Unmasking “Righteous Rage:” Centering the voices of Black and girls’ of color in Pedagogies of Resistance

• In Event: Intersectional Perspectives and Transformative Educational Practices of Girls and Women of Color

Abstract

In this paper, we center the experiences of girls of color (GoC) and women of color educators as they respond to and resist the racial and gendered violence embedded in curricula and society. This study reveals how these girls, alongside faculty and staff, draw on their lived experiences and women of color feminist theories to address institutional and interpersonal violence. Using a Black feminist theoretical framework, we analyze and prioritize the embodied knowledge of Black girls and GoC to envision and create educational spaces that value their humanity and holistic well-being. Black feminist epistemological examinations “point to the ways in which power relations shape who is believed and why” (Collins, 2000, p. 252). In the context of schools, Black girls’ encounters with racialized and gendered violence are often minimized, silenced, or wholly ignored (Harris & Kruger, 2023). By exploring how school curricula enact violence on Black girls and GoC, we recognize violence in its physical, psychological, and epistemic forms. The following questions guide this work:

What can we learn from the stories of students and educators in schools and community-based educational contexts to inform our understanding of an ethic of care and criticality that disrupts the normalization of racialized and gendered violence?

How can a justice-oriented praxis support teachers, students, and school personnel in cultivating learning spaces that address the racial and gendered trauma of students?

Our paper is based on data collected and analyzed from two educational contexts in the Northeast: a public high school (NAEd Spencer funded project) and a social justice community-based program. The data included individual interviews, focus groups with students and educators, and classroom observations. The findings highlight the learning opportunities that arise when educators create space for critical examinations of canonical texts and dominant narratives that normalize rape culture and racial violence through interrogations of intersecting forms of oppression. For example, we examine the curricular interventions made by a woman of color educator in response to witnessing a Black girl’s rage during the oral reading of a scene from Romeo and Juliet where the Montague men jest about their sexual pursuits and physically taking control over women (i.e., raping women to fulfill their physical pleasures). The student stood up, hit her desk loudly with her fists, and shouted, “I don’t want to read this anymore.” The educator, witnessing and affirming this “righteous rage” (Duncan-Andrade, 2009), used a Black feminist theoretical and pedagogical lens to facilitate a class discussion on sexism and misogyny, exposing and validating the student’s rage. Another insight sheds light on the thought process of a Black community-based educator in describing how, when, and why she employed necessary interruptions in the curriculum to console and validate GoC in the wake of anti-black police violence. Finally, our paper offers other insights and implications for educators, administrators, and researchers concerning humanizing approaches to the visceral ways Black girls and GoC call attention to their trauma and resist the normality of oppression and injustice in classrooms and beyond.

Authors

• Davena Y. Jackson, Boston University

• Tashal Brown, University of Rhode Island