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Learning, Media and Technology

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A snapchat story: how black girls develop strategies for critical resistance in school

Lauren Leigh Kelly

To cite this article: Lauren Leigh Kelly (2018) A snapchat story: how black girls develop strategies for critical resistance in school, Learning, Media and Technology, 43:4, 374-389, DOI: 10.1080/17439884.2018.1498352

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/17439884.2018.1498352

Published online: 19 Jul 2018.

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A snapchat story: how black girls develop strategies for critical resistance in school Lauren Leigh Kelly

Department of Learning and Teaching, Rutgers University Graduate School of Education, New Brunswick, NJ, USA

ABSTRACT Drawing from Black, feminist epistemologies as well as theories of critical consciousness, and adolescent digital literacies, this paper analyzes the narratives of 7 Black, female high school students who experience oppressive practices, including racial microaggressions, silencing, harsh discipline, and marginalization within a predominately White school environment. At this juncture in which race, politics, and activism intersect with school, media, and identity, this study discusses how Black, female students resist oppression and use digital and social media as well as other available tools to speak out against injustice and heighten the racial awareness of their school community. This qualitative case study uses individual and focus group interviews to examine the ways in which Black female students develop critical resistance strategies, working individually and collectively within existing structures to fight for their humanity and liberation.

ARTICLE HISTORY Received 15 January 2018 Accepted 26 June 2018

KEYWORDS Black feminist theory; black girl literacies; critical consciousness; digital literacies; suburban schooling

To the Little Revolutionary Be careful, little lightning bug, when you spread your wings Be mindful of the fire in your belly There are those who will want to snuff you out and put out your spark too young. -Layla, 12th grade student

Introduction

During the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign, Aaliyah,1 a Black, female sophomore in a predomi- nantly White school, was disturbed by the fact that some of her White, male classmates were expli- citly vocal in their support of a particular candidate, whose policies, she felt, undermined her freedoms as a woman of color. Within school, there was little space provided to engage in healthy dialogue about the election or its sociopolitical implications. In response, Aaliyah posted a photo of two of these classmates on her Snapchat story with a caption that read ‘white supremacists.’ This action led to her being placed into in school suspension for using social media during school hours. This example highlights how the intersections of institutional racism, digital and social media, and school discipline impact the schooling experiences and critical development of students of color, and more specifically, Black, female students. While schools can serve as empowering spaces for Black girls to develop self-knowledge and humanizing critical and digital literacy practices (McArthur 2016; Sealey-Ruiz 2016), these institutions can also be oppressive, dehumanizing spaces for Black girls, ones in which survival and resistance are oftentimes antithetical (Morris 2016).

© 2018 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group

CONTACT Lauren Leigh Kelly [email protected] Department of Learning and Teaching, Rutgers University Graduate School of Education, 10 Seminary Place, Room 229, New Brunswick, NJ 08901, USA

LEARNING, MEDIA AND TECHNOLOGY 2018, VOL. 43, NO. 4, 374–389 https://doi.org/10.1080/17439884.2018.1498352

Aaliyah’s turning to social media to express her frustrations at the oppression she experienced inside school indicates a lack of and a need for ‘safe spaces’ in school for discussions of race and iden- tity. It can also be viewed as a response to the ‘conspiracy of silence’ (Sue 2015) regarding expressions of race and identity that impacts the learning environment and identity development of students of color, and especially female students of color, in predominantly White spaces. Aaliyah’s actions reflect the need for marginalized students to resist oppression using the tools available to them as well as the need for schools to foster and support the critical development of adolescents in order to build safe, inclusive, and culturally sustaining learning communities.

Background and context

Black women’s critical resistance

The Black Lives Matter movement, founded by Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi; the #metoo movement, founded by Tarana Burke; and the Say Her Name movement, founded by Kim- berlé Crenshaw and Andrea Ritchie, are three examples of the visibility of the critical resistance of Black women during this modern civil rights era (Raschig 2017). However, Black women’s leadership in U.S. activism is far from new. McArthur (2016) reminds us that there is a ‘rich lineage of Black women activists who used their voices and literacy practices for social change’ (364). This history includes publically recognized leaders such as Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, Fannie Lou Hamer, and Ella Baker; however, it also includes less visible activists such as Black, female domestic workers who, as Collins (2009) explained, ‘undermine the rules governing their employment by creating Black female spheres of influence and control over the conditions of their work’ (220). While such forms of activism are less visible, they are fundamental to the history of resistance and survival of Black women in the U.S.

Collins (2009) describes structural inequality as a ‘matrix of domination’ that must be examined through the lens of intersectionality in order to dismantle structural oppression. She explained, ‘If power as domination is organized and operates via intersecting oppressions, then resistance must show comparable complexity’ (Collins 2009, 218). Consequently, an examination of resistance strat- egies, including the ways in which adolescents resist the structural forces of school, must involve a complex understanding of the actions and experiences of Black women. Oftentimes, the contri- butions of Black women’s actions and voices go unnoticed in the narrative of civil rights and social justice activism since they take place within the interstices between Black (male) activism and (White) feminism and emerge from a history of social movements that have excluded the intersec- tionality of gender and race. As Crenshaw (1991) wrote,

Although racism and sexism readily intersect in the lives of real people, they seldom do in feminist and anti- racist practices … . when the practices expound identity as woman or person of color as an either/or prop- osition, they relegate the identity of women of color to a location that resists telling. (1242)

Ironically, it is at this very intersection that successful social justice movements often foment. Thus, the struggle for equity and justice in U.S. society must rest upon an understanding of the experiences and critical resistance of Black females.

