Resilient Youth Transforming Educational Systems: Black Queens Rising Through RYTES of Passage

• In Event: Love Yourz: Critical Race Love Letters to Community

Abstract

Objectives
For Black girls, race and gender are not mutually exclusive identities, but rather compounding and influencing all aspects of their lived experiences (Hill-Collins & Bilge, 2020) including education. It is not uncommon for Black girls to face and navigate racist and oppressive social-political power dynamics, in education, related to their race and gender. The purpose of this praxis-driven qualitative study was to examine and understand how anti-black policies, practices, and beliefs within the education industrial complex (EIC) impact school engagement, achievement, and sense of belonging for Black girls. In doing so, this study centered the voices and humanity of Black girls via counternarratives and testimonials through the manifestation of self-portraits and self-love letters.

Theoretical Framework
This research is a combination of both exposition and action designed to identify and disrupt the root causes of racialized trauma experienced by Black girls within the education industrial complex; specifically, root causes grounded in white supremacy culture and anti-blackness. To best understand this critical race phenomenon through an intersectional lens of Blackgirlhood, my researched was positioned within two theoretical frameworks: Black Feminist Theory (Crenshaw, 1989; Hill Collins, 2016) and Fugitive Pedagogy (Givens, 2021). Black Feminist Theory was used to examine how the intersecting identities of Black girls led to systemic oppression and trauma in the EIC. Fugitive Pedagogy, which embraces Blackness as an asset, and was used as a tool to enter, move within, and exit collective spaces throughout this study.

Methods
The overarching qualitative methodology used was portraiture (Lawrence-Lightfoot & Davis, 1997), as a method of critical inquiry and documentation. Portraiture incorporates phenomenological interviews alongside “empirical description with aesthetic expression, blending art and science, humanistic sensibilities and scientific rigor” (p. 3). This method was used to capture what transpired within participant “circles,” which brought together high-school aged Black girls to engage in a process of self-portraiture; a methodology that intersects portraiture, autoethnography, and critical self-love theory. Finally, participants wrote letters of love, affirmation, and appreciation to themselves as a form of praxis.

Findings
Initial findings suggest that Black girls face unforeseen barriers and high levels of emotional, psychological, and physical trauma as a result of discriminatory practices stemming from anti-blackness enacted through adultification, hyper-regulation, microaggressions, and zero-tolerance school discipline rhetoric. Through self-portraits and self-love letters, Black girls offer counternarratives and cultivate radical self-love as acts of social justice, resistance, and healing both individually and collectively.

Scholarly Significance
Until recently, the torment of Black girls within the education industrial complex has been largely ignored; thus, invisibilizing the specific needs of Black girls and omitting them from anti-racist efforts and protection. Most of the research examining anti-blackness and the impact on Black girls in school focus, primarily, on disproportionate discipline rates and the school-to-prison pipeline. The findings from these studies have shed some light on the oppressive experiences of Back girls. However, there is a growing need to understand the other ways the effects of anti-blackness manifest in Black girls who may seem okay, but are actually suffering in silence.

Author

• Rachel Vatannia, San Leandro Unified School District
  Presenting Author