“A Different Energy… That I Love”: Black Girls’ Interpretation of Vibe as a Power Metric

• In Event: From Infinity to Infinity: The Plurality of Black Girl Space and Literacies

Abstract

Previous literature has studied the interpersonal and structural impacts of racialized oppression on Black Americans’ emotional experiences (Gordon, 2008; Palmer, 2017). More recently, this discussion evolved into an exploration of vibe, (1) the affective process through which Black people respond to and surmise oppressive power dynamics as well as (2) an embodied sense of relationality to a space and those within it (Miles, 2022). A good vibe is promotive, signaling the lack of marginalizing power differentials among individuals whose company one enjoys and that power and authority are being shared in positive, communal ways (Brown, 2009). Black girls’ utilization of vibe was readily apparent in the critical conversation space (CCS; Carter Andrews et al., 2019) we facilitated at a local high school, given CCSs’ centering of fictive kinship and affinity between Black girls and woman of color educators (Author et al., in progress). Herein, we formed a unique, intuitive sense of how prevailing social structures such as misogynoir and adultism manifest in various contexts and relationships to influence our identity development and self-expression. Accordingly, our study uplifts the voices of Black girls as we explore how they interpreted the vibe they experienced and cultivated within our CCS.

We sought to cultivate a space that would scaffold Black girls’ critical consciousness in accordance with our guiding framework, positive youth development for girls of color (PYD4GOC; Clonan-Roy et al., 2016). PYD4GOC posits that a systemic and sociopolitical awareness of singular and intersectional forms of oppression is key to girls of colors’ thriving via traditional positive youth development assets and through their sociopolitical resistance and resilience. We began by recruiting Black girls enrolled at a local high school to participate in our CCS. Before, during, and after the pilot of our programming, we held focus groups and conducted semi-structured interviews where girls reflected on the sociopolitical beliefs that they explored during the CCS. We then analyzed the data using Rigorous and Accelerated Data Reduction (Watkins et al., 2017) and created cross-case themes and subthemes to give a comprehensive representation of the process.

Our analysis highlights two broad themes the girls articulated when discussing the vibe of the CCS: Vibe as Relational and Vibe as Embodied. Vibe as Relational explores how resistance to misogynoiristic, adultist hierarchies and co-creation of communal knowledge cultivated good vibes within the CCS, counter to girls’ experiences in more traditional classrooms. Vibe as Embodied articulates vibe as a Black girl epistemology that transcends formal articulation and instead emerges from an inherent felt/spiritual sense of kinship within the CCS and akin homeplaces (hooks, 1990). We use this work to advance vibe as a PYD4GOC asset, akin to the asset of interpersonal connection & caring but with a broader focus on sociopolitical relationality. Additionally, we call for an investigation of the developmental psychology of vibe to complement Miles’ sociology of vibe (2022). Such inquiry would complement our group-level understanding of vibe among older Black people with an individual-level focus on Black adolescents and emerging adults’ usage of this embodied affective tool.

Authors

• Gabrielle Kubi, Boston College

• Mara D. Johnson, University of Michigan

• Eden G Harrison, University of Michigan

• Hyeri Mel Yang, University of Michigan

• Kaila F. Pelton-Flavin, University of Michigan