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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