Abstract
A growing body of literature highlights how teachers and administrators influence Black girls’ academic and social experiences in school. Yet, less of this work explores how Black undergraduate women understand their earlier school experiences, particularly in relation to whether teachers advocated for their educational success or participated in discriminatory practices that hindered their potential. Using consensual qualitative research (CQR) methods, the present semi-structured interview study explored the narratives of 50 Black undergraduate women (mean age = 20 years) who reflected on their experiences with teachers and school administrators during high school. Five discriminatory themes emerged, including body and tone policing, exceptionalism, tokenization, cultural erasure in the curriculum, and gatekeeping grades and opportunities. Three anti-racist themes emerged, including communicating high expectations and recognizing potential, challenging discrimination in the moment, and instilling racial and cultural pride. Our findings highlight the higher prevalence of discriminatory events compared to anti-racist teacher practices, as well as how the women’s high school experiences occurred at the intersection of race and gender. The Authors discuss the need to incorporate gender and sexism into discussions of anti-racist teacher practices to address Black girls’ experiences of misogynoir. We hope our findings contribute to educational initiatives that transform the learning landscape for Black girls by demonstrating how educators can eliminate pedagogical practices that harm their development.
Highlights
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To build upon extant literature, we explored the narrative reflections of Black undergraduate women regarding their experiences of misogynoir and anti-racism with high school teachers
As Evans-Winters and Esposito (2010) noted, “because feminist epistemologies tend to be concerned with the education of White girls and women, and raced-based epistemologies tend to be consumed with the educational barriers affecting Black boys, the educational needs of Black girls fall through the cracks” (p. 12)
Summary
Given our focus on combatting Black women and girls’ experiences of race and gender oppression in educational settings, we incorporated Evans-Winters and Esposito (2010) framework of critical race feminism (CRF). The five main tenets of CRF most relevant to the current study include, (1) the belief that Black women and girls’ experiences are different from the experiences of men of color and those of White women; (2) the focus on Black women and girls’ experiences of discrimination at the intersection of race, class, and gender; (3) the assertion that multiple identities and ways of knowing inform Black women and girls’ experiences; (4) the necessity of multidisciplinarity in writing about Black women and girls; and (5) a call for theory and practice that studies gender and racial oppression in an effort to combat its effects. CRF provides a framework to analyze Black women and girls’ misogynoiristic experiences in school settings and lays the groundwork to consider how to actively promote educational change at the micro- and macro-level by integrating gender and social class into antiracist discourse. Sci. 2021, 10, 29 be instructive for scholars and educators who want to transform pedagogical practices in the classroom and broader school communities
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