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This article discusses the potential of promoting the critical consciousness and positive racial and gender identity development of adolescent Black girls through implementing a curriculum grounded in Black feminist thought and critical media pedagogy. By using bell hooks' (1992) "oppositional gaze" concept as a frame, it argues that Black girls' development of a critical lens and analytic skills is tied to images in the media and central to their positive development. The article draws on qualitative data from a larger phenomenological study that explores how adolescent Black girls who attend independent schools employ critical lenses to understand their experiences around race, gender, and class. This study presents vignettes that illustrate how the different components of a Black feminist critical media pedagogy curriculum come together to support the developing of the oppositional gaze of Black girls.
This article discusses the potential of promoting the critical consciousness and positive racial and gender identity development of adolescent Black girls through implementing a curriculum grounded in Black feminist thought and critical media pedagogy. By using bell hooks' (1992) "oppositional gaze" concept as a frame, it argues that Black girls' development of a critical lens and analytic skills is tied to images in the media and central to their positive development. The article draws on qualitative data from a larger phenomenological study that explores how adolescent Black girls who attend independent schools employ critical lenses to understand their experiences around race, gender, and class. This study presents vignettes that illustrate how the different components of a Black feminist critical media pedagogy curriculum come together to support the developing of the oppositional gaze of Black girls.
Keywords: Black girls, adolescence, Black feminist thought, critical pedagogy, racial socialization, gender socialization, media literacy
INTRODUCTION
In her essay "The Oppositional Gaze: Black Female Spectators," bell hooks (1992) presented the idea of the "oppositional gaze" as a way for people in subordinate positions to resist the dominant images and messages that communicate their devalued status. Specifically, hooks describes "the gaze" as
A site of resistance for colonized black people globally. Subordinates in relations of power learn experientially that there is a critical gaze, one that "looks" to document, one that is oppositional. In resistance struggle, the power of the dominated to assert agency by claiming and cultivating "awareness" politicizes "looking" relations-one learns to look a certain way in order to resist. (p. 116)
Developing an oppositional gaze is especially important for adolescent Black girls who continue to grow up in an environment in which Black girls and women are continually relegated to the role of "the Other" (hooks, 1992, p. 95) in society. As "the Other," Black girls historically and currently possess a "status as outsiders [that] becomes the point from which other groups define their normality" (Collins, 2009, p. 77). The marginalization of Black girls is evident in that they continue to be an underresearched population in the social sciences, especially within the field of education (Evans-Winters, 2011; Henry, 1998; Mirza, 1992; Ward & Robinson, 2006). When Black girls are included in research, their experiences are often subsumed under the larger monolithic categories of Black youth or adolescent girls (these girls often being middle-class and White) (Evans-Winters, 2011; Evans-Winters & Esposito, 2010; Henry, 1998), neglecting the nuances of their particular lived experiences.
Schools, which serve as "purveyors of sociocultural knowledge" (Brown, 2012, p. 28), act as socializing agents for youth in that they often communicate, replicate, and reproduce the norms of dominant society (Giroux, 1983). In the case of Black girls, schools reproduce and reinforce the undervalued and oppressed status of Black girls through many of their daily policies and practices such as enacting harsher disciplinary actions in comparison to their White peers (African American Policy Forum & Center for Intersectionality and Social Policy Studies, 2015; NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund & National Women's Law Center, 2014; U.S. Department of Education, 2003), alarming rates of suspension, and increased contact with the juvenile-justice system as a result (Blake, Butler, Lewis, & Darensbourg, 2011; Morris, 2016). In her ethnographic study of students of color at a diverse public high school in Washington D.C., Fordham (1993) found that the Black girls who were the most successful in school were those who were silent, and therefore, invisible in the eyes of teachers and administrators. Fordham analyzes this pattern of behavior through the concept of "passing" (p. 3). She suggests that, by being silent, Black girls are attempting to "pass" as something that they are not: the White female. The act of being silent, Fordham argued, represents Black girls trying to adopt the persona of silence that schools appear to value in (White) female students.