Adolescents’ digital literacies and online identity formation

In an increasingly digital and media-centered society, adolescents often engage in literacy practices through digital forms of communication and in online communities. These digital literacies can play a role in adolescents’ identity development. In a 2013 study, McLean describes digital literacies as a means by which young people, specifically Black Caribbean immigrant girls, can ‘come to voice’ (hooks 1994) and engage in critical dialogue with peers. McLean (2013) refers to adolescents’ use of technology and social media as ‘identity markers’ (70) that highlight their multiple literacies as well as their membership in multiple communities. Wängqvist and Frisén (2016) describe online

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contexts as just as important as home and school contexts for the identity development of adoles- cents. This is especially so for those who find few physical spaces in which their identities are sup- ported and embraced. While digital spaces can serve as an important catalyst in the development of adolescents’ identities, such development extends beyond the digital. As Kahne and Middaugh (2012) argue, youth engagement in digital media can serve as a space for individual development as well as an entry point for civic and social participation.

Research on black girls and schooling

Black girls’ tumultuous history in U.S. public schools extends as far back as 1960, when Ruby Bridges defied angry White mobs of protestors to singlehandedly integrate an all-White school in New Orleans. Like Ruby, many Black girls in predominately White schools face the reality that their pres- ence in such schools is tolerated at best, and oftentimes unwanted. Race and gender thus become omnipresent factors in their relationship to school, impacting the ways in which they position them- selves in society, in schools, and online (McLean 2013). As Kerry, one of the participants in this study, said,

[I]t’s always back to the narrative of Black women are always carrying the load for our race as a whole. So, why is it that all the Black kids are agitating the community? They’re not Black kids. They’re Black girls.

Evans-Winters and Esposito (2010) stated,

Because feminist epistemologies tend to be concerned with the education of White girls and women, and raced- based epistemologies tend to be consumed with the educational barriers negatively affecting Black boys, the educational needs of Black girls have fallen through the cracks. (12)

Research on the experiences of Black girls in schools is critical since, ‘Because of racism, sexism, and class oppression in the U.S., African American girls are in multiple jeopardy of race, class and gender exclusion in mainstream educational institutions’ (Evans-Winters and Esposito 2010, 13). This exclusion is exacerbated by the erasure of the contributions of Black women in mainstream history curriculum and in public school curriculum broadly, which was not ‘designed with Black girls in mind’ (Morris 2016, 26).

Previous scholarship on Black girls’ education corroborates discussions of the erasure and disem- powerment of Black girls in schools, including their experiences of silence and isolation (Fordham 1993), inequitable discipline practices (Blake et al. 2011), colorblind racism (Chapman 2013), a social acceptance of Black males that is not extended to Black females (Ispa-Landa 2013), and adults’ attempts at ‘re-form[ing] the femininity’ of Black girls (E. Morris 2007, 22). However, much of the research on Black girls’ schooling focuses exclusively on the experiences of Black girls in urban schools, leaving a paucity of research on the lives and development of Black girls who attend suburban, racially diverse, or predominantly White schools.

In order for educators and schools to support the healthy development of Black girls and auth- entically work towards equity in schools, more research is needed that documents the experiences and critical practices of Black girls who actively resist what they experience as oppression in their school environments. The study discussed in this paper examines the ways in which a group of ado- lescent Black females in a predominately White school work individually and collectively within existing structures to fight for their humanity and liberation.

Methodology

As a theory of liberation, Black feminism provides a necessary framework for understanding and researching Black womanhood and, by extension, Black girlhood. Patterson et al. (2016b) describe Black feminist theory as a ‘vehicle for making black women’s critical consciousness intelligible to black women’ as well as ‘a powerful methodological tool for research by and

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about black women’ (59). Evans-Winters and Esposito (2010) stated that ‘there is a need for a coalition of educational researchers who seek to understand Black girls’ multiple realities … empirically validate the experiences of girls of African descent … . and actively promote social and educational policies at the micro- and macro-level, with those in mind who exist at the inter- sections of race, class, and gender’ (15). Responding to this call, this qualitative research study sought to discover how Black girls experience school as minoritized2 subjects and how they develop tools for resistance and survival within this context. This research approach is rooted in hooks’ (1994) assertion that Black women who ‘deal with sexism and racism, develop impor- tant strategies for survival and resistance that need to be shared within black communities’ (118). It is also based on Collins’ (2009) idea that,

When an individual Black woman’s consciousness concerning how she understands her everyday life undergoes change, she can become empowered. Such consciousness may stimulate her to embark on a path of personal freedom, even if it exists initially primarily in her own mind. (xii)

Through this lens, the struggle for liberation begins in one’s consciousness and an understanding of Black girls’ consciousness development is essential to understanding and supporting their critical resistance.

In applying a framework of critical methodology to their analysis of the shared experiences of Black women, Patterson et al. (2016b) offer a critique of ‘traditional’ research methods, which include,

an assumed separation between power-bearing researcher(s) and the objectified individuals being researched; forms of data collection that truncate the robust exchange of ideas (e.g., rigidly structured interviews and sur- veys); and presenting results to serve those who author them more so than the people who inform them. (59)

The author’s research study challenges such traditions by making visible the connections between the researcher and the participants, deliberately engaging in a ‘robust exchange of ideas’ through the structure of focus group interviews with the participants, and providing the participants with a consistent and generative space for healing and testimony that extends beyond the research and interview processes.

Since this study sought to better understand the experiences and practices of Black girls in school, documenting the students’ narratives through individual and focus group interviews was critical to the research approach and to understanding the girls’ particular forms of activism (Patterson, Howard, and Kinloch 2016a). This practice of documentation serves dual purposes in that it helps the researcher to gather information about the participants’ experiences at the same time that it helps them to articulate and reflect on these experiences. Indeed, when the participants were first approached about being involved in this study, each expressed eagerness to share their stories and to have their stories shared with others who could both learn and heal from them. Patterson, Howard, and Kinloch (2016a) explain that as Black women, ‘By being accountable to one another and providing the safe space to tell our truths, we develop more fully human, less objectified selves’ (48). In pursuit of these aims, the author entered this study with the following research questions:

. How do Black girls who are (statistical) minorities in their schools experience schooling?

