Flipping the Script: The Dangerous Bodies of Girls of Color

Introduction

As a Black girl who grew up in the 1990s, girlhood back then was portrayed in mainstream novels and popular media as a state of oppression and subjugation as well as a coming to voice stage; a stage of asserting one’s right to exist and to be recognized as fully human. Today, there appears to be a shift in popular media with girls being represented as active agents in their own lives, moving from villains to heroines, princesses to bosses, and from helpless victims to capable athletes. Girlhood is being redefined as a stage of fortitude and active voice. Nonetheless, being left out of these conversations of girlhood as an identity and rite of passage are girls of color, especially girls from lower income and working-class families. Girlhood is a designation and theorization grounded in Eurocentric Western White middle-class understandings of what it means to be a girl and woman in a White male patriarchal society. This article brings girls of color into the conversation about girlhood as a potential epoch of self-empowerment and agency, such as naming one’s own reality, speaking truth to power, and embracing ways of knowing the social world by young women and women of color. Specifically, the shared reality of experiencing schooling as a Black girl and/or girl of color is exposed through the research process.

Our (the girl participants and I) research perspective emerged after extensive conversations on how school discipline policies affect girls in New York schools. Research reveals that students of color, in particular African American males and females and those identified with a disability, are suspended and expelled at higher rates than their White peers for the same kind of behaviors at school (American Civil Liberties Union [ACLU], 2008). Here, we posit that underresourced schools that serve mainly racial/ethnic minority students systematically and politically (i.e., for social control purposes) embrace high police presence and intervention as well as zero tolerance policies.

Through personal reflections, youth researchers came to the conclusion that African American girls are certainly impacted more than any other girls by zero tolerance policies in school contexts. According to the African American policy forum (Crenshaw, Ocen, & Nanda, 2015), Black girls across the United States are suspended 6 times more often than White girls. By comparison, Black boys are suspended 3 times more often than White boys are. In contrast, only 2% of White females were subjected to exclusionary suspensions, compared with 12% of Black girls. In New York City, where this youth-led study was conducted, during the 2011-2012 school year, 90% of all the girls subjected to expulsion were Black (Crenshaw et al., 2015). Surprisingly, Black girls with an identified disability are suspended at higher rates (22.5%) than White and Latino males with a disability (Office of Civil Rights [OCR], 2014). As it relates to the school-to-prison pipeline, Black girls receive more severe sentences when they enter the juvenile justice system than do members of any other group of girls, and they are the fastest growing population in the system (Crenshaw et al., 2015; Morris, 2016).

With the above recent social patterns in mind, I posit that the research process is a valuable educational experience that can serve to combat racist and sexist school practices, which serve to watch, contain, and monitor female bodies of color. Sharing the process of our youth participatory action research (YPAR) project can help to unveil the ways in which schools are reflective of prison culture and girls of color respond to being treated like potential prisoners and the imprisoned. Despite a growing body of knowledge on how racial/ethnic minorities endure racially hostile school conditions and how girls cope with sexist school environments, more research is definitely needed on how young women of color cope with and resist oppressive school conditions. The girls and I decided that the objective of sharing the results of the study is to expose how school policies and actions discipline the bodies of girls of color.

In this article, I introduce a participatory action research (PAR) project conducted by young women of color, being schooled in New York, who studied their schools’ environment and other girls’ experiences of what they refer to as “harsh discipline policies” in schools from an intersectional perspective. Through reflection and dialogue, the girl researchers magnify the relationship between the research process, self- and community empowerment. Using youth-led PAR as the mode of inquiry, analysis of the data included the following questions:

The next section provides a brief overview of the theoretical framework the girl researchers adopted in the initial study.