Another source of sociocultural knowledge for young people is the popular media, which is comprised of outlets such as the Internet, magazines, television, film, and music (Morrell & Duncan-Andrade, 2006). The "othered" status of Black girls is typically present in the media that they regularly consume. Images of "Rachet women," "Baby Mamas," and "Black Barbies" (Walton, 2013) are ever-present in the various forms of media that flood the screens depicting Black girls and women as hypersexual, emotionally unstable, and uneducated in comparison to the positive images of White girls and women seen in magazines, movies, and television shows (Duke, 2000; Evans & Rutberg, 1991; Milkie, 1999; Schooler, Monique Ward, Merriwether, & Caruthers, 2004).
In this article, the author argues that instead of serving as sites of reproduction of negative messages and images concerning Black girls, schools can potentially transform into spaces where Black girls are given the tools to recognize, critique, and push back narratives that oppress and dominate Black girls and women, particularly those messages found in the media. The focus is on the formation of an all-Black girl discussion group as an example of an in-school curricular intervention that supports the oppositional gaze and critical consciousness development among a group of adolescent Black girls. This author's understanding of critical consciousness draws on Freire's (2000) theory of "conscientizaçâo" (p. 35), which holds that critical consciousness development involves a growing awareness and analysis of the power relations that exist within social relationships and societal structures. Additionally, this perspective of critical consciousness stems from Collins' (2009) theory of "Black woman standpoint" (p. 29), which highlights how Black women in the U.S. learn to develop a particular way of seeing the world as a result of their interlocking oppressive identities.
Discussion groups have the potential to serve as in-school curricular interventions in that they can create "homespaces" (Ward, 1996) or "homeplaces" (Pastor et al., 2007), sites in school where girls can come together to express their frustrations, hopes, and desires with the goal of creating change and promoting resistance to oppressive structures. Often in schools, although critical thinking and analysis skills are promoted, they are not taught with a social justice or liberatory orientation (McLaren, 2003). Therefore, the guiding question that framed the research design and analysis was what impact does a discussion group aimed at promoting the oppositional gaze have on high school Black girls?
This author draws on what was learned from the adolescent Black girls in the discussion group to illustrate what a developing critical consciousness of adolescent Black females looks like when they are engaged with a curriculum whose theoretical and ideological roots lie in racial and gender socialization, Black feminist thought, and critical media literacy pedagogy. This research has implications for educators and curriculum developers particularly in the use of media as a means to support engagement in identity development. Additionally, findings suggest that identity politics surrounding Black girls and women are shifting to reflect the innate power they possess, as opposed to the oppressed status Black women and girls were born into (Crenshaw, 1991; Evans-Winters & Esposito, 2010).
First a guiding framework will be presented for the epistemological stance, research design, and methodology. Next, three vignettes will be used that illustrate how adolescent Black girls employed an oppositional gaze through the use of a curriculum based in critical media literacy pedagogy.The article concludes with a discussion of curriculum principles that serve to promote the oppositional gaze and critical consciousness development of Black girls.
A CRITICAL FEMINIST MEDIA PEDAGOGY FOR BLACK GIRLS
Current research fails to address the racial and gender socialization of Black girls through media and offer a pedagogy through which the oppositional gaze of Black girls can be nurtured. To develop this framework, the author uses developmental, critical feminist, and pedagogical theories to create a conceptual and methodological framework; one that privileges the experiential knowledge of Black girls within particular sociopolitical and historical contexts. The framework dismantles the traditional knowledge hierarchy of "novice/expert" and "student/teacher" by holding Black girls up as experts of their lived experiences. A review of the various frames that coalesce to create a critical feminist media pedagogy framework for Black girls are provided.
Developmental Frames
In employing a developmental perspective, this author highlights how the messages, images and expectations around race and gender that are communicated to Black girls are socializing factors that influence their identity development. Adolescence is a developmental period characterized by the search for identity (Nakkula & Toshalis, 2006). Exploring how Black girls are socialized is particularly important to understanding some of the ways in which they may see themselves.