. How do Black girls resist marginalization in the context of their schooling experiences?

. How do Black girls experience community and intersectionality within school?

Setting and context

This research study is connected to a long history between the author and the Apple Valley School District in which each of the participants is a student. Apple Valley is a K-12 public school district located in the suburbs of a large northeastern city in the U.S. The district serves students from mul- tiple surrounding towns that are, for the most part, economically and racially distinct, making Apple

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Valley’s student population one of the more racially and socioeconomically diverse in the area while still remaining predominantly White and middle class. The Apple Valley School District consists of multiple elementary schools, middle schools, and high schools. Having grown up in one of the towns that Apple Valley serves, the author spent 13 years as a student in the district and later spent 8 years as a teacher there. For the majority of the time the author spent as a teacher in one of Apple Valley’s high schools, she was one of 3 Black teachers and 1 of 8 non-White teachers in a faculty of approxi- mately 100, serving a student body of nearly 1400 students. 64% of the student body is identified as White and 36% as students of color, including Black (16%); Asian (13.5%); ‘Hispanic’ (7%); two or more races (2%); and American Indian (.4%). Socioeconomically, 19% of the student body qualifies for free or reduced lunch.3

In addition to being underrepresented in the racial makeup of the faculty, the experiences of stu- dents of color in Apple Valley High also follow national trends regarding overrepresentation in exclusionary discipline (Kupchik and Catlaw 2015). According to the U.S. Department of Edu- cation’s Civil Rights Data Collection,4 in 2015, students of color comprised 36% of Apple Valley High School’s student body and 69.3% of the students placed in ISS (In School Suspension). While Black students comprised 13.5% of the student population that year, they made up 38.5% of the students placed in ISS. In that same year, 100% of the students placed in OSS (Out of School Suspension) were students of color. Phrased differently, of the 37 students who received OSS that year, zero of those students were White.

During a previous study, the author conducted an interview with a Black female college student who had previously attended Apple Valley High. During the interview, the student explained that she ‘never felt comfortable’ in the school district, and that, ‘No one wants to be Black at that school.’ She said that the day she graduated she felt, ‘Finally free.’ In her time as a teacher at Apple Valley High, the author encountered many Black female students who shared similar experiences. Inspired by these stories as well as her own, the author sought to examine how Black girls develop strategies for survival and resistance in this predominantly White school as well as the outcomes of these strategies.

Sample

Based on the aforementioned theories and experiences, and with the assistance of former students, the author organized a group of 7 research participants who were all Black girls in the same senior class at Apple Valley High. This group consisted of Aaliyah, described in the introduction, Layla, Lillian, Jasmine, Kerry, Marissa, and Monica. 4 of these 7 participants had been former students of the author; two of the participants were introduced to the author through the research project; and one of the participants was familiar with the author through school interactions, including hav- ing a sibling who was a former student of the author. All 7 of these girls had been students in the district since elementary school, and many had been friends or had known each other for just as long. When prompted by the researcher, all 7 of the girls self-identified as ‘middle’ or ‘upper middle class’ and were 17 years old at the time of the study, with the exception of Aaliyah, who was 16. The criteria for participation in the project were being in the 12th grade class of Apple Valley High, iden- tifying as Black and female, and having a history of engaging in activist-oriented practices in or out of school. The sample size was intentionally small in order to preserve intimacy and rapport within the group.

Methods

For this study, the author conducted and audio-recorded an initial semi-structured focus group interview; 7 individual semi-structured interviews with each of the participants, and a final fol- low-up focus group interview. The purpose of the two focus group interviews was to elicit more in-depth responses from the interactions between the participants and their stories than the

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individual interviews alone may yield as well as to provide a space in which the participants could learn from and with each other, perhaps finding some healing through listening to each other’s stor- ies. Additionally, the focus group structure can disrupt the potential ‘hierarchical relationship’ that may arise in individual interviews (Creswell 2007). The interview questions asked about the girls’ experiences in school, engagement in digital and social media, experiences with mentorship and community, and development as a Black female within and outside of the school community. Each interview was approximately one hour long and took place over the course of several weeks at the community library after school.

The interviews were transcribed and first categorized through open-coding and subsequently through axial coding (Creswell 2007). Initial emerging themes included the girls’ sociopolitical devel- opment, experience of microaggressions and negative perceptions of Black people in school, and painful encounters with adults and peers in school. In this article, the author focuses on the partici- pants’ development of critical consciousness and the ways in which their school community responded to this development.

Results

Critical consciousness

Brazilian philosopher and educator Paolo Freire (2000) defined oppression as the act of dehumaniz- ing others; he described resistance to this oppression as critical consciousness, or the process of becoming ‘more fully human’ (44). In other words, as one gains critical consciousness, she resists dehumanization and, in doing so, works towards the full humanity of all. The process of developing critical consciousness involves both ‘reflection and action upon the world in order to transform it’ (Freire 2000, 51). Based on the narratives of the 7 participants interviewed, the author found that over the course of their time spent in high school, each of the girls developed characteristics of the stages of critical consciousness as outlined by Watts and Hipolito-Delgado (2015). These include critical social analysis, collective identification, political self-efficacy, and sociopolitical action. These stages took on particular forms and meanings for the participants who experienced this conscious- ness development at the intersections of Blackness, femininity, and adolescence. Simultaneously, the girls’ development in the latter two stages, political self-efficacy and sociopolitical action, were sig- nificantly limited by the response of the school community. The sections below discuss how the par- ticipants exhibited stages of critical consciousness development as expressed through their individual and collective narratives.