Girls in the Know: Radical Black Feminism

Radical Black feminism was the guiding framework for the YPAR project designed and implemented by the youth of Sisters in Strength (SIS). Radical Black feminism highlights the role of hegemonic state policies and practices in racial and gender violence, and thus can inform research concerned with the relationship between race, gender, and state-sanctioned violence. Black feminist scholar Joy James (1996) articulates that “Greater obedience is demanded from those whose physical difference marks them as aberrational, offensive and threatening” (p. 26). Crenshaw (2012) contends that state institutions function to control the bodies of women of color to reproduce social inequalities. Black radical feminism is a useful theoretical tool for unmasking the multifarious ways schools attempt to demand obedience from Black young women and other girls of color from marginalized groups (e.g., language and religious minorities).

As a Black feminist girlhood scholar, I view YPAR with girls of color as a form of resistance to punitive school policies. A significant aspect of feminist research is “studying up” (Nader, 1972), or stated differently, as the oppressed studying power, institutions, policies, and practices (Harding & Norberg, 2005) from the bottom up. With PAR, young women of color expose the power relationships in schools that shape girls’ realities, perceptions, and behaviors and the ways in which Black girls push back against abusive power. From a Black feminist standpoint, research theory is not separate from praxis nor is it separate from the cultural understandings and expressions of Black girls and other non-White girls.

As a part of the SIS program, youth were introduced to the concept of Black feminism(s) as a conceptual framework representative of ideas and actions that center the collective experiences and insights of Black women. The excerpt below is from a journal reflection by Aalimah, a 16-year-old Muslim American girl researcher. We see in the reflection that she is becoming more conscious of how her experiences align with the experiences of other girls of color.

Many of us don’t know what we deserve because for most of our lives, we’ve been treated as less than human—both in schools and out of schools. So when I learned about the natural human rights I was deprived of, like the ability to speak out about injustices and inequality, I knew I had to take action to teach other girls who have been through similar obstacles. (Aalimah, journal reflection, March 2016)

Embedded in the conceptualization of Black feminism, as a critical social theory, is a commitment to a critique and transformation of society with Black girls and women in mind. Along these same lines, a prerequisite of research with, and on behalf of, Black girls should cultivate new or alternative ways of thinking and behaving as both schoolgirls and social actors for themselves.

Black feminism in YPAR helps bolster and encourage research on resilience and resiliency-fostering factors in the lives of Black girls, while helping us to consider how historical and current sociocultural factors impact girls’ lives (Evans-Winters, 2011). Methodologically, Black feminist/womanist research places Black women at the center of research and analysis by viewing Black girls and other marginalized girls as active participants in the research process (and not mere objects to be studied). Thus, the girls and adult community leaders in the YPAR project presented here conceptualized the research problem, set of questions, and methods.

As for my role in the study, I collaborated with the youth researchers as a Black girl/woman/mother/scholar activist interested in the overall education and emotional development of girls and women of color. The primary role I held was to introduce the youth researchers to the academic literature on issues related to the topic such as school resilience, school push-out factors, and so on. Even more specific to this discussion on the use of YPAR, my role as the “principal investigator” was to assist the girl researchers in articulating and presenting their research to audiences outside of their organization. ³ In preparation for presentation, I introduced the girl researchers to (a) the traditional research report outline typically used by scholars for publication or presentation, (b) standard research terms (i.e., theoretical framework, methodology, data analysis, coding, etc.) commonly used in most academic texts, and (c) processes of research and reflection in qualitative research paradigms such as PAR and reflexivity. Some of these conversations took place face-to-face, whereas others occurred in conference calls or Skype. It is worthwhile to note here that the youth researchers reported that the most difficult aspect of engaging in YPAR (from a Black feminist lens) was my constant encouragement for them to engage in ongoing reflection and develop the most gender- and culturally relevant ways for presenting their research discoveries.

Methodology of YPAR

We used a transdisciplinary approach to research gender and zero tolerance disciplinary policies in schools. As explained by Pratt-Clarke (2010), transdisciplinarity in Black feminist research is “the use of multiple theories, methods, approaches, frameworks, and disciplines to understand, strategize, and implement transformative initiatives in society” (p. 19). We believe that PAR offers the opportunity to draw from multiple theories (e.g., critical social theory, postmodernism, critical pedagogy, etc.), methodologies (i.e., critical ethnography, qualitative, quantitative, etc.), and theoretical frameworks (i.e., Black feminism, critical race feminism, and critical race theory) for understanding the multiple identities (i.e., girl, African/Latina/Native, poor/working class, student, etc.) and positionalities that girls of color draw upon to navigate often oppressive school environments.

