“Got Everybody Hating”: Black Girls’ Reauthoring Discipline Narratives Through the Arts (Poster 20)

• In Event: AERA Poster Session Thursday 5:25 p.m.
  In Poster Session: Resisting Marginalization: Narratives of Black Student Persistence and Empowerment Across Educational Spaces

Abstract

This paper examines how the Black girls in one high school used the dramatic and visual arts to disrupt racist stock stories articulated through discipline referrals and re-author their identities and presumed capacities. Drawing from a two-year critical ethnographic study, and grounded in Black feminist theory, I argue that though referrals have been influential in establishing disproportionality and illustrating the disciplinary context in which Black girls are embedded, they are nevertheless limited articulations given their elevation of teachers’ bias and simultaneous silencing of Black girls. By examining how Black girls re-author the stories these forms tell, we gain insight into the humanity that these disciplinary processes (and the tools that support them) deny and identify opportunities for intervention.

Author

• Alaina Neal-Jackson, University of Michigan