Racial socialization of adolescent Black girls. The research of Brown (2009, 2013), Love (2012), and Ward (1996) illustrates how both traditional and non-traditional educational spaces can be sites of affirmation and promote the positive development of Black girls' racial identity. These scholars demonstrate how Black girls, with the help of supportive adults, carved out spaces where they were able to discover shared experiences and perspectives tied to their Black girl identities. Whether it was a classroom during lunch time or a community space after school, those spaces served as "homeplaces" or "homespaces," where Black girls felt like they could come together and celebrate themselves and each other. In spaces such as these, adults build on the conversations that many Black parents have with their daughters that teach them to resist prevalent negative stereotypes associated with being Black girls (Ward, 1996). Robinson and Ward (1991) described these types of messages as "resistance for liberation" strategies in which "black girls and women are encouraged to acknowledge the problems of, and to demand change in, an environment that oppresses them" (p. 89). A focus on "resistance for liberation" encourages Black girls to critically examine and affirm their status in society in safe and supportive environments.
Gender roles, beliefs, and socialization experiences of adolescent Black girls. For Black girls, much of their experience around gender identity development stems from the lack of congruency between their physical characteristics and the dominant standards of femininity and beauty in the U.S. (Cauce et al., 1996; Ward, 1990). Instead of being celebrated, characteristics such as a voluptuous body type, a variation of brown skin colors, and curly hair are looked on as falling outside of the norm and being undesirable according to societal standards (Cauce et al., 1996). Additionally, Black girls' gender identity development is connected to the ways in which Black girls tend to embody behaviors and beliefs that are counter to the dominant gender norms (Ashcraft & Belgrave, 2005; Way, 1998). As a result, Black girls are often portrayed in a negative light. For example, in Essence magazine's "Images of Black Women in Media" study (Walton, 2013) in which 1,200 women were asked to keep journals about the images that they saw of Black women depicted in the media, those images that appeared most frequently were of "Gold Diggers," "Modern Jezebels," "Baby Mamas," Uneducated Sisters," "Rachet Women," "Angry Black Women," "Mean Black Girls," "Unhealthy Black Women," and "Black Barbies"-images that collectively show Black women as uneducated, opportunistic, hypersexual, and unapproachable.
Research suggests that Black girls' constant exposure to negative messages results in adolescent experiences marked by "cultural dissonance" (Stevens, 1999, p. 145) in which they begin to see themselves devalued by society because of their race and their gender. Research focusing on the gender socialization of Black girls suggests Black mothers and Black women role models intentionally attempt to socialize Black girls to counter dominant norms and protect themselves from the potential psychological damage caused by negative messages and images (Belgrave, 2009; Fordham, 1993; Morris, 2007; Ward, 1990). As a result, Black girls are often described as displaying androgynous gender beliefs, meaning they possess both high masculine beliefs (being "independent, assertive, willing to take risks, a leader, and decisive"; Belgrave, 2009, p.18) and high feminine beliefs (being "emotional, attentive, caring, cooperative, and helpful"; Belgrave, 2009, p. 18).
Critical Feminist Frames
Black feminist thought. The goal of Black feminist thought is the realization of justice and empowerment for U.S. Black women and other groups that are similarly oppressed within society (Collins, 2009). The key tenets of Black feminist thought hold that
* the economic, political, and social status of Black women in society provides them with a unique set of experiences that give them a viewpoint that is distinct from other member groups,
* as a result of their experiences, Black women have a particular knowledge about the world and society that operates on two different levels (race and gender), and
* Black feminist thought encourages self-definition and provides a space for Black women to develop a new consciousness that serves as another tool of resistance to their subordination (Collins, 2009).
Black feminist thought is a particularly useful lens through which Black girls can analyze depictions of themselves as represented in the media. Black feminist thought provides a critical curricular stance that can leverage the unique knowledge that Black girls already possess and thereby provide them the opportunity to develop critical media literacy skills, which can mature their oppositional gaze toward the media. As described by hooks (1992), "Critical black female spectatorship emerges as a site of resistance only when individual black women actively resist the imposition of dominant ways of looking and knowing" (p. 128).
