Pens Down, Don’t Shoot: An Analysis of How Black Young Women Use Language to Fight Back

2020 ◽  
pp. 004208591989373
Author(s):  
Sherell A. McArthur ◽  
Gholnecsar E. Muhammad
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
Young Women ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
The United States ◽  
Black Girls ◽  
Literacy Practice ◽  
The Public ◽  
Current State ◽  
Black Girlhood ◽  
Historical Literacy

Media culture is exploitative and damaging. It reinforces both racist and sexist stereotypes, which places Black young women’s unique racialized gender in a position to be overidentified in derogatory ways. The bodies of Black young women, as an example, are labeled with social stigmas that make them identifiable to society at large as deficient. Furthermore, their lives have been devalued and dehumanized in the public eye as their stories are often left untold, falsely reported, or overlooked in the wider media landscape. Using qualitative interview methods, we examine the current state of Black girlhood and womanhood and the racism that pervades their lives in the United States. With this backdrop, we also investigate the ways in which Black young women have responded with their writings when we, as Black women researchers, created spaces for them to use language to fight back and resist assaults against their humanity. Specifically, we illustrate the historical literacy practice of (re)claiming print authority through writing and how Black young women used their pens as a means to claim authority of language in ways to assert their voices, ideals, and truths. We conclude with a discussion of how educators can advance print authority within learning spaces for identity meaning making and empowerment so that Black girls and young women have an expressed voice in our current social and political context.

Centering “Grace”: Challenging Anti-Blackness in Schooling Through Motherwork

2021 ◽  
Vol 31 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 142-157
Author(s):  
Terri N. Watson ◽  
Gwendolyn S. Baxley
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
School Leadership ◽  
School Leaders ◽  
Black Children ◽  
The United States ◽  
Black Girls ◽  
Racial Biases ◽  
Black Girlhood ◽  
Patricia Hill Collins ◽  
Educational Advocacy

Anti-Blackness is global and present in every facet of society, including education. In this article, we examine the challenges Black girls encounter in schools throughout the United States. Guided by select research centered on Black women in their roles as mothers, activists and school leaders, we assert that sociologist Patricia Hill Collins’ concept of Motherwork should be an essential component in reframing the praxis of school leadership and in helping school leaders to rethink policies, practices, and ideologies that are anti-Black and antithetical to Blackness and Black girlhood. While most research aimed to improve the schooling experiences of Black children focuses on teacher and school leader (mis)perceptions and systemic racial biases, few studies build on the care and efficacy personified by Black women school leaders. We argue that the educational advocacy of Black women on behalf of Black children is vital to culturally responsive school leadership that combats anti-Blackness and honors Black girlhood. We conclude with implications for school leaders and those concerned with the educational experiences of Black children, namely Black girls.

Black Girl Thought in the Work of Ntozake Shange

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 32-47
Author(s):  
Naila Keleta-Mae
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
The United States ◽  
Black Girls ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Ntozake Shange ◽  
Black Girl ◽  
Civil Rights Era ◽  
Spheres Of Influence ◽  
Gender And Age ◽  
Black Girlhood

In this article I examine the performances of black girlhood in two texts by Ntozake Shange—the choreopoem “for colored girls who have considered suicide when the rainbow is enuf” (1977) and the novel Sassafras, Cypress and Indigo (1982). The black girls whom Shange portrays navigate anti-black racism in their communities, domestic violence in their homes, and explore their connections with spirit worlds. In both these works, Shange stages black girls who make decisions based on their understanding of the spheres of influence that their race, gender, and age afford them in an anti-black patriarchal world dominated by adults. I draw, too, from Patricia Hill Collins’s work on feminist standpoint theory and black feminist thought to introduce the term black girl thought as a theoretical framework to offer insights into the complex lives of black girls who live in the post-civil rights era in the United States.

