I learned that] expressing myself didn't make me angry, it just made me a normal human being."

Discussion

As the girls' narratives demonstrate, honoring the full humanity of Black girls means allowing space for each girl's individuality, uniqueness, and emotional expressions– which are all shaped by their experiences within schools and encounters with systems of power and oppression. Creating schools that promote Black girls' sense of psychological safety requires educators to intentionally cultivate humanizing relationships that honor and affirm all Black girls.

Authors

• Misha N. Inniss-Thompson, Cornell University
  Presenting Author

• Seanna C. Leath, Washington University in St. Louis
  Non-Presenting Author

• Jamelia Nicole Harris, National Crittenton
  Non-Presenting Author