Black girlhood. Black girlhood is a framework that emphasizes the agency, creativity, and resistance of Black girls (Brown, 2013). A defining characteristic of this framework is its assetbased orientation toward researching Black girls rather than the deficit-oriented literature that has dominated the research on girls of color for decades. There has been a developing shift in the literature on Black girls' experiences, which began with research studies in the late 1990s and early 2000s that highlighted the skills, knowledge, and resilience of girls of color (Belgrave, 2009; Evans-Winters, 2011; Ward, 1996; Way, 1996). As a result of her qualitative study working with a girls group composed of adolescent Black girls, Brown (2013) developed five principles that describe the Black girlhood framework:
1. Articulate visionary Black girlhood as a meaningful practice;
2. Showcase Black girl inventiveness of form and content;
3. Expand our vision of Black girlhood beyond identity;
4. Sense radical courage and interdependence; and
5. Honor praxis, the analytical insight that comes only by way of consistent action and reflection. (p. 3)
Another element of Brown's (2013) Black girlhood theory is that it can be used as an organizing framework in order to encourage and move Black girls toward the collective action of critiquing their status in U.S. society. Brown emphasizes the presence and importance of the knowledge that Black girls possess, and also focuses on Black girls as agents rather than objects within systems of power within society. Brown's Black girlhood framework articulates the potential for Black girls to come together to create change when they take a critical stance toward the ways in which they are positioned, degraded, and often times ignored in society.
Pedagogical Frames
Critical media literacy pedagogy. Drawing from the principles of critical pedagogy (McLaren, 2003), critical media literacy pedagogy questions how forms of media construct, reproduce, and give meaning to the ways in which power, privilege, and hierarchies based on social differences operate within U.S. culture (Kellner, 1998). In schools, critical media literacy pedagogy involves teaching students how to critically analyze the different components of media such as the strategies and methods that are employed in communicating messages to its audiences, and the biased representations, values, and ideologies that it promotes (Kellner, 1998; Kellner & Share, 2007). In addition to learning to be critics of the media, critical media literacy pedagogy also empowers youth to learn how to intelligently consume and produce their own forms of media (Kellner, 1998; Kellner & Share, 2007; Morrell, Dueñas, Garcia, & López, 2013). Morrell and colleagues (2013) pointed out that the power of developing media literacy in youth and teaching them how to produce their own versions of media creates an opportunity for them to create and share "competing narratives" (p. 17) of their own social experiences, which could potentially illustrate life experiences and perspectives that depart from those of the dominant culture in our society. Such pedagogy, Morrell wrote, embraces a theory of learning that holds that learning must be active, authentic, participatory, and empowering (Morrell, Dueñas, Garcia, & López, 2013).
Using Morrell and associates' (2013) framework, a critical media pedagogy that serves to empower adolescent Black girls encourages activism by creating opportunities for Black girls to analyze the messages they receive about race and gender from the worlds they navigate such as their home, school, and peer communities. The pedagogy promotes authenticity by ensuring that all of the activities, discussions, and inquiries that Black girls have work toward their own liberation and the liberation of other oppressed groups. The participatory component of the pedagogy requires that Black girls not only learn from each other, but also have opportunities to learn from and about Black women in their community (both in the current and historical sense), who serve as role models for Black girls in developing their oppositional gaze. Lastly, the empowering element of this pedagogy for Black girls is that they are viewed as experts of their own experiences, their experiences are recognized as being valid, and their developing oppositional gaze creates a space for adolescent Black girls to define themselves on their own terms and work toward challenging the messages that they receive from the dominant culture.
The different pieces of this framework come together to create a curriculum that emphasizes the identity development and self-definition of Black girls through encouraging Black girls to tell their own stories and also reflect on the experiences of other Black girls that they see in different forms of media. By adopting a critical stance through the use of feminist lenses, a curriculum based on this framework gives Black girls the opportunity not only to consume and critique messages from the media, but also to produce their own media to serve as counternarratives to the dominant negative images of Black girls.
METHODS
Sites and Participants
The data for this article are drawn from a larger phenomenological study in which the author examined the critical lenses that adolescent Black girls who attend elite predominantly White independent schools use to recognize, process, and respond to encounters of race, gender, and class in their schools. The research study included two school sites-one was a predominantly White elite PK-12 all-girls independent school with an enrollment of around 600 students (280 in the upper school), and the other site was a predominantly White elite PK-12 co-ed independent school with an enrollment of about 800 students (380 in the upper school). The schools are situated about two miles away from one another and are located in a suburb just outside of an urban center in the northeastern part of the United States.
