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Nia Thompson March 19, 2021
RRS 480 Current Event Assignment
Reclaiming Our Time:
The Robbery and Recollection of Black Girlhood
A traveling art exhibit named The First Time I Ever Saw Your Face featuring portraits of
school aged Black girls in West Philadelphia seeks to “create a sacred space for Black women
and girls to reflect on [their] childhood, and for the rest of the world to acknowledge that, yes,
[they] really did have one,” (Wellington, 2021).
The show, open through April 30th at the Slought Gallery, was born from a partnership
of The Colored Girls Museum to honor Women’s History Month. Vashti Dubois, founder of the
CG Museum asserts the exhibit focuses on the experience of many Black girls in which
“girlhood is a neglected space” (Wellington). DuBois commissioned six artists to create portraits
of Black girls who were selected by Black women as muses, prompting the viewer to “become
engrossed in seeing [them],” and consequently “begin to remember [one’s] own childhood and
see the little girl in [oneself]” (Wellington, 2021).
Creating a space for Black girls and women to reflect on their girlhood (or lack thereof)
and connect back to their inner child is not only welcomed, but necessary. Black girls across the
globe have to fight for their humanity and autonomy to be recognized, especially in institutions
such as academia. In schools, the educational needs of Black girls are wholly unaccounted for as
the system pushes them to the outskirts of scholarly success, communicating that “their
presence...is tolerated at best, and oftentimes unwanted” (Kelly, 2018). Even worse, as they
experience erasure they simultaneously endure hypervisibility in the form of “inequitable
discipline practices” (Kelly, 2018). It is widely known that Black girls experience
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“disproportionate rates of punitive treatment in the education and juvenile justice systems”
(Wellington, 2021).
Jumping a minimum of two ropes at once - racism and sexism - black girls are
hypersexualized and treated far beyond their age starting very young. In a 2017 study by the
Georgetown Center for Poverty and Inequality, findings cemented that Black girls are perceived
to need “less nurturing, less protection, and less emotional support” (Epstein et al., 2017). This
misconception has roots dating all the way back to slavery, in which enslaved Black women
were viewed as possessing animalistic strength and the ability to endure the harshest of
circumstances, defying traditionally feminine traits. Moreover, since they weren’t classified as
human, but rather property, the caricature of a Black ‘superwomen’ further enabled whites to
treat them as high functioning units of labor. The effects and lasting residuals of this stigma are
still evident today, especially in the ‘Strong Black Woman’ trope.
The complexities and intersecting oppressions Black girls experience and are forced to
grapple with at such a young age often results in the undergoing of critical reflection and
resistance, but not without cost. Such maturity further catapultes young Black girls out of their
youth and into a level of consciousness and preoccupation with forms of resistance other
marginalized demographics only begin to engage in young adulthood.
Indeed, Black girls have expressed the process of coming to critical consciousness at such
a young age as “even more [intense]” and “really overwhel[ming]” (Kelly, 2018). This often
evokes “feelings of anger and sadness” and moves the girls to find “strategies for withstanding
[such] emotions by ‘compartmentaliz[ing].’” (Kelly, 2018). Coming to consciousness is rarely a
smooth or easy transformation. Black girls often experience a struggle of recognizing operating
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systems of oppression in their lives, described by some as “hav[ing] all these feelings and [that]
you can’t name” which alters the way they view and interact with the world (Kelly, 2018).
This is why Black women revisiting adolescence is a critical act of self love as well as
resistance. Through recollection, one can begin to heal the wounds of a stolen youth as well as
break internalized manifestations of such robbery and halt their projections onto future
generations. By meditating on the right to the carelessness and nurturing tenderness so
beautifully reconstructed in the art exhibit, yet so absent in Black girlhood, Black femmes can
take an active role in caring for themselves through reclaiming the extended grace of
pubescence.
This current event stood out to me because of its beauty and relevance to both our
readings and my personal life. I was pushed into accelerated maturity largely through needing to
make sense of encounters with prejudice teachers and racist classmates growing up. I think the
show has the ability to impact Black women who experience the exhibit simply by calling them
back to their inner child, a privilege so rarely afforded to us. Unfortunately I can’t attend the
event from sheer physical distance, but the article already has sparked a yearning within me to
revisit and reclaim the childhood I wasn’t granted.
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References Epstein, R.; Blake, J.; and González, T. (2017). Girlhood Interrupted: The Erasure of Black
Girls’ Childhood. Center of Poverty and Inequity, Georgetown Law. Online text accessed at http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3000695
Kelly, L. (2018). A Snapchat Story: How Black Girls Develop Strategies for critical Resistance
in School. Learning, Media and Technology, 43(4), 374-389. https://doi.org/10.1080/17439884.2018.1498352
Wellington, E. (2021). This Exhibit From The Colored Girls Museum is Reframing the
Conversation of Black Girlhood, The Philadelphia Inquirer. Online text accessed at https://www.inquirer.com/columnists/colored-girls-museum-vashti-dubois-adultification -black-girls-20210318.html