Black Women Remember Black Girls

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruth Nicole Brown
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
Collective Memory ◽  
Sexual Politics ◽  
Black Girls ◽  
Black Girlhood ◽  
Material Conditions ◽  
Made In

This chapter shows how Black girlhood must be made—in SOLHOT the space of Black girlhood is made through time, a timing that is infused with the sacred and spirit. In SOLHOT, to “homegirl” means engaging Black girls in the name of Black girlhood as sacred work that implicates time. Sacred work acknowledges the ways spirit moves one to act, often beyond the material conditions of one's immediate circumstance. The chapter considers how homegirls remember SOLHOT as a sacred experience that makes Black girlhood possible. It then features a creative and collective memory constructed from the interview transcripts of eight SOLHOT homegirls and M. Jacqui Alexander's (2005) Pedagogies of Crossing: Mediations on Feminism, Sexual Politics, Memory, and the Sacred. The memory shows how homegirls' labor constructs SOLHOT as a methodology and cosmology that makes Black girlhood possible, affirms Black girls' lives, and enables personal and collective transformation.

Tiara

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruth Nicole Brown
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
Black Girls ◽  
After School ◽  
School Program ◽  
Daily Lives ◽  
News Stories ◽  
Black Girlhood ◽  
After School Program ◽  
New Ideas ◽  
Women And Girls

This chapter features a scene from a play entitled Endangered Black Girls (EBG), based on the lived experiences of Black girls the author has worked with in an after-school program (not SOLHOT) and has learned about through news stories. Theorizing the process of writing and performing EBG on through to subsequent productions made possible only because of the show's original cast, this chapter illustrates how creative means of expression make it possible to fully capture the complexities of Black girlhood and that attending to the complexities of Black girlhood is necessary to affirm Black girls' daily lives. Importantly, performances of EBG generated new ideas for ways Black women and girls could be present with each other, and the play was a primary catalyst for suggesting and co-organizing Saving Our Lives Hear Our Truths (SOLHOT) as transformative collective and creative work.

Speech-Language Pathology Assistants Current State of Affairs

2009 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 12-18 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lemmietta McNeilly
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Public Schools ◽  
The United States ◽  
Speech Language Pathology ◽  
The Public ◽  
School Based ◽  
Current State ◽  
Language Pathology ◽  
Educational Requirements ◽  
State Of Affairs

Abstract The utilization of speech-language pathology assistants (SLPAs) is increasing in the United States particularly in the public schools. The American Speech-Language-Hearing Association provides specific guidelines regarding the training, use, and supervision of (SLPAs; ASHA, 2004). The current state of affairs of SLPAs involves variable requirements across the states to qualify for SLPA credentials. The programs that educate SLPAs have variable technical and curricular requirements, and the educational requirements for regulating SLPAs also vary across the states. School-based SLPs continue to raise questions about the supervision requirements, funding, and reimbursement issues for working with SLPA in schools across the country.

Private Prisons in a New Environment

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Scott D. Camp
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Rapid Growth ◽  
The United States ◽  
Private Prisons ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
The Public ◽  
Current State ◽  
History Of ◽  
Prison Populations ◽  
Public Versus Private

This chapter focuses on the current state of practice, policy, and research related to privately operated prisons in the United States. I begin with a brief overview of the history of the rapid growth in the private sector in the United States, followed by a discussion of costs of public versus private prisons. While costs are easily quantified, assigning the proper costs to the public and private sectors has presented much controversy in previous studies. The issue of quality of correctional services provided by public versus private prisons is also reviewed, given that there is little agreement on the type of measures that allow for fair comparisons of public and private prisons. The chapter concludes with thoughts on issues facing public and private prisons in an era marked by stability or decline as opposed to rapid growth in prison populations.

scholarly journals Copyright: Regulation Out of Line with our Digital Reality?

2008 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 7 ◽  
Author(s):  
Abigail J. McDermott
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Copyright Law ◽  
Library Services ◽  
Property Law ◽  
The Public ◽  
Library Community ◽  
Current State ◽  
Digital Library Services ◽  
Negative Impacts

This paper provides a brief overview of the current state of copyright law in the United States, focusing on the negative impacts of these policies on libraries and patrons. The article discusses four challenges current copyright law presents to libraries and the public in general, highlighting three concrete ways intellectual property law interferes with digital library services and systems. Finally, the author suggests that a greater emphasis on copyright literacy and a commitment among the library community to advocate for fairer policies is vital to correcting the imbalance between the interests of the public and those of copyright holders.