The participants were ten to fifteen adolescent Black girls in grades 9-12 from each school site. They represented a wide range of experiences based on the number of years they had attended their school (a third had been in the school since kindergarten, a third entered in middle school, and a third entered in high school), socioeconomic background, and academic standing. Seven of the participants were part of a qualitative study that was conducted previously at one of the school sites for a two-year span that explored the raced- and gendered-experiences of middle school Black girls in independent schools, and at the time of that study, the girls were in 6th, 7th, and 8th grade.
Data Sources
Consistent with studies that employ phenomenological approaches, this author disseminated preand post-questionnaires, facilitated weekly discussion groups grounded in a curriculum that was developed focusing on Black feminism and critical media literacy, conducted one-time individual interviews, and recorded field notes over a period of four months. The data sources informing this study are the content of discussion from the weekly discussion sessions and the researcher field notes.
Weekly discussion groups. The author took on the role of a participant-observer when facilitating weekly discussion sessions grounded in a critical pedagogy and Black feminist-based curriculum (Collins, 2009; Evans-Winters & Esposito, 2010) with the participants over a period of 16 weeks. The curriculum touched on topics such as feminism, intersectionality, the cycle of oppression, and media literacy. The curriculum included activities such as identity mapping, watching videos and news clips, and brainstorming sessions about changes the participants wanted to see in their schools. This author began each session with the question, "What's on your mind today?" and had participants engage in a free-form discussion before moving into the topic of focus for the session. An important element of the discussion groups was developing a rapport with the girls so that the space felt supportive and inclusive of all who attended. As the girls shared their experiences, this author would often contribute opinions and perspectives related to diversity, discrimination, sexism, racism, and classism, a method that served to further develop the relationship with the girls and also provided another avenue through which they could learn about the experiences of a Black woman who was similar to, yet different from them. Each session was audio and video recorded, and 30-45 minutes was set aside after each session to write up field notes.
Researcher field notes. I recorded my own reflections, thoughts, and questions that emerged as I served as a facilitator for the weekly group discussions and conducted the individual interviews.
Data Analysis
A grounded theory approach was used to analyze the data for this article. As part of the grounded theory approach, a three-tiered procedure of "open coding" was employed (Strauss & Corbin, 1988). During the open coding process, this author developed broad categories based on what was seen emerging from the different sources of data through a method of constant and consistent data comparison (Creswell, 2007). As each of these categories was developed, analytic memos were written about the meaning of each category in terms of how it was defined, where and when it occurred, what its range in variation was, and where it was limited (Clarke, 2007). Following the open coding, this author engaged in axial coding, in which the categories were interconnected that related to the central phenomenon of what critical lenses adolescent Black girls use and how they use them in their daily lives (Creswell, 2007).
In order to ensure trustworthiness of the data, some of the analytical memos were shared with my participants to gauge how the interpretations aligned with their understanding of their experiences. Several external audits were also conducted during different stages of the data analysis. The external auditors were doctoral-level graduate students and faculty members in the field of education who were familiar with data analysis and interpretation.
A Note on Researcher Positionality
In this study my researcher identity as a Black feminist and my social location as a middle-class Black woman who has educational and teaching experiences in both diverse suburban and elite predominantly White institutions informed my beliefs surrounding Black girls and education. I approached this study with an oppositional gaze of my own in that I looked for the strengths, resilience, and authentic wisdom that Black girls emanated as they went throughout their daily lives rather than focusing on how their differences from the dominant norms of society were evidence of social and character detriments. From my education and teaching experiences, I firmly believe in the power of the presence of Black female role models for Black girls, and I aimed to create a space where the girls were free to be themselves and mutually enjoy the company of each other.
Throughout the study, I found that my role shifted between that of a researcher, serving as a facilitator/educator of the discussion groups, and as an ally to the girls as they discussed strategies to create change in their school communities. As a researcher, I was intent on observing how the girls described and analyzed their encounters of race, gender, and class, and how they took up a curriculum focused on Black feminism and critical media pedagogy. As a facilitator/educator, I often brought in activities, discussion questions, or different forms of media for the girls to react to and reflect on as it related to their own experiences. As an ally, I used my knowledge of independent school culture and work as an activist to ask the participants strategic and pointed questions that would help them to brainstorm ideas and strategies that would support them in formulating a workable plan for creating change in their school communities.
