Protecting Black Girls: Understanding Safety Before and After Violence

• In Event: Girls & Women Involved with Gangs, Violence, & the Criminal Legal System: Old Structures Dealing with New Phenomena

Abstract

"Protecting Black Girls: Understanding Safety Before and After Violence" seeks to explore and understand Black girls’ intersectional experiences of community violence and safety, whilst also exploring ways in which we can support their healing and joy. Underpinned by our London-wide research, our work aims to offer a much-needed intersectional focus, and amplify the voices and needs of a group so easily forgotten. Often in discourse surrounding community violence, the voices and experiences of Black girls are made invisible. Issues such as the lack of safety within the community, lack of safety in digital spaces, peer-on-peer violence and misogynistic violence experienced by Black girls are frequently ignored, leaving them with a range of mental health concerns. Our work explores how those in positions of power, such as educational practitioners and policy makers, who are given the duty of safeguarding Black girls, often do the opposite: they subject Black girls to excessive punishment, marginalisation and silencing. We aim to reimagine a world that prioritises the safety of Black girls, and doesn’t simply reduce them to an afterthought. Through our campaigns and academic research, we implore wider society to not only see Black girls in their trauma, but also in their joy.

Authors

• Ebinehita Iyere, Milk Honey Bees

• Sophie Arinde, Milk Honey Bees