Critical social analysis/reflection

Critical social analysis, or critical reflection, is defined by Watts and Hipolito-Delgado (2015) as a ‘recognition of social inequalities and understanding of the unjust exercise of sociopolitical power that creates them’ (849). This involves an analysis of inequity that moves beyond individual acts of discrimination and reflects on the structures that institutionalize and perpetuate oppression. Criti- cal social analysis provides individuals with ways in which to understand their experiences as sub- jects of oppression as well as a means to begin to take action against this oppression.

For the students involved in this study, the development of critical social analysis occurred over time and as a direct result of exposure to social issues and social media. The girls each applied their developing understandings of their social and cultural worlds to their experiences and observations in school, resulting in moments of critical reflection. One example of the participants’ critical social analysis regarding school can be seen in the following example in which Layla shared some of her experiences in school:

An administrator and some students have told me that I was just as bad as White supremacists. There’s never been enough done in this district to acknowledge Black history. I’ve heard teachers say that they don’t even care

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what day it is as long as they don’t have to come in, in reference to Martin Luther King Day. I’ve been told that stereotypes can be a good thing, that Klan members can still be good people. A teacher of mine agreed with students who said that racist memes weren’t that bad, only in bad taste …

Black people are constantly monitored while going through the hallway and often get more severe punishments for first and second time offenses … . People are allowed to wear ‘Blue Lives Matter’ and ‘MAGA’ [Make Amer- ica Great Again] apparel to school, but someone was told to change out of a ‘BLM’ [Black Lives Matter] shirt on the day of the [Black History Month] assembly. Somehow the faculty of a predominantly White school … think it’s their place to tell people of color how to feel. The history department continues to paint Martin Luther King as an … ally to liberal white folk and Malcolm X as a radical terrorist, which is micro-aggressive, as he was not only black, but Muslim.

In this response, Layla offers multiple critiques of practices within the school that she finds inequi- table and oppressive, including the policing of political clothing only when it is worn by students of color; increased monitoring and discipline of students of color; an absence of Black history edu- cation; a disregarding of Black trauma; and a devaluing of the identities and experiences of students of color. Additionally, Layla expresses an awareness that these issues are embedded in school struc- tures such as pedagogy, curriculum, and discipline.

As Layla shared the above response, the other participants nodded along and expressed similar experiences with microaggressions and structural inequality within school. They then recounted the moments and processes by which their critical social analysis developed. In her one-on-one inter- view with the author, Aaliyah discussed the challenge of developing socio-politically while simul- taneously developing adolescent identities:

I mean there’s also a possibility when you’re young it’s like even more intensified because you have all these feelings and you can’t name them. And at first it just really overwhelmed me; I was angry all the time, and then I just – it became more regular I guess, sort of like when all that stuff was happening with police brutality, sort of like grieving people that you don’t know sort of like does something to you, not in a good or bad way, it just changes you in a certain way because you’re looking at the world differently and once that happens so many times and dealing with the sadness of no repercussions happening and coming to school and having teachers wearing Blue Lives Matters shirts and stuff like that during educational events and just being in school and hav- ing someone wear confederate stuff and them not being yelled at … it felt very enclosing but now … I’m able to compartmentalize more.

Aaliyah’s statement, ‘It just changes you in a certain way because you’re looking at the world differ- ently,’ reflects the permanence of critical social analysis as well as the stages of this development as she experienced it, including connecting societal inequality with her schooling experiences, feeling anger and sadness, and finding strategies for withstanding these emotions by ‘compartmentaliz[ing].’

Like Aaliyah, Monica’s critical development also included feelings of sadness and anger and was similarly triggered by the recognition of systemic racism in the criminal justice system. This recog- nition began with the death of Trayvon Martin:

I was 12 or 13 when I first heard about what happened to Trayvon Martin; I was like, ‘Wow, this is really sad, blah, blah, blah,’ but I was like, ‘But he’s going to get justice at the end of the day, like this guy is going to jail, whatever,’ and then when I heard the verdict that he was going to go off scot-free I was like crying for hours and I just really didn’t understand before then like what it was really like to be Black I guess … . after that I was just angry a lot and I was like, ‘How could they just let this guy walk free after taking an innocent life?’ and … ‘Does this happen often?’ … I was just so confused … . and then as I got older I started to see it happen – well I looked back and I saw what happened with Rodney King and we learned about Emmett Till in school and … I really didn’t fully understand until I saw it like when I was living in a time where that happened.

For Monica, it was not Trayvon Martin’s death, but the verdict that allowed Zimmerman to ‘go off scot-free’ that led to her critical reflection on ‘what it was really like to be Black.’ In addition to Tray- von Martin, Emmet Till, and Rodney King, Monica also discussed the police killings of Sandra Bland and Philando Castile. She responded to the news of these events with both confusion and anger, wrestling with the contradiction between the world as it was taught to her and the world as she saw it:

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I don’t know. It’s just – it still is beyond me that people – I can’t really wrap my head around it still, like how do people think that way- that that kind of behavior is okay? And then you know the people who kind of feed into it like, ‘He was a thug and he didn’t … .’ Girl, what?

For Monica, critical curiosity (Clark and Seider 2017) was an important part of her social analysis. She sought answers to questions such as ‘How could they just let this guy walk free after taking an innocent life?’ and, ‘Does this happen often?’ as she ‘looked back’ and began to develop understand- ings of the history of structural and institutional racism. Additionally, Monica describes a developing recognition of the ways in which societal stereotypes impact individual attitudes and actions, stating, ‘And then you know the people who kind of feed into it like, “He was a thug.”’ Monica rejects these concepts while also recognizing the ways in which implicit bias disproportionately impacts the lives of Black people.