To begin to understand gender-related school push-out factors and other effects of zero tolerance policies, the data collection procedures involved a mix-method design. Qualitative data were collected from two focus groups: One group consisted of four parents with children enrolled in a New York City public school, and another group consisted of four school administrators. According to the youth researchers, the purpose of focus groups was to ascertain adults’ perspectives on the objective, fairness, and effectiveness of school discipline policies. Qualitative data also consisted of one-on-one interviews with public school students, school “safety officers,” and school administrators. SIS researchers informed individuals of their research study, and asked adults and students whether they would be willing to be interviewed. Some adults chose not to be interviewed whereas others volunteered. All students participated.

The purpose of the interviews served to document different school groups’ perspectives and experiences with school discipline. Quantitative data collection consisted of 390 students, teachers, and parents who are a part of a large public school community in a metropolitan area. These data gathered information on demographics of research participants, such as gender, year in school, and other identifying information including relationship to school (i.e., parent, administrator, etc.).

All data were collected by youth researchers/organizers enrolled in the SIS program at Girls for Gender Equity (GGE). SIS is a youth organizing program for young women of color. The young women described in this discussion participated in SIS as organizers and youth researchers, and they all were students in New York schools at the time of the original study. Majority of SIS’s participants self-identify as Black/African American, and others identified as Latina, Asian, or Multiracial. Most youth participants identified as “straight,” but sexual identity varied in the group. Youth selected their own gender pronouns for the study. The data collected serve to inform GGE participants, school officials, and the community about girls’ experiences with harsh discipline and punishment inside of schools. Analysis by youth researchers concludes that girls of color are harassed at school and punished for not conforming to White middle-class norms.

During the write-up and presentation part of the PAR process, youth researchers were asked to participate in the interpretation of data, which included girl researchers’ reflections of their observations in the field, their insights on the climate of their schools, and the research process itself. Based on these reflections and descriptions, the youth team identified patterns of discipline policies and practices (i.e., behaviors or attitudes). The purpose of this article is to share how the youth researchers articulated and contextualized their own and other research participants’ experiences in school with harsh discipline.

Youth researchers’ reflections suggest that schools are “policing” girls’ bodies and penalizing them for not conforming to adults’ and the dominating culture’s standards of beauty and femininity. Also, the youth research team concluded that zero tolerance school policies are “harsh discipline.” These harsh discipline policies are forms of sexual harassment and gender violence. Particularly, the following major themes emerged from the data and will be discussed in the next section: (a) Girls of color are viewed as dangerous, and (b) Hidden curriculum (or hidden discrimination) prohibits self-expression.

Dangerous Bodies: Girls of Color Expose Harsh Discipline

Through self-reflection and the research process, the girl researchers concluded that school officials viewed girls of color as a threat to the school environment itself. In particular, the girls reported that they were targeted for their style of dress, their hair, and their attitude or character. In the words of the girls, they are viewed as “Dangerous Bodies.” As non-White people, they are perceived as inherently violent; as nonwealthy youth, they are viewed as in need of discipline and control; and as girls of color, they are believed to be lacking morals and values. Thus, the body of a Black or Brown girl is seen as simultaneously an inherent threat to school officials and other students as well as a threat to her own safety and well-being.

Furthermore, an image titled “Nigga” (see Figure 1) is representative of how Destiny, a 15-year-old girl researcher, felt that school officials viewed Black girls. She drew the image when asked to reflect on her experiences in school. Destiny drew a jail and a high school adjacent to each other, with her own image centered between the two buildings. Although she depicted herself as “lady-like, ⁴ ” as evidenced with her in a dress, shouldering a purse, and sporting nicely kempt flowing curls, she writes the letters “N-I-G-G-A,” which hangs over her schoolgirl body.

