Black Girls’ Hip-Hop Dance Literacy and the Politics of Respectability

• In Event: Go Off Sis: Journeying Through (Re)Searching With Black Girls Through Space and Place

Abstract

Objectives: Amidst the growing landscape of hip-hop and Black girls’ literacies research, Black girls’ hip-hop dance literacy goes largely unexplored, submerged, or (mis)represented from an etic perspective (Gaunt, 2015). The assumptions that define these cultural practices as deviant and inappropriate for the classroom, like the byproducts of adultification, lend themselves to the over-policing and disciplining of Black girls (Morris, 2016), sanctioned by politics of respectability (Higginbotham, 1993). This paper uplifts the practice as a cultural asset (Author 1, 2022) and a form of multimodal text that should be considered as a pedagogical tool. Performance-based research methods in data collection, analysis, and reporting, illuminates this Black girl literacy.
Perspectives: Hip-hop feminism supports the centering of how Black girls live their hip-hop lives. Arts-based research perspectives are both process and product and support viewing a network of language and actions as valuable indicators of culture. Perspectives of multiliteracies (New London Group, 1996) and African American new literacies (Richardson, 2013) frame the conceptual performances of hip-hop feminine dance as literacy. This research centers on the perspective of the youth participant as a contribution to the overall imagination of Hip Hop Based Education (Irby, Hall, & Hill, 2013). In so doing, this research brings wreck (Pough, 2004) to the notion of breakdancing as the dance pillar of hip hop, what counts as literacy, and Black cultural language in the academic space.
Methods and Data: Data from a multiple case study of three Black girls from Elementary, Middle, and High School highlight their hip-hop dance literacy practices and encounters with the politics of respectability. Each girl’s mother significantly contributed to data validity and triangulation as an informant. Interviews served as the primary data, and were supported by contextual data, as recommended by case study inquiry (Yin,2014 ). One example are surveys, completed by mother and daughter each week, a recommended practice of including family as researchers (Compton-Lily, Lewis Ellison, & Rogers, 2019). Data was used to map the ways hip-hop dance literacy was acquired and exchanged (Gee,1989) (cyphered) in various spaces and what messages were being communicated. Data were collected over a two-month period and answered the questions: How do Black girls that dance feminine hip-hop dance negotiate the politics of respectability? and How does hip-hop feminine dance function as literacy?
Results and Significance: The findings in this work explores the resistance and negotiations with respectability enacted in the performance of hip-hop dance literacy. By reporting this work in formats espoused by arts-based research (Mienczakowski, 2009; Saldaña, 2011), workshop participants are able to humanize the Black girls that wield this literacy throughout the day. This importantly contributes to pedagogical actions that seek to tap into what students know and create a safe space for home literacies in the classroom. In so doing, family literacies can also be pedagogically welcomed in the classroom (Compton-Lily, et.al., 2019). This research informs scholarship that centers youth perspectives of their own performed literacies.

Author

• LaTasha Hutcherson Price, Central Georgia Technical College