Aaliyah attributes much of her critical development to her engagement with social media, stating, ‘Twitter changed my life, because I feel like I got all the – like my beginnings of like hearing about social issues all started from Twitter.’ Aaliyah began her Twitter account as a fan account for a band that she liked. Over time, her followers developed Twitter identities that sparked Aaliyah’s critical curiosity. According to Aaliyah,

They were like all evolving and stuff, and they all just started talking about things, and I’m like, ‘What is this stuff?’ so it led me to like get more books and research more on my own to see more things. And I feel like honestly, I learned more from Twitter than I did- in terms of like social issues and like real events- than I did in school.

For Aaliyah, engagement in social media provided her with a scholarly community and sociopolitical education that she found lacking in her formal schooling. In spite of the challenge of independently developing critical awareness during adolescence, Aaliyah appreciated learning about social issues at a young age since she

was able to grapple with the realities of life as a Black girl in this century earlier and so I don’t have to figure that out in my 20s … I mean, it’s a long quest, but I have figured some of that stuff out and reached certain under- standings pretty young, which I wouldn’t have been able to do without social media.

Like Aaliyah, Layla also attributed much of her sociopolitical development to engagement with social media, stating,

I only joined Twitter in July, and already, like I’ve learned so much about like disabled people’s rights and like erasure of Native Americans, and like it’s such a short time, but like I’m a lot more educated on these things than I was.

Layla’s critical reflection extends beyond a recognition of racial inequity and addresses the oppres- sion of those from disabled and indigenous populations. Ultimately, through engagement with social media, she was able to connect the oppression and experiences of individual identity groups to a broader struggle for social justice and equity.

The examples provided in this section reflect some of the ways in which the girls individually came to critical understandings of society. This stage of critical social analysis impacted their indi- vidual identity development and shaped their subsequent actions and perspectives. However, this development was also impacted by the girls’ physical and conceptual connections to a larger com- munity of Black womanhood. The following section discusses how the girls’ collective identification impacted their schooling experiences and critical consciousness development.

Collective identification

According to Watts and Hipolito-Delgado (2015), collective identification ‘includes feelings of soli- darity, collective efficacy, and shared culture’ (849). This process involves forging positive and empowering definitions of one’s social identity and is ‘thought to inspire action or change, not only for oneself, but also for the betterment of the collective’ (849). Collective identification is

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integral to the development of critical consciousness since it can foster critical reflection while build- ing fellowship between those who share a social identity. Collins (2009) discusses the significance of this fellowship when she writes of Black women, ‘If she is lucky enough to meet others who are undergoing similar journeys, she and they can change the world around them’ (xii). For the partici- pants in this study, finding themselves within a community of Black girlhood both through social media and their school was an instrumental part of their critical consciousness development.

Many of the girls in this study described feeling isolated as a Black girl within a predominantly White school for much of their childhood and early adolescence. Finding solidarity with other Black girls was often described by the girls in contrast to these experiences of isolation. Aaliyah, for example, discussed the significance of finding ‘sisterhood’ and community with other Black girls in juxtaposition to her experiences with White friends:

I would go home and make all these jokes that like me and my sister and me and my cousin, like we all get, because we’re all Black, but then when it came to my [White] friends … they weren’t getting it … . I was getting frustrated, because I’m just like, ‘No one gets me,’ except for at home … . when I was like able to make more friends, like when I met Marissa and when I met Monica and I started getting closer with Layla and my [other] friend and stuff like that, it was sort of like almost therapeutic to like find people that get me and my little jokes … . It’s comforting.

Here, Aaliyah describes the cultural connection and emotional support that can be found in Black sisterhood, since they ‘get me and my little jokes.’ Not only does collective identification help Black girls in finding comfort and safety, but it can also help them to survive and navigate the oppres- sion they experience since, according to Aaliyah, ‘you’re able to be more light-hearted about tough things like racism in school when you have a group of Black girls that know what’s it like.’ This type of solidarity is critical for the emotional development of Black girls as it reassures them that their experiences of oppression are not unique to them and that there are others who share similar ideol- ogies and lenses of critical social analysis.

Monica came to this realization through finding like-minded people on Twitter who ‘have the same kind of mindset that I do and I’m just like, Wow, I really didn’t think that other people felt this way about certain things.’ Aaliyah also expressed feelings of ideological isolation before finding shared cultural and ideological communities on Twitter. According to Aaliyah, ‘It felt liber- ating to speak with people that it wasn’t weird to discuss certain things or to think certain things and just sort of let me be me in my own way.’ For Monica and Aaliyah, discovering that there were others like them was emotionally and critically sustaining.

As Layla explained, finding sisterhood through collective identification required a reevaluation of her existing friendships: ‘I still do have my white friends, but it’s different now … ‘cause they’ll never understand you the way that my Black friends do, and there’s nothing wrong with that, but it is what it is.’ While this distance may be more ideological than racial, as many of the other participants dis- cussed maintaining close friendships with students who are not Black but who share similar ideol- ogies and whom they see as allies, the girls all discussed the power of collective identification in building community and spaces for healing. This can be seen in the following excerpt from the first focus group interview:

Lillian There’s always gonna be like tensions between certain people, but we all share a similar story, and like if something happens, like, oh, it’s like it happened to me too. Like, I’m here for you-

Marissa -and we always just talk to each other about like our Black people issues – Lillian Yeah, and it’s just between – Marissa And it’s only between us, and it’s just great to have that community … just walking into my classes,

seeing like the people that I can confide in just about anything … . Aaliyah It’s comforting. It’s fun. It’s like you feel a sense of community. Like, our times like when we like –

we all have [the same] period off, so like –it’s a laugh every single day, and it’s just like my one period to like relax and like –

Lillian Be yourself. Aaliyah – be myself and sort of like let my hair down almost. I don’t know. I feel like that has been like the

biggest- like, what sisterhood looks like for me.