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Figure 1.

Nigga by Destiny.

She explained that jail and high school are nearly synonymous, and the pathway to prison is made easier via discipline practices in her school. Because the school views her as a danger to herself and others around her (i.e., boys, men, teachers, etc.), the school offers her little solace (hence, her standing outside the school building). The school only offers girls like her more discipline and punishment. According to Destiny, the word “Nigga” represents her belief that school officials view her as less than a human being, nonintelligent, and mere property, thus not worthy of an adequate education.

Since slavery, Black girls and women have been perceived and depicted as lascivious, mannish, and stoic (or the superwoman). As Mia, a 16-year-old researcher stated, “Society has these stereotypes, and like, it’s going to be hard to make these stereotypes go away.” Based on the girl researchers’ feedback, these stereotypes influence their treatment by school personnel. For instance, several girls informed me that school personnel “judge us based on how we choose to express ourselves.”

School officials bastardize urban girl culture. As LaShonda, a 17-year-old girl researcher, stated, “How I wear my hair has nothing to do with how smart I am. I like to do hair and I like getting paid to do other people’s hair.” She further explained, “I like to get my nails done. And, I like my nails long. That doesn’t make me a slut or not smart.” A different girl researcher named Destiny agreed with LaShonda when I asked them to share with me their reflections on their findings, “They just don’t like our culture.” Girls of color forms of expression in schools are determined not to be “lady-like” and “ghetto,” to use the words my copresenters used as we prepared to present our data. The following is a journal reflection titled “Hidden Discrimination” by Destiny who explained why Black girl culture is marginalized.

While I was in middle school the policy was for us not to wear dark colored nail polish and tips. Because they felt in was street wear (ghetto) and unprofessional. They only didn’t allow it because mainly African American kids wear them and they tried to do whatever they can to prohibit blacks from expressing themselves.

From these experiences, the girl researchers were highly aware of the doubly entangled situation in which girls of color were disciplined as girls, non-White girls, and poor girls. School policies judge girls’ attire and attempt to dictate how they dress (i.e., no shorts, tight fitted clothes, or shirts without sleeves were permitted in school). The following image expresses Destiny’s reflection on school officials policing her attire, in which she writes, “I hate having to cover myself, so that boys can focus; That’s stupid!”

According to the girl researchers, in essence, girls are blamed for how those of the opposite gender may perceive or respond to their bodies. In other words, instead of school personnel protecting girls against sexual harassment and sexual assault, Black girls themselves are blamed for potential or actual harassment. I learned in dialogue with the coresearchers that Black girls are punished when they do respond to and push back against sexual harassment. In other words, the girls are accused of being the aggressor. As the girl researchers report, Black girls are perceived as less than “lady-like” because they may not dress or respond to sexual harassment in the ways that White middle-class girls do. Oxymoronically, Aalimah, a Muslim youth researcher of Asian descent, described in a videography ⁵ how she is gawked at by school officials and some of her peers, “not for not being covered, but for being too covered up” (emphasis added), while wearing her hijab and not fitting into White notions of femininity.

As seen in Figure 2 created by Destiny, the girl character resisted being forcibly covered. In the background box of the first drawing, the girl character is content, showing her arms and cleavage, whereas the middle character is discontent and covered up with a jacket. In the girl character drawn outside of the box, the girl in the picture is asserting her right to dress openly. In fact, she shows defiance by drawing a thumb down and writes, “That’s stupid!” Her art (as research artifact) unveils a sense of agency and resistance to school discipline policies that aim to shame the Black girls’ body. The girl researchers explained to me that Black girls are naturally “thicker” than White girls and develop breasts, hips, and buttocks earlier than most White middle-class girls. They continued that school officials see their “thick” bodies as sexually lewd and shame them for something not in their control.

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Figure 2.

Policing girls’ dress and attire.