The Power of Storytelling: a Quest for a Public Discourse on Sexual Harassment

2005 ◽  
Vol 7 (1-4) ◽  
pp. 5-28
Author(s):  
Jenny Morgan
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Sexual Harassment ◽  
Young Women ◽  
Generational Differences ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Legal Discourse ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Law ◽  
Law Reports

This article explores the possible reasons for the absence of a public discourse about sexual harassment in Australia, which can be contrasted with a relatively well-developed legal discourse. It also briefly compares the debate about sexual harassment in the United States and Australia that followed in the wake of controversial and very public sexual harassment cases in each country. It argues that the debate in the wake of the Clarence Hill-Anita Thomas hearings in the United States was much more productive than the debate in Australia after the publication of Helen Garner’s book, The First Stone. The discussion in Australia focused on whether the young women in the case had ‘over-reacted’ and whether there were generational differences in women’s reactions to sexual harassment. The more interesting (and I would argue, far more important) questions of what is sexual harassment is and what are its effects were ignored. This article goes on to explore one aspect of what sexual harassment is and does by examining what women actually do in response to sexual harassment through an analysis of some of the stories of targets of harassment as they appear in the law reports. In this way it tries to make some of the legal discourse about sexual harassment a part of the public discourse about the phenomenon.

Exploring Black Girls’ Subversive Literacies as Acts of Freedom

2020 ◽  
Vol 52 (4) ◽  
pp. 456-481
Author(s):  
Lauren Leigh Kelly
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
Literacy Practices ◽  
The United States ◽  
Black Girls ◽  
Racial Equity ◽  
Race And Gender ◽  
Consciousness Development ◽  
History Of ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Young Black Women

Research on Black girls’ and women’s literacies reveals how they utilize literacy practices to resist oppression and define their identities. Yet, these practices are frequently absent from or marginalized in formalized schooling spaces. In addition, Black girlhood is rarely placed at the center of equity interventions in schools. As the history of activism in the United States is tied to Black women’s struggles for freedom, research and practice involving racial equity must be attentive to the literacies and activism of Black girls. Grounded in Black feminist theory, this article describes a longitudinal study of the critical consciousness development of two young Black women as they engaged in distinct literacy practices to navigate and resist racial oppression in high school. The author analyzes interviews as well as literacy artifacts to explore how these girls enacted critical, digital, and subversive literacies to challenge intersecting oppressions of race and gender in a predominantly White, suburban school.

scholarly journals Public Sense of Water Fluoridation as Reflected on Twitter 2009–2017

2019 ◽  
Vol 99 (1) ◽  
pp. 11-17 ◽  
Author(s):  
H.J. Oh ◽  
C.H. Kim ◽  
J.G. Jeon
Keyword(s):  
Information Sources ◽  
The United States ◽  
Online Information ◽  
Water Fluoridation ◽  
The Public ◽  
Network Analyses ◽  
Current State ◽  
Twitter Users ◽  
Using Data ◽  
Negative Sentiment

Though controversial, water fluoridation has been hailed as one of the top-ten public-health achievements of the 20th century in the United States of America. In this article, we aim to investigate the public sense of water fluoridation as reflected on Twitter, using data from 2009 to 2017. To this end, tweets related to water fluoridation were collected using queries such as “fluoridated water or fluoride water,” “water fluoridation or fluoridation of water,” and hashtags related to water fluoridation. The collected tweets ( n = 218,748) were examined through informetric, linguistic (word sentiment, word frequency, and word network analyses), and issue tweet analyses. We found that Twitter users who tweeted about water fluoridation in English between 2009 and 2017 constituted about <0.01% of all users including non-English users. In their tweets, words such as “poison” and “waste” were the strong negative sentiment words most often used. Of the top 30 words most frequently used, words related to information sources on water fluoridation and the safety of water fluoridation appeared more often than words related to its efficacy. Additionally, the words related to information sources on water fluoridation and the safety of water fluoridation were found to be core terms in the sentences of tweet mentions. Our linguistic analyses indicate that Twitter users responded sensitively to words that emphasize negative aspects of fluoridation. This is clearly shown in our issue tweet analysis, where tweet mentions expressing negative opinions about water fluoridation accounted for at least 59.2% of all mentions. By contrast, <15% of tweet mentions were found to be positive. These findings suggest that professionals need to reevaluate the current state of online information about water fluoridation, and improve it in a way so that the public can easily access reliable information sources.

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