FINDINGS
In the following sections, three vignettes are presented that are drawn from the audio-recordings and the field notes of the weekly girls' group discussion sessions. These vignettes illustrate how the girls enacted an oppositional gaze using forms of media as a starting point for analysis.
Finding #1: Resisting Negative Images and Loving Yourself Through the Struggle
About halfway through the discussion session schedule (session #7 out of 14 total sessions) the girls were shown "A Girl Like Me," a documentary created by Kiri Davis (2005), a Black female high school student in New York City. In the film, Kiri interviews different high school Black girls about their experiences being Black and female in the U.S. In the documentary the girls discussed topics such as the different standards society imposes on Black girls, what is "good" hair versus not "good" hair, their personal experiences with colorism and sexism, and the challenge of not being able to trace their ethnic lineage. One of the goals of showing this video was to create a dialogue with the girls in the discussion group about the intersectional experiences of Black girls. It was hoped that the video's discussion of standards of beauty connected to hair and body type, and societal assumptions about how Black girls express themselves as the result of the intersection of racism and sexism would serve as an entry point for them to discuss their own experiences with racism and sexism. Another goal in selecting this video was to provide the participants with an example of what resistance to and the disruption of the dominant narratives surrounding Black girls could look like in everyday life constructed by someone who was their own age. Up until this point, the participants' discussions had often centered around the interactions that they had with their peers and teachers that were largely based on stereotypes attributed to Black girls, but they had yet to discuss how they wanted to collectively push back the negative stereotypes that permeated throughout the school.
In response to the video, the girls in the discussion group talked about their own experiences with colorism and the challenges about being labeled generally as Black and not having the privilege of knowing or identifying with other ethnicities. Another topic that stemmed from watching this video was a sense of pride and identification with being a Black girl. For example, Cheryl (a pseudonym), a 12th grader, shared this reflection:
I don't know, I just think it's interesting, like now realizing the fact that, we're a minority, like, within a minority, like, Black females and like-I don't know if someone were to ask me like, 'Would you ever want to be, like, [W]hite to erase all the problems or whatever?' Like I would never, I would never consider that, like, I love being who I am even though there's like, there's so many struggles and like, I'm around so many [W]hite people, and there's-like when I was younger there have been weird moments where I guess I wanted to be like some of them. I don't know, I'm always gonna love the struggle and overcoming struggle and just the people that I'm with.
Cheryl was a "lifer" at her school, meaning that she had attended her independent school since she was in Pre-kindergarten. In other discussions, Cheryl and other "lifers" had talked about their experiences in lower school where there were only one or two Black students in their grade, let alone in their class. The girls described experiences in Pre-kindergarten and kindergarten of White students rubbing their skin and touching their hair, leading them to feel "weird", and as Cheryl describes, wanting to be more like the White students in order to fit in.
The foundational literature around Black girl resistance points to instances in which Black girls push back the accepted norms of White femininity and proudly define their own identities (Ladner, 1995; Ward, 1996). In fact, Cheryl's statement above echoes those of the Black girls who were a part of Ladner's (1995) study of Black girls and women almost forty years prior. Cheryl's response to the video illustrates her developing oppositional gaze through her reflection of how she has grown to resist the pressures of being different than who she is, and how she continues to show resistance by openly embracing the struggle of what it means to be a Black girl in society and her school-"we're a minority, like, within a minority." Watching a video where Black girls were displaying their own oppositional gazes through confronting and talking back to the negative stereotypes of Black girls and demonstrate of pride in being Black females awakened a similar consciousness in Cheryl.
Finding #2: Developing a Group Consciousness about the Status of Black Girls
In the session following the showing of "A Girl Like Me," Candace, a 12th grader, brought in a video that she wanted to share with the rest of the group. Until this point, this author had primarily been the one who had brought in the media for the girls to analyze and critique. The video was a spoken word poem titled, "F·ck I Look Like!" performed by Kai Davis (2012), a writer and performance artist who identifies as a queer woman of color. In the video, Davis describes experiences of racial double standards in the classroom, being accused of "acting White," and the importance of self-definition and standing up for her ideas. While the video was playing some of the girls were nodding, and snapping their fingers in agreement.