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Marissa Because I feel like if you don’t have like your black sisters in school, like you can’t really rely on anybody, really, to be like your like true, true friend.

This dialogue reveals the necessity for black girls’ collective identification in maintaining emotional health, developing critical analysis, and finding solidarity. Additionally, the ways in which the girls finish each other’s sentences reveals the shared cultures and experiences that foster this community of sisterhood.

Political self efficacy and sociopolitical action

Political self-efficacy is described by Watts and Hipolito-Delgado (2015) as ‘a growing sense of confi- dence or a motive to take action to improve one’s status in society’ (849). This includes ‘feeling capable of personal and community action’ in pursuit of social change (Watts and Hipolito-Delgado 2015, 849). Developing confidence in one’s own ability to create change is an essential stage in the development of critical consciousness since, ‘New ideas and perspectives alone do not lead directly to changes in the material world. It takes action in the form of strategic behavior to advance social lib- eration’ (Watts and Hipolito-Delgado 2015, 848). As defined by Watts and Hipolito-Delgado (2015), sociopolitical action is the ‘promotion of change in social and institutional policies or practices that maintain an inferior status for members of marginalized groups’ (850). Such strategic action has the potential to dismantle oppressive structures and create lasting change. For the participants, forms of action included ‘coming to voice’ (hooks 1994), writing poetry, leveraging positions of power, and using social media to raise awareness about racial injustice.

Resisting silence In their individual interviews, all 7 of the participants expressed the idea that social change is con- tingent upon individuals taking action. Jasmine, for example, said,

Whatever you can do to bring light to the situation, I guess because if you don’t bring light to it and you’re silent, it’s just gonna roll by and nothing’s gonna get done. It’s gonna be a cycle and it’s gonna keep on going.

Like Jasmine, each of the participants expressed some confidence and willingness towards taking action within their school communities by speaking out against injustices. Marissa expressed confi- dence in taking action when she described an incident that occurred during homecoming week at the high school. As a Black student and member of the mostly-White student government, Marissa had to decide whether or not to move forward with the spirit week theme of ‘Freedom Friday’ after receiving backlash from Black community, including parents, who took issue with the notion that to live in America is to be free. She decided to take action by changing the theme, stating, ‘I’m gonna do something about it … . I have to do something about it. I’m not gonna just allow these people to feel uncomfortable, especially when I’m like in charge.’ In this instance, collective identi- fication played a significant role in Marissa’s decisions, as devaluing the response of the Black com- munity would also signify a devaluing of her own identities. Kerry also decided to take action after the Freedom Friday incident, which she described as, ‘the straw on the camel’s back.’ In response to the racial tensions in the school community, Kerry wrote a poem which she later read during a school assembly:

The first line of the poem is until you realize that the same blood that courses through your veins was once mixed with the dust of plantations, spattered on the streets during protests, and dripping from a swinging rope hanging from a tree, you cannot understand the word freedom. Then it goes into sort of those reactions in the classroom … . I never expect you to understand. But when I tell you something, when I voice my opinion, I need it to be respected and I want it to be heard because it comes from such a large overwhelming experience of what it means to be a Black girl, especially in this district.

Kerry’s decision to share her experiences through poetry reflects how young people engage in forms of activism that are rooted in their literacy practices. At the same time, such engagement can lead to

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social and disciplinary repercussions within school, a reality made evident by the experiences of Layla and Aaliyah.

Youth activism and school discipline or a tale of two snapchats As hooks (1994) explains, students who are ‘unwilling to accept without question the assumptions and values held by privileged classes tend to be silenced, deemed troublemakers’ (179). Both Aaliyah and Layla came to this realization through their experiences with social media and school discipline. In discussing the Snapchat incident described in the introduction, Aaliyah explained that the first comment that one of the administrators made to her was about her course load, remarking that she was taking a ‘lot of good classes.’ For Aaliyah, who read this as, ‘almost like a cognitive disasso- ciation from like you vs. like the bad Black people, kind of thing,’ her sense of collective identification led her to feel insulted by the implications that this observation had for the school’s Black student community. However, her feeling of powerlessness led her to remain silent:

I was like, ‘Okay, I understand that I did something against school rules, but the way that you twisted that to pin me against other people that you view as bad is ridiculous and bad. I didn’t speak, because I just was like, ‘Well, this is gonna get me in more trouble,’ so I just sat there … . And the fact that like a matter of race was like on the table right here, right, and didn’t even think to call in the one Black administrator in the school or any sort of Black professional, like not even like, ‘Oh, let me like think about this and get like a second opinion … ’

During her junior year, Layla also looked to social media as a space to express her frustrations and perhaps educate her peers about social issues. In one instance, she used her Snapchat story to attempt to change how the school dealt with Black History Month:

I was fed up with the school’s lack of action at Black History Month, especially after the Trump presidency begins and like everything that was happening at the end of January, beginning of February was like the Muslim ban and all these other things. So I was angry, and so I decided on my story to do like a little spotlight thing for Black History Month every day, and so I talked about on one like different genres of Black music and like how liberating they were. I talked in one about like colorism. I talked about reverse racism as a concept that doesn’t exist … .

