Hashtag Feminism Archive Tara Conley Hashtag Feminism Archive Tara Conley

#BlackGirlsMatter Too: Ending the Exclusion of Black Girls

This post originally appeared on February 26, 2015 written by Aisha Springer.

This post originally appeared on February 26, 2015 written by Aisha Springer.

Earlier this month, the African American Policy Forum released a report, Black Girls Matter: Pushed Out, Overpoliced, and Underprotected, written by Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw, a Columbia University law professor. The report provides data from Boston and New York public schools on the ways girls are disciplined depending on race. Not surprisingly, girls of color and especially black girls are exposed to harsher punishment and at a higher frequency. Though more boys are suspended than girls overall, racial and gender disparities are significant. Black males were suspended three times as often as white males, while Black girls were suspended six times more than white female students.

As a result of zero-tolerance policies applied with gender and racial bias, students of color are removed from their learning environments and unnecessarily exposed to the criminal justice system, something referred to as the school-to-prison pipeline. Girls in particular face unique challenges when it comes to zero-tolerance policies that don’t allow for individual discretion by a teacher or counselor. Sexual trauma and harassment, high incidence of interpersonal violence, teen pregnancy, and family responsibilities contribute to emotional, behavioral, and practical challenges that affect a girls’ school life.

Excessive discipline cases have been making the news for years now, bringing the issue to light. Recently, video footage from a Baltimore middle school shows the beating and pepper-spraying of three girls by a school security officer. In 2014, a Detroit honor roll student was suspended during her senior year for accidentally bringing a pocketknife to a football game and in 2007, and a six-year-old Florida girl was arrested for having a tantrum. This report is the first of its kind to bring attention to the fact that girls of color are nowhere near exempt from harsh treatment and it does not make sense to focus policy on boys alone.

News coverage of stories like these helps to inform a wider audience of issues facing Black girls and the AAPF report includes a social media campaign to do the same.

The hashtag #BlackGirlsMatter tracks the conversation on Twitter and has produced thoughtful responses regarding Black girls in the school-to-prison pipeline, the gender and race biases that cause this disparity, and the way Black women and girls have long been left out of conversations on addressing racially biased policies and practices.

An important fact raised in the report is that girls are largely excluded from current efforts to break down the school-to-prison pipeline. It’s generally thought that boys suffer worse consequences than their female counterparts, and unfortunately, this myopic thinking influences policy. While the overall number of Black men who are the direct victims of a racially biased criminal justice system is higher than the number of Black women, this often translates to a complete disregard for Black women and girls. Just as it is possible to address the difficulties officers face in policing while at the same time holding them accountable to the public, it is also possible to tackle the needs of Black men and women at the same time. Outside of the Black feminist community, not enough attention is paid to Black women and girls who suffer the same injustices, but are not acknowledged.

Black feminists have increasingly been pushing back on this type of thinking and their outspokenness has spurred real-world action. Women leaders of #BlackLivesMatter protests have made a conscious effort to include the names of Black female victims in protests to make sure their lives and deaths are not ignored in the process. In 2014, when President Obama announced the My Brother’s Keeper program feminists activists, scholars, and organizations including Alice Walker and Rosario Dawson, signed onto an open letter. The letter made it clear that leaving out Black girls perpetuates the myth that girls are doing just fine and ends up neglecting them to the detriment of the entire community. Also publicized by the AAPF, the letter and its topic were discussed on Twitter using the hashtag #WhyWeCantWait and has become a full campaign to realign MBK.

Stereotypes of Black women contribute to the erasure of Black girls from the conversation about excessive use of force and discipline. Historically, Black women have endured racial and sexual abuse and fought tirelessly for justice, but despite their many contributions have been relegated to the sidelines in public.

Now, in the age of social media activism, Black women activists have an expanded platform to resist these entrenched biases and insist that Black women and girls be considered and involved in policy decisions. Hopefully, this is a continuing trend and we see a greater understanding of and concern for the future of Black girls in this country.

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Hashtag Feminism Archive Tara Conley Hashtag Feminism Archive Tara Conley

In response to #ReclaimIntersectionalityIn2014 and #StopBlamingWhiteWomenWeNeedUnity #F

This post originally appeared on January 3, 2014 written by founder, Tara L. Conley. This was Hashtag Feminism’s first post of 2014.

This post originally appeared on January 3, 2014 written by founder, Tara L. Conley. This was Hashtag Feminism’s first post of 2014.

My short response to #relcaimintersectionalityin2014 ? No, I will not be reclaiming intersectionality in 2014. Thanks though!