After watching the video, the girls in the room launched into a 45-minute discussion of their own experiences in their classes where they feel like they have to fight against the perception that Black students are only at the school to play sports, experiences of White students expressing surprise that there were Black students taking honors-level classes, and experiences of teachers and administrators questioning whether or not they should pursue honors-level classes. Throughout this discussion, girls in the group also made suggestions to others in the room about what they could do in the future to push back and question students, teachers, and the messages such as they were getting that they were not smart or did not belong in a certain level class.
The showing of this video was a significant moment in the curriculum development of the research study. Once the girls in the group saw that it was okay to bring in examples of media that resonated with their identities, the curriculum became co-constructive, with this researcher still coming prepared with discussion questions and different video clips, but largely it was the girls who began to bring in videos, songs, and Tumblr. posts to share and discuss.
From this perspective, Candace's request to show the video to the group serves as a form of activism, in that after viewing the video by herself, she decided that its contents and message were something that needed to be shared with all the girls. She was introducing a particular perspective into the group that provided a snapshot of the experiences of a female of color in school. In turn, the content of the video created an empowering and participatory space in which the girls took up the examples that Davis presented and mapped those experiences into personal interactions and encounters within the context of their own school. By asserting her own definition of who she is within the context of a school and larger society that seeks to define Black girls and women in specific deficit-oriented ways, Davis' proclamation of self-definition throughout the video provides an illustration of how to enact an oppositional gaze and that seems to have been Candace's intent in sharing the video with the group.
Finding #3: Black Girls Producing the Oppositional Gaze
This author built on the girls' growing awareness of the influence of images of Black girls in the media by following up on these videos a few weeks later with a video of a spoken word poem titled, "Average Black Girl," by Ernestine Johnson (2014). In the poem, Johnson describes the negative stereotypes society attributes to Black girls and women, and then critiques those stereotypes by holding up examples of historical Black women activists, freedom fighters, and heroines who spent their lives breaking barriers of race, gender, and class that society placed on them. The goal with showing Johnson's poem was not only to provide the girls with another perspective of the experiences of Black girls in the U.S., but also to show the girls how Black girls were creating their own media to provide a commentary about the status of Black girls and women in society.
The examples of the documentary and spoken word performances described in the vignettes show how Black girls employ an oppositional gaze to create forms of media to resist the dominant negative messages that are communicated through websites, television shows, movies, music, magazines, books, blogs, and other types of media. Throughout the sessions, the girls brainstormed ideas of what it would like to create their own media. Ideas arose such as making a video where they would interview Black students about their experiences at their school. Another idea was to create a website that would serve as a database of resources about how to have effective conversations about issues of race, gender, and class, something that the girls saw lacking in their daily school experiences. Although these ideas did not come to fruition by the time the meetings ended, one example of the girls creating their own media was a poster that Cheryl created during one of the sessions, proclaiming that "Black Girls Rock" (see the appendix). In the poster, Cheryl drew a Black girl with natural hair and hoop earrings, and in the figure's hair are the affirming words "foundation," "versatile," "brilliant," "empowered," and "stunning"-all serving as a counternarrative to the words and phrases that are often used to describe Black girls and women. By producing their own media, Black girls not only help themselves by creating counternarratives of self-definition, strength, intelligence, and resilience, but also empower and educate other Black girls who will consume these alternate perspectives of the lives and experiences of Black girls and women.
DISCUSSION
As this author read through the transcripts and the field notes from each of the discussion meetings, two key implications for curriculum emerged: (a) a Black feminist framework and (b) schools as sites of resistance. In the next section of this article, each of these curricular points will be discussed and how they work to contribute to the oppositional gaze development of Black girls.