Layla’s actions in attempting to heighten other’s racial awareness through social media led to her being harassed by a group of students who accused her of racism and radicalism. Layla engaged in online exchanges with these students that escalated to the point where ‘someone actually posted on their story, “Cross me and see what happens.”’ During the focus group interview, Layla recalled,

I took all of that to administration, and they’re like, ‘Well, we’ve heard about the things you were saying, like, “I think only Black people should be able to say the N word,”’ this and that. ‘That’s kind of radical,’ this and that and whatever.

The following day, Layla and two of the students involved were placed into ISS for engaging in aggressive online exchanges. As Layla shared her story, many of the study participants interjected with corroborating commentary, including, ‘Yes, I remember that’ and ‘They were aggressive. I remember.’ During her individual interview, Layla described experiencing residual trauma from the harassment of the students and the response of administration.

For both Layla and Aaliyah, who initially viewed social media as a safe space to be and express themselves, Snapchat became a forum regulated by school surveillance on behalf of peers and admin- istrators who reinforced a ‘conspiracy of silence’ (Sue 2015) around race and identity and engaged in a form of silencing by subjecting them to exclusionary school discipline. Ironically, the use of Snap- chat as an ephemeral space for self-expression (Bayer et al. 2016) exacerbated, rather than alleviated, racial tensions in school. Kahne and Middaugh (2012) describe participatory politics as a framework through which young people can ‘gain independence from traditional keepers of information and political participation’ by introducing and sharing their narratives through social and digital net- works (53). They argue that educators can prepare young people for civic participation by engaging digital media literacies in their pedagogy and curriculum. Simultaneously, Kupchik and Catlaw

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(2015) reported that school suspension has a detrimental impact on young people’s future civic par- ticipation. They attribute this to the idea that, ‘civic participation is taught through democratic, inclusive educational climates that encourage participation’ and ‘suspension tends to reduce student participation and contribute to undemocratic, noninclusive school climates’ (117). Unsurprisingly, Kupchik and Catlaw (2015) also explained that since Black and Latinx youth are suspended at much higher rates than their peers, they ‘bear the brunt of this overall negative effect far more often than do white students’ (118). From these standpoints, both Snapchat incidents can be read as missed opportunities for the school to support the civic and sociopolitical development of its stu- dents by engaging in critical discussion of the ideologies and experiences that prompted the girls’ actions and the subsequent responses of their peers.

Kupchik and Catlaw’s (2015) findings are also supported by the fear that many of the participants expressed regarding the consequences of challenging racism in the school. Throughout the focus group and individual interviews, the participants often expressed feelings of racial battle fatigue, the ‘mental, emotional, and physical strain’ that can result from frequent encounters with racial microaggressions (Smith, Yosso, and Solórzano 2006, 300). Layla, for example, reported feeling tired of explaining issues of equity to people, and Marissa stated that ‘it gets tiring being Black, especially in school.’ According to Layla,

Even if you say something, it’s very hard to … challenge their worldview and change it. So I feel like it’s – not that it’s not worth trying, but it takes a lot of energy to do so, and [I] don’t really have that.

While Layla recognized the need to speak up in school, she also expressed fatigue as a consequence of doing so with very little impact. For these girls, being vocal about issues of race and equity in school was exhausting and, in many cases, led to their waning confidence in their own self-efficacy. This decrease in political self-efficacy was clearly expressed by Marissa:

I feel like maybe starting probably in tenth grade, I was like, ‘Okay, things need to change. I need to be the one to make the change.’ But now under this new presidential administration, I feel like people are more willing to say what they want to say and spew their hateful views. It’s kind of like no matter what I say, they don’t care, and they’re just stuck in their ways now, especially because of Trump and everything that he says. So, I feel like nothing I say matters, and nothing will sway their opinion.

Recognizing the context for the girls’ development and decrease in political self-efficacy is significant in understanding the actions that they did and did not take within school. It is also important in understanding the significance of the spaces that the girls did choose to express their ideas and iden- tities. Since having confidence in one’s ability to create change is a precursor to taking action in pur- suit of social change, the girls’ development of sociopolitical action is directly connected to their complex beliefs about safety and survival.

Silence as resistance As discussed previously, a lack of dialogue in school regarding the racial politics that impact the lives of its Black students led to Aaliyah and Layla’s taking action via social media. In addition to avoiding any concrete discussion of race after Aaliyah’s incident, the school’s administration took the opportunity during the following semester, in which the presidential election took place, to urge teachers and students at the school to avoid any discussion of the election unless it was directly related to academic curriculum. For the participants, this institutionalization of silence exacerbated their experiences of marginalization in school as well as their feelings of powerless- ness. Thus, lacking support from their school community and lacking strategic approaches to social action hindered their development of sociopolitical action. At the same time, however, the girls learned how to develop strategies for survival within this context and survival is in itself a form of activism. According to Collins (2009), Black women’s intersectional identities force them to develop, ‘collective actions within everyday life that challenge domination in these multifaceted domains’ (Collins 2009, 218). Patterson, Howard, and Kinloch (2016a) refer to these actions as

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‘everyday activism,’ that constitutes a form of Black female literacy. According to the authors, ‘this type of activism rebuffs traditional conceptions of activism as a public activity that adheres to a publically accepted definition. Our everyday activism occurs in both public and private spaces, in “official” and unofficial contexts, including inside educational institutions’ (Patterson, Howard, and Kinloch 2016a, 43). For the girls in this study, their development of sisterhood, sociopolitical awareness, and strategies for navigating their school environment expands on the tradition of Black women’s activism.

