Black Girl Cartography: Black Girlhood and Place-Making in Education Research

Abstract

Drawing on research in education, Black Girlhood studies, and conversations connected to girlhood and cartography, this chapter calls for transdisciplinary analyses of Black girls' sociocultural and geopolitical locations in education research. In reviewing education research documenting the practices and interrogating the experiences of Black girls, I propose the framework of Black Girl Cartography. In addition to an analysis of education research, I offer a series of theoretical and methodological openings for transformative and liberatory work grounded in Black Girl knowledge and practices. BlaCk GiRl CaRToGRaPhiEs "Intersectional Black feminism," or intersectionality rooted in Black feminist practices and theories (Blige, 2010, 2013; Carastathis, 2014; Collins, 2000), names the multiple axes of difference and makes clear how equitable and ethical interventions should be conceived. In other words, since Black women experience oppressions along the lines of space, place, race, gender, sexuality, and class, liberation should be imagined along those same lines. For example, in 1990, eight teenagers raped and murdered Harbour, a 26-year-old Black woman who was also a mother in Dorchester, Massachusetts (Crenshaw, 1991). Kimberlé Crenshaw (1991) discusses the ways that Harbour's story did not draw as much media attention as White women who were assaulted or reported missing that year. Yet there was little discussion about the interplay of patriarchy, misogyny, and the structural inequities that shaped Dorchester into a dangerous location for young women of color. How might the impending gentrification of the historically poor neighborhood transform it into a place of violence against Black female bodies, and the erasure of said violence? Similar questions can be asked of Baltimore, Maryland (Alphonza Watson

Policy as Punishment and Distraction: The Double Helix of Racialized Sexual Harassment of Black Girls

“…Racial and sexual violence in schools is important to study because, as illustrated above, Black girls’ experiences are unique (Miller, 2008). Yet, Black girls’ broader educational experiences (Butler, 2018), and specifically their encounters with sexual harassment, remain critically understudied (Hines-Datiri & Carter Andrews, 2017; Jones, 2009). Given this void, we explore what combined role educators and policy play in perpetuating or disrupting sexual harassment in schools and ask:…”

The Wretched of the Research: DisenchantingMan2-as-Educational Researcherand Entering the 36th Chamber of Education Research

“…Accessing intergenerational modes of intersectionality from Black Feminist Thought, educational researchers such as Patterson et al (2016) and Evans-Winters and Esposito (2010) have engaged intersectional theory to unmask and develop ways of gathering, interpreting, and sharing educational knowledge beyond the hierarchical and categorical ordering of Man2-as-educational researcher . The conceptual understanding that systems of power work together to structure society has roots in Black Feminist Thought from as early as the 19th century (Butler, 2018; Carastathis, 2014; Cooper, 2017; Hill Collins, 1990, 2019). Most impactful to education, Hill Collins (1990, 2019) invoked understandings of interlocking systems of oppression as “matrices of domination,” while legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw (1991) theorized what has come to be referred to as intersectionality, “[Intersectionality’s] a lens, a prism, for seeing the way in which various forms of inequality often operate together and exacerbate each other” (K. Crenshaw, interview by K. Steinmetz, February 20, 2020; Cho et al, 2013; Harris, 2020; Tefera et al, 2018).…”

“…They have illuminated how the monohumanist genre-specific assumptions behind what is “worthy” and “high-quality” education research is influenced by cisheteropatriarchy and interlocking societal structures. These societal structures are invested in elevating and furthering an imagined normative personhood that is defined by “multiple axis” of differentiation by race, class, gender, sexuality, dis/ability, religion, and other institutionalized understandings of human difference, which are further bound by space, place, and time (Brockenbrough, 2013; Butler, 2018; Callier, 2018; Erevelles & Minear, 2010; Evans-Winters, 2019; Garcia & Ortiz, 2013; Tefera et al, 2018). Within the U.S. nation-state and broader “Western” world of the early 21st century, Black Feminist educational researchers have elucidated how societal structures relinquish resources from a person at accelerating rates the more a person is categorized as “other” and differentiated from the embodied position of power (Erevelles & Minear, 2010; Hill Collins, 2019).…”

Precariedad e investigación educativa: una realidad inexplorada en las revistas españolas de educación indexadas en JCR y SJR

“…Hemos visto que autores como Cervinkova (2016), Näsström y Kalm (2015) y Standing (2013), entre otros, incluyen en el precariado a una multiplicidad de grupos distintos desde trabajadores industriales, migrantes, jóvenes y ancianos, mujeres y hombres, poco o muy cualifica-dos… Hecho que justifica más, si cabe, la perspectiva interseccional en investigación educativa. Además, sin olvidar que los trabajos pioneros en interseccionalidad educativa fueron desarrollados por mujeres de color (Butler, 2018;Harris y Leonardo, 2018), para exponer las formas en las que algunas personas son silenciadas y anuladas socialmente por estructuras de poder y procesos de desigualdad legitimados históricamente.…”