Historically, Black girls and women were often thought to be innately emotionally strong and unbreakable; therefore, they were robbed of the privilege to show a variety of human emotions (Beauboeuf-Lafontant, 2009; Harris-Perry, 2013). Ironically, many girl researchers revealed that they felt many emotions when confronted by microracial (and macroracial) aggressions. The girls reported that they felt vulnerable, sad, enraged, and embarrassed at times. Many of these emotional responses resulted in girls’ feeling psychologically disconnected from schooling. The comments also excerpted from the videography as written below captured youth participants’ emotional responses. The youth participants were asked how they feel about their treatment at school. The high-school-aged girl participants responded, “It causes me to want to really shut down and not want to be there,” and “It makes me feel misunderstood and I’m very cautious now of what I do in school, because I know if I say something it will be taken to the extreme.”

The girl researchers concluded that policing girls’ bodies was a method used to deny and strip them of their cultural identity. For example, Roxanne (age unknown) shared an occurrence at school in both her journal reflection and videography when she was required to take her hair down to show school police officials manning the metal detector that her hair was safe from weapons. In Roxanne’s words,

In school I have to go through metal detectors, so anything that disturbs that or makes it go off is told to be taken off. There was a time I had my hair wrapped with bobby pins and it caused the machine to go off. I was told to remove the pins from my hair but I refused. I was threatened by being told that my parent was going to be called but I didn’t care. The safety agents made it seem like I was doing something wrong or as if my hair being wrapped was “dangerous.” I was pissed and I am fed up with them making such a big deal over things that are so minor.

Roxanne’s experience exemplifies a gender-specific form of policing the adolescent body. The metal detector and the presence of “safety agents” all serve as state apparatuses to control her body. Clearly, Roxanne viewed it frivolous for safety agents to be concerned with bobby pins, but I believe she found it even as egregious for the safety agents to require her to unwrap her hair after taking the time to wrap it in the first place.

As girl researchers and I playfully discussed, the safety agents did not consider the time and skill to style Black girls’ hair. Similarly, the agents failed to acknowledge the cultural meaning of hair, and possibly the shame associated with one’s hair being “messed up.” To make her undo her hair in front of an audience was a form of shaming. The officers’ overall actions and the surveillance procedures became a gender and racial assault on the Black girls’ body. Unfortunately, when girls question and resist authority at school, as Roxanne did in her story, they are then threatened and punished for their unacceptable responses.

Finally, scholars assert that girls’ cultural background (Lee, 2007) and where they live (Kinloch, 2009; Love, 2012) are important to students’ identity. Thus, it is important for educators to respect the multiple identities of girls of color (e.g., girl, African American, Latina, student, etc.). In closing, to navigate hostile school environments, girls learned to fight back with words, resist by ignoring school rules and personnel, or shut down emotionally/psychologically. Engagement in YPAR and participation in a community organization equipped many of the girls in this study with more positive tools for fighting oppressive school conditions.

However, many girls do not have the support necessary to cope with and resist hostile school environments, as reflected in the image above from a young participant’s journal entry (see Figure 3). The girl researcher asks teachers to become more empathetic and aware of social issues impacting students of color, and to end practices that eventually lead to students coming in contact with the criminal justice system.

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Figure 3.

White privilege by Maxine.

This YPAR project with girls of color revealed what many girls already suspected, which is that zero tolerance school policies are harsh on girls of color. These harsh discipline policies (a) impact the schooling experiences of both girls and boys of color, (b) indicate that students are consistently policed in public schools, and (c) show that there are gendered forms of violence that are unique to girls of color. Stated differently, policing is demonstrated in racialized and gendered ways. As an example of racialized and gendered policing and punishing, this study found that young women were more likely than their male peers to report being sent home for violating the school’s dress code.

Another significant discovery as it relates to racialized and gendered policing is that there was no support in place in schools for girls who engage in self-defense against sexual harassment. Girls reported being punished (e.g., verbally reprimanded, given in-school suspension, or sent home) for responding back to harassment aggressively (i.e., profanity, hitting, and/or insubordination). In addition, school officials failed to notify victims of sexual harassment of their rights.