Collins (2009) explained that Black women’s activism exists in two forms, or ‘dimensions’: struggles for group survival and struggles for institutional transformation. The latter aligns with Watts and Hipolito-Delgado’s (2015) definition of sociopolitical action in that it entails, ‘efforts to change discriminatory policies and procedures of government, schools, the workplace, the media, stores, and other social institutions’ (Collins 2009, 219). The first dimension of Black women’s activism, group survival, ‘consists of actions taken to create Black female spheres of influence within existing social structures’ (Collins 2009, 219). Layla’s creation of a Black student group chat is one example of how she worked to create ‘spheres of influence’ within existing struc- tures. Another example of this form of action is Marissa’s involvement in student government and other school-based organizations. While maintaining this involvement often required Mar- issa to make her identities and ideologies less visible, they also helped her to gain power and access within school:

I have like things to do, so I just – I can’t – the way I present myself with them, it’s kind of fake, but I get by, and they love me, and but the problem is I’m like their token, and I know that, but I just – I do use it to my advan- tage, just to get by in school and just to like be invited to certain events or like you know what I mean? … Like, I have – I feel like I have to do it, and if I didn’t feel that way, I wouldn’t – I don’t know. Maybe I’d speak out more against things that they do, but I don’t, because I kind of like use my status to my advantage.

Here, Marissa describes a DuBoisian ‘double-consciousness’ or what Collins (2009) refers to as a ‘dual consciousness’ in which ‘Black women “become familiar with the language and manners of the oppressor, even sometimes adopting them for the illusion of protection” (Lorde 1984, 114), while hiding a self-defined standpoint from the prying eyes of dominant groups’ (107). Not only does this strategy help Marissa to succeed socially and academically, but it is also a form of subversive action that resists the oppressive practices of the institution by gaining access and power within it. Aaliyah describes this dual consciousness as an ‘in-between act’ that she learned to develop over time. While this consciousness is not explicitly taught, it is a result of their experiences as Black girls who have learned that navigating institutions is the only way to overcome them. For the par- ticipants, their ability to learn and navigate the structures of a racially isolating institution is an expression of everyday activism rooted in Black female epistemologies (Patterson, Howard, and Kin- loch 2016a).

Discussion/Implications

Social media as third space

The existence of social media as a liminal space, constantly (re)constructed through collective dia- logue and individuals’ digital practices, creates a type of ‘Third Space’ (Gutiérrez 2008) in which digi- tal platform users and media content reciprocally shape and are shaped by each other. Gutiérrez (2008) refers to the Third Space as an environment ‘in which students begin to reconceive who they are and what they might be able to accomplish’ (148). Aaen and Dalsgaard (2016) explain, ‘third spaces emerge from a need for discourses that cannot take place within existing settings’ (162). This points to the ways in which learning takes places outside of school while also being informed by school. For the participants in this study, involvement in digital and social media pro- vided them with an alternative curriculum through which they could access language, perspectives, communities, and dialogues not available to them in school.

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Schools as sites of disruption

Since classrooms offer ‘the most radical space of possibility’ (hooks 1994), it is within classrooms that the seeds of social transformation must be cultivated. The narratives of the participants in this study contribute to developing research and praxis on educational equity, especially pertaining to the most marginalized youth in schools. Within their school environment, the girls in this study sought sup- port from peers and adults in understanding, healing from, and responding to the racial microag- gressions they faced daily as well as the violence against Black bodies that they viewed in history and in contemporary media. Lacking such school-based support, these girls developed their own strategies of action, many of which resulted in their being silenced and isolated. Baker-Bell, Stan- brough, and Everett (2017) remind us of the responsibility of critical educators to ‘equip teachers with transformative tools that work toward healing Black youth and supporting them in speaking back to and against racial violence’ (138). Within the participants’ experiences, many of the adults they encountered in school read the girls’ objections as behavioral challenges rather than critical resistance or social justice actions.

This study pushes teachers and teacher educators to develop new classroom practices to support the social, emotional, critical and academic development of Black girls as well as all students, since, ‘If we focus on excellent educational pedagogies for Black women and girls, given their distinct oppres- sive histories, then Black women lay the foundation for advancing education for all’ (Muhammad and Haddix 2016, 300). Future research should investigate what schools are successfully doing to foster critical consciousness amongst young people and how such schools cultivate environments of safety and support for students of color, especially Black girls.

Black feminist epistemologies as resistance

Patterson et al. (2016b) explain, ‘The evolution from knowledge to resistant action is essential to black feminism’ (58). The girls in this study learned from and with each other how to navigate the institution of school and find ways to resist oppressive practices within it, creating frameworks for resistance within spaces that attempted to marginalize and exclude them. Morris (2016) wrote, ‘Every girl is unique … understanding widely shared experiences connected to structural forces big- ger than us would go a long way toward supporting the success and education of Black girls’ (86). While the narratives captured in this study by no means reflect the entirety of the experiences of Black girls in predominantly White schools, their testimonies allow for a more complex understand- ing of how young people develop socio-politically and how school communities can support or limit this development. Thus, research and practice involving young people’s social development and acti- vism must take into account Black feminist epistemologies and the ways in which Black girls may engage in ‘everyday activism’ that often goes unrecognized as a form of critical resistance.

Notes

1. Pseudonyms are used for all people and places referenced in this study. 2. As explained by (Souto-Manning and Winn 2017), the term ‘minoritized more accurately conveys the power

relations and processes by which certain groups are socially, economically, and politically marginalized within the larger society’ (xviii).

3. Data retrieved from 2015 U.S. News and World Report. 4. Data retrieved from Civil Rights Data Collection: https://ocrdata.ed.gov/

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

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Notes on contributor

Lauren Leigh Kelly is an assistant professor of urban teacher education at Rutgers University Graduate School of Edu- cation. She taught high school English for 10 years in New York. Kelly’s research is focused on critical hip-hop litera- cies, critical consciousness development, Black feminist theory, and culturally responsive pedagogy.

ORCID

Lauren Leigh Kelly http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9002-1360

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