Black Girls and Critical Media Literacy for Social Activism

2017

This dissertation analyzes the agency that adolescent Black girls in independent schools use to craft their identities, and describes the particular competencies that they enact as they navigate encounters of race/ ethnicity, gender, and socioeconomic status within their daily school lives. Through the adoption of developmental, feminist, and critical pedagogy frameworks, this phenomenological study employs a grounded theory methodology and presents an emergent theory that describes the phenomenon of “Black girl critical literacies” when situated in the context of elite, predominantly White independent schools. I define Black girl critical literacies as the phenomenon in which Black girls use particular competencies to recognize, process, and respond to messages that they receive connected to their status as Black adolescent females in U.S. society while simultaneously crafting their own sense of their Black girl identities. Using weekly discussion groups grounded in critical femini...

In light of the current assaults on Black girls in and out of schools across the nation, K-12 educators need to understand a more complete vision of the identities these girls create for themselves and the literacies and practices needed to best teach them. In this article a collective of Black female scholars addresses how gender construction and the literacy experiences of Black adolescent females are supported by their interactions with and engagements in community-and school-based programs that center on the literacy needs and interests of Black adolescent females. The authors draw on their collective yet individual experiences as Black women scholars and teachers to share ways to transform the identity development of Black adolescent females within and beyond official school contexts. Implications are provided for educators in creating legitimate spaces for Black girls to express their voices, perspectives and ways engage in multiple acts of literacies.

English Journal, 2018

The International Journal of Critical Media Literacy , 2019

In the current sociopolitical climate, children, often, bear witness to the levels of vitriol in this country. It has become more imperative that elementary classroom teachers disrupt normative discourses. Therefore, the author suggests critical media literacy as a significant pedagogical practice to utilize in order to do so. In this article, the author articulates the importance of employing critical media literacy in the elementary classroom to deconstruct the diversity of tense relations in the u.s. and provide a language for students to articulate their identities and experiences. Through her experiences in elementary classrooms, as a teacher and a teacher-educator, the author provides practical examples of how to disrupt normative discourses by utilizing critical media literacy.

Curriculum Inquiry, 2025

In order to develop critical worldviews and confidence in their identities, Black girls should make meaning of their lived and schooling experiences. Critical conversation spaces (CCSs; Carter Andrews et al., 2019) centering reflection on gender and race pro- vide environments for this meaning-making. Further, CCS curricular design should account for girls’ pre-existing knowledge and desires; likewise, CCS curricular revisions should incorporate their experi- ences and eventual self-described outcomes (Nyachae, 2016; Nyachae & Ohito, 2023). To evolve past adult-driven prescription, proscription, and prioritizations, we asked participants to share their reflections on the CCS pilot and their desired revisions. We sought to understand the sociopolitical ideations that arise among Black girls engaging with an in-school, CCS curriculum designed to encourage their critical consciousness of interlocking systems of oppression in their own experiences. Employing girls of color’s pos- itive youth development (Clonan-Roy et al., 2016) as our theoreti- cal framework, we analyzed individual interviews and focus group data using Rigorous and Accelerated Data Reduction (RADaR). In this article, we explore themes relating to Black girls’ intersectional awareness (diversity and multiplicity of Blackness) and their resis- tance and resilience (self-care and intragroup diversity) as they developed throughout the CCS curriculum. We close by advocating for the proliferation of Black girl-centric pedagogies and offering future directions for CCS research.

This coauthored article examines the ways in which teaching Black feminism in both high school and undergraduate contexts can inspire Black feminist activism in young Black women and girls. Using the work of bell hooks as a foundation for designing and implementing feminist pedagogies and practices, the authors trace the trajectory of two young women of color in their classrooms who, as a result of reading hooks, employ a range of literacies—including blogging, public speaking, and campus activism—to participate in movement building within intersectional feminism in general, and #BlackLivesMatter and #SayHerName in particular. The article ultimately demonstrates the importance of women of color feminisms both in and outside of the classroom, as content and as practice, to promote critical self-awareness and burgeoning political consciousness. The transformative impact of intersectional feminist pedagogies on girls and women of color, with an emphasis on Black feminism, is at the heart of this essay—as are practical approaches to the work of bell hooks's texts for contemporary students.

Urban Education, 2022

The #BlackLivesMatter movement, which rose to prominence following the state-sanctioned murders of several unarmed Black Americans, shed light on the power of social media to serve as a platform for transformative resistance and digital counter-storytelling for minoritized youth. With some of the highest rates of social media use to date, it is not altogether surprising that Black college-age youth, particularly young Black women, were the primary curators of the politicized social media storm that captured the nation's attention and spurred a viral hashtag into a historical movement. Qualitative interviews with 17 Black undergraduate women showcased the ability of social media to provide young Black women with a sense of safety, visibility, and community that is not regularly available in offline settings. In addition to the benefits of digital resistance, this study also illuminated a spectrum of unintended mental health impacts of countering anti-Black violence online, including anxiety, depression and fatigue as a result of witnessing viral Black death and dying. Participants' experience with racial battle fatigue inevitably caused academic hardships, including inability to study, focus, attend lectures, or participate in class discussions. By submerging these findings into a rich body of Black feminist technology scholarship, this study sheds light on the obscure inner-workings of algorithmic racism and the commodification of Black death online. By showcasing how the internet traffics in Black death and dying, this work begins to disrupt normative constructions of technology and information systems as post-racial, ungendered and inherently liberatory platforms for student activism.

Multicultural Perspectives, 2019

This narrative inquiry explores an African American read-in entitled Black Girls Read! This read-in was organized by four Black, women scholars who, in celebration of Black History Month, continued the tradition of Black women throughout history who have resisted the dominant narrative perpetuated by mainstream culture. Attended by over 100 Black girls, the read-in provided an opportunity and a space for Black girls to connect with their cultural heritage and to build upon their individual, literate identities. A Black girls’ literacies framework was used to examine the diverse experiences of the attendees and to highlight the need for educational experiences that affirm the identities of Black girls and defy a single narrative of Black girls’ literacies.