(Re)Writing the Script: Girls of Color in the Public Imagination

Traditionally, young women of color were entirely left out of the public discourse on community or school-based violence. Therefore, initially I found it interesting that in personal communication and in review of research artifacts that the youth researchers described themselves (from the gaze of the other) as dangerous bodies. The girl researchers even titled a recent National Women’s Studies Association (NWSA) presentation, “Dangerous Bodies: Girls of Color and Harsh Discipline.” They argued that school officials perceive their very presence as a danger to the learning environment. Notwithstanding my own shortsighted understanding of dangerous, I have come to recognize that the use of the term dangerous bodies simultaneously describes the vulnerability and subjectivity of girls of color as they navigate oppressive school environments.

Today, in the era of “Black Lives Matter,” experiences of young women of color are overshadowed by that of Black boys and racial politics. The intersectionality of racial oppression, gender denomination, and class oppression is overly complex for media sound bites. However, through ongoing reflection and community engagement, the girl researchers learned to assert their right to take up space in the public imagination and discourse.

Similar to the narratives of Dangerous Minds ⁶ and Endangered Species, ⁷ the narrative dangerous bodies becomes script as it plays out in the daily lives of girls of color via state and local school zero tolerance policies that serve to surveil, discipline, and punish young women’s bodies. Yet, through the research process, girls of color rewrite the dangerous body narrative that attempts to be engraved in their minds and on their bodies. Through research as performance and art, the youth researchers (a) expose that their body is scripted upon by society (i.e., racialized gender narratives of dangerous), then (b) unscript their bodies (i.e., empowerment through the telling of their stories in the research process), and simultaneously (c) rewrite the scripts of their lives (i.e., research presentations as texts and performance).

In Black vernacular, the girl researchers “flipped the script” on dangerous bodies. Girls became a danger as they resisted authoritarian policies and practices enacted upon them. The girls’ engagement in the research process with production of research text(s) provides a counternarrative to societal understandings of Black girlhood. Girls co-opted the dangerous body narrative and co-constructed their own scripts of agency with the use of art, personal and secondary narratives, stories, videos, skits, and so on, to unveil their objectification in hostile school environments as well as their subjectification. Aalimah, a 16-year-old Muslim American girl researcher, describes what she learned in her journal reflection while engaged in PAR.

I learned that everyday occurrences in my life were not supposed to be happening, but because my mind had gotten so used to these negativities, my body had become numb to this form of micro-aggression playing out in my life. I also realized that this was not only true for me, but for so many other girls of color in the education system.

Aalimah is in the process of developing a critical consciousness. She reveals how society had inscribed so many transgressions upon her that her mind adapted and her “body had become numb.” Nevertheless, the naming and the identifying of one’s shared reality fostered community and self-awareness among the girl researchers. Grace’s (17-year-old girl researcher) reflection below also provides an example of youth researchers coming to consciousness through active engagement in the research process.

There were surveys given out, interviews given. It was horrifying what we found. Staff members were afraid to speak up about the injustice in their schools. There would be parents that had a high concern for their children in school. There would be students that didn’t feel safe in their schools. The problem was pretty evident to us. So the next question was how can we fix it?

When I met Grace, she was ready to make the shift from exposing how students’ bodies were inscribed upon by school policies as dangerous to “fixing” the challenges and interrupting painful inscriptions. Equipped with a sense of awareness, it became important to document how others in their local communities experienced life as raced and gendered bodies. Research therefore became a form of activism, voice, and a tool for collecting other people’s story of vulnerability, resilience, and resistance. The scientific method and all of its required cited theories, scholarly literature, and yielded statistics and findings legitimated the young women’s personal stories and observations of the social world. The research process became one more way of seeking to understand the world around them and an alternative outlet for expressing their lived reality.