Curriculum Point #1: A Black Feminist Framework is Essential for Black Girls
Critical pedagogical approaches that call for the dismantling of practices of power, domination, privilege, and oppression present in schools and the media are often limited. They fail to fully capture the lived experiences of Black girls. One exception is the development of the growing field of hip-hop feminist pedagogy (Brown, 2009; Love, 2012), which exists as a marriage between Black feminism, critical pedagogy, and hip-hop. Specific to this article, the findings from this study point to the need of a similar coming together of theories that focus on how Black girls approach and critique all forms of media. Black feminist thought (Collins, 2009) and Black girlhood (Brown, 2013) serve as foundational lenses through which Black girls can develop an oppositional gaze in relation to media because those theories promote Black girls' self-definition and reinforce the validity of their experiences in the face of messages in the media that distort and devalue Black girls by describing them as emotionally unstable, hypersexual, and unintelligent (Walton, 2013).
Additionally, the three vignettes illustrate how the Black girls' discussion group served as a place where the girls could celebrate and take pride in their racial and gendered identities, particularly through the Black girl-positive messages that they saw in the videos they watched. In line with the developmental aspect of a critical feminist media pedagogy framework, these Blackgirl-positive messages serve to promote the positive racial and gender identity development of Black girls in that the videos showed girls of color being bold and brave, being proud of their skin color, and of the way they talk-a demonstration of "resistance for liberation" (Robinson and Ward, 1991) strategies that push back the oppressive structures of racism and sexism.
Curriculum Point #2: Schools as Sites of Resistance for Black Girls Through Critical Media Literacy Pedagogy
In the Black girls' discussion group, the author watched as the girls, without prompting, enacted critical media literacy skills in how they responded to the media they watched in the different sessions. They asked questions about the different Black girls who made each of the videos, trying to discern who they were and where they were from as a way to understand the perspectives these Black girls were presenting-all examples of questions that are part of a critical media literacy framework (Morrell, Dueñas, Garcia, & López, 2013). After a few meeting sessions, the girls also felt comfortable bringing in videos and news clips that they had seen to share with the group and start their own discussions that centered on the experiences of Black girls and how they are depicted in society.
By using the the pedagogical and critical feminist frames that are a part of a critical feminist media pedagogy framework, hooks' (1992) "oppositional gaze" can be developed in the classroom by teaching Black girls the skills to critically analyze the ways in which media reveals representations of Black girls and women, how it idealizes certain forms of beauty, and reinforces race and gender stereotypes. Through the development of critical media literacy skills, Black girls can continue to develop an oppositional gaze that critiques and resists the negative images of Black girls and women, and enact this oppositional gaze through the creation of their own media, and present a counternarrative to the dominant images and representations that are perpetuated daily in the media.
CONCLUSION
In this article the author presented the potential of a curriculum grounded in the tenets of Black feminist thought and critical media pedagogy as a way adolescent Black girls can continue to develop their oppositional gazes of resistance and resilience in connection with media images and messages. The discussions and resulting actions of this Black girl group suggests that the curricular intervention of the discussion group was important, maybe even essential in this school setting, thus enabling Black girls to develop an "oppositional gaze" that critically analyzes and questions the messages that they receive about Black girlhood and Black womanhood through the media. Furthermore, although parents of Black girls tend to socialize their daughters with strategies of resistance and resilience in connection with school and their status as Black girls within broader society, this study suggests that focused attention on translating and developing these strategies in schools in connection with media can be very powerful for Black girls' racial and gender identity development.
Schools and educators can play a significant role in supporting adolescent Black girls in their questioning of negative messages present in the media and in their positive racial and gender identity development. Schools, while existing as institutions where the dominant societal norms of inequity around race and gender are reinforced and reproduced, can also serve as sites of liberation and critique through the incorporation and implementation of critical pedagogies. By adopting a critical pedagogy and curriculum infused with the tenets of Black feminist thought, teachers and their Black female students are not only disrupting the traditional power dynamics in the school setting (e.g., teacher as expert, student as novice), but also are creating a new way to envision Black girls' identities and roles in society through the adoption of an oppositional gaze.
The power of hooks' (1992) concept of the oppositional gaze lies in not only in the gazer's ability to critique and resist the negative images associated with her identity, but also highlights the importance of the need for Black girls to be able to define themselves. By equipping Black adolescent girls with the tools and skills to thoughtfully analyze and critique the media around them, and by providing them with a space for their own self-definitions, educators and schools can work to not only promote the positive development of Black girls, but also take steps toward making our society a more equitable place for future generations of youth.
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(ProQuest: Appendix omitted.)
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