And from Adele Wilde-Blavatsky’s (@lionfaceddakini) Huff Post piece:

So I propose a new hashtag campaign for women (and men) tired of the misguided cultural relativism called #stopblamingwhitewomenweneedunity. It is not acceptable anymore to ignore white privilege and intersectionality in feminist discourse but at the same time let’s stop blaming white women for issues that clearly effect them too. Issues such as marriage, physical safety and autonomy, access to good family planning and health care, pregnancy, abortion, rape, domestic violence, slut shaming, denial of opportunities in work and education and so on still effect women across all cultures, races and nations (albeit in differing ways). If we allow race and ‘culture’ to divide rather than unite women then the patriarchs have won. On the other hand, women united can never be divided.

My short response to #stopblamingwhitewomenweneedunity ?

No, actually I’m over re-centering white women, or white liberal feminism via hashtags to understand what inclusion means because, at this point in my life, oppositional politics, no matter how you slice and dice it, or dress it up as critique or solidarity, hasn’t done much for me spiritually.

Longer response below.

A friend of mine recently reached out to me asking what I thought about Ani DiFranco’s re-apology, and to get my perspective on what might be the best plan of action that we, particularly allies can take towards healing.

Post by Ani DiFranco.

I admit that I really haven’t given Ani DiFranco or her multiple apologies much thought before my friend reached out.

But I’m glad my friend did reach out because in responding, I was able to think through how I feel about intersectionality and allyship currently emerging within mainstream and public critical discourse.

My response is below the jump (tweets added for emphasis).

###

Thanks for reaching out.

As I was reading your message, a few quotes and a movie reference came to mind.

The first quote comes from Jasbir Puar in her discussion about intersectionality and why assemblage as a concept is as, if not more, necessary than intersectionality to consider when theorizing difference and critiquing the status quo.

Puar writes,

“What does an intersectional critique look like—or more to the point, what does it do–in an age of neo-liberal pluralism, absorption and accommodation of difference, of all kinds of differences? If it is the case that intersectionality has been ‘mainstreamed’ in the last two decades—a way to manage difference that colludes with dominant forms of liberal multiculturalism–is the qualitative force of the interpellation of ‘difference itself’ altered or uncertain? […] Has intersectionality become, as Schueller argues[6], an alibi for the re-centering of white liberal feminists? What is a poststructuralist theory of intersectionality that might address multicultural and post-racial discourses of inclusion that destabilizes the WOC as a prosthetic capacity to white women?”

Then there is the line from the movie Malcolm X, when Malcolm X (played by Denzel Washington) was walking out of Columbia University, a white woman approached him and she asked: “What can I do to help?” Malcolm responds coldly, “Nothing.” Then he walks away.

To address your question about what will it take to heal the wound, I’m inclined to respond similarly to the way Malcolm responded, but for different reasons.

I think there comes a moment in critical discourse when some, like myself experience fatigue with critique, especially intersectional critique. While in the midst of the call outs and apologies, some of us with semi-public platforms prefer to reflect for a moment. Log off Twitter, don’t publish any critical or ally pieces for mainstream publications, or on Facebook.

Just pause.

Even though this makes us look like we’re not “producing” anything, or that we’re being “silenced”, what actually happens in these moments of reflection is that we stop participating in Otherizing discourses.

When Jasbir writes about the “mainstreaming” of intersectionality, and the subsequent critiques that are informed by well-intentioned allies, she’s saying that when we discuss inclusion and allyship, we end up, as always, re-centering white liberal feminism, only to render Women of Color as ‘subverted, resistant, and grieved’ bodies.

Intersectionality helps us to understand the multiple ways our bodies live, particularly within structures and systems but what it doesn’t do particularly well is de-privilege the body. The organic body isn’t all there is to our human circumstance. When we start from the position of the body, when we critique from the position of/against white woman (or white liberal feminism), we remain in a perpetual state of seeing difference as different. We’re unable to genuinely imagine what inclusion looks like, or what healing looks like because we reside is a stagnant state of resistance without ever really considering the alternatives. When doing this, we also fail to think about what might actually happen after the shift, after the healing, or after transformation takes place. We’re unable to envision, as Puar states, “what is prior to and beyond what gets established.” Our visions for inclusion therefore become shortsighted, if at all visible.

I recognize fully the unpopular perspective of my critique of critique. However, I’ve realized over the years that I can call out, resist, and write 1,000 amazing articles about status quo and allyship, but in the end, these critiques of the status quo do nothing for me spiritually, but to simply re-center the status quo.

What can/should Ani DiFranco and allies do to heal? Right now, nothing. Just reflect. If you must write something publicly, keep it short, and tell us that you’re going to do nothing, for now, because you need a moment. And while reflecting, be very thoughtful about every public and private action you take thereafter. Ask yourself: Who’s who am I aligned with? Is performing a public benefit concert or writing another public statement in the next month necessary for my personal well-being and for the spiritual healing of the collective?

You, we need to pause. We need time to re-imagine.

Also read the following books and essays at least twice:

I hope this helps, if not challenges you more.

In solidarity,

Tara

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