For once, research protocol was not simply something conducted on them by adult outsiders in need of research participants, nor was it something simply enacted upon them as an empirically proven intervention. In this project, girls of color engaged and adapted research practices, traditionally reserved for Whites, adults, the middle and educated class, to name their own reality. In the act of naming and acting upon that reality, they became dangerous bodies to the status quo. The girl researchers’ knowledge and voice became a viable threat to school officials. Data, academic, and political discourse allowed them the attention of school administrators, political figures, legal scholars, and other educational stakeholders. In other words, the research process itself became a politicized tool to fight against racial and gender injustice.

While I was presenting, I felt like all of my struggles had finally meant something. I wasn’t just a statistic anymore of someone who had been a victim of the system. I was finally a person able to help young girls in a way I was never helped before. The data we collected helped all of us to come up with different solutions to combat the negative impact of school push out. (Aalimah, reflection of presenting at NWSA, November 2015)

As Paulo Freire (2002) reminds critical educators, it is not enough for individuals to come together in dialogue to simply obtain knowledge of their social reality. Individuals must act upon their environment to critically reflect upon their reality and transform it through further action and critical reflection. The girls in this PAR project engaged in ongoing critical reflection around issues of race, class, gender, and sexuality, and utilized the research process to question, interrupt, and reinterpret power. The research process and texts became tools of empowerment and voice in the silenced dialogue (Delpit, 2006) about racialized gendered violence in schools.

Conclusion: Black Girl Power

Drawing from a transdisciplinary/interdisciplinary perspective, I aver that it is necessary to understand Black girl agency within context and from multiple perspectives, including sociology, gender studies, psychology, cultural studies, and ethnic studies. From an intersectional perspective, we avert that girls of color are treated harshly in schools, due to their race, class, gender, sexuality, religion, and location. In fact, we acknowledge that nongender conforming youth were at higher risk of harassment at the hands of school officials. Traditionally, Black girls have been viewed as strong enough to survive harsh social conditions, or too weak and vulnerable to resist their social realities. However, PAR reveals that Black girls shift between vulnerability and agency, and resilience and resistance.

Black girl–centered research with girls reveals that Black girls do endure residual effects of race, class, and gender oppression; however, this YPAR project by the SIS researchers also reveals that girls of color are consistently making choices to change their personal and social circumstances. Power is located in girls collectively questioning, exploring, engaging, and naming one’s own reality throughout the research process.

Undoubtedly, many Black girls are able to survive and thrive despite racism, sexism, and classism in their families, communities, and schools, but PAR becomes a strategy of resistance. As a radical Black feminist, whose life work has centered the lived experiences and multiple identities of Black girls from lower income and working-class families, I believe that I served as a role model, mentor, and muse for the youth researchers. I modeled what it is that Black women researchers do, guided them intentionally through PAR through a culturally responsive lens, and shared with them my own Black girl experience. Through this arduous, and at times, very privileged process of presenting research, I demonstrated how an activist scholar engages in research. Moreover, my Black woman identity informs a cultural and gender framework for interpreting much of the girls’ experiences and observations. Many outsiders may overlook or question the validity of the girls’ experiences, because they lack the cultural insight and intuition. As a coresearcher, my own frame of reference becomes infused with the youth’s insight. I am not, nor can I be, separated from the final inscribed product (as text).

Finally, Black girl power is educed from acts of knowing and deciding to engage in consciousness-raising and community advocacy. Since the initial writing of this article, the SIS girls have educated the public on gender harassment on streets and in schools, protested against state-sanctioned police violence, and participated in academic conferences. Knowledge coupled with action is Black girl power personified. As a Black woman feminist, I recognize that Black girls’ and women have knowledge about the social world that is useful to social researchers and practitioners. I view their/our experiences, insights, and cultural funds of knowledge as powerful. Thus, girlhood scholars must begin to think of Black girls as already possessing aspects of power (and not in need of empowerment), and then we must accept that our advocacy role is to support and help them create and engage in activities that bring forth their power, such as girl-centered and culturally responsive PAR.