When Black Girls Fight: Interrogating,Interrupting,and (Re)Imagining Dangerous Scripts of Femininity in Urban Classrooms

Abstract

The recent death of Amy Joyner, a promising Wilmington, Delaware, high school sophomore demonstrates very clearly the ways in which Black girls are made vulnerable in urban schools. Joyner, an honor roll student, was jumped by a group of girls in the bathroom just before classes began. The alleged cause of the fight was jealousy over a boy. Black girls are bombarded with popular culture messages defining Black femininity along narrow notions of sex appeal, maintaining romantic relationships, and having the ability to fight. Black girls are neither invited in the process of critically examining their popular representation nor supported in thinking through its impact in their own lives. This aspect of the null curriculum, coupled with Black girls’ persistent criminalization, makes schools risky places for Black girls. They are left to navigate a society which misunderstands their gender performance without the support or opportunities they need to develop authentic definitions of self, all the while being held subject to beliefs, policies, and practices which surveil and contain them. Despite the neoliberal assault urban educators face, this article argues that urban educators have an epistemic responsibility to critically examine the denigration of Black womanhood in society, incorporate critical media literacy lessons as one response, and pedagogically support Black girls in the creation of counternarratives as a matter of ethical import. Without such practices, urban schools remain complicit in the physical and civic deaths of Amy Joyner, the girls who attacked her, and all other Black girls caught in the web of risk many urban schools leave unexamined.

Keywords

Black girls critical media literacy bullying femininity

Introduction

Like most people, we were stunned and horrified by news reports that a 16-year-old Black girl had been beaten to death in her school’s restroom by other Black girls. Amy Joyner-Francis’s death made us wonder how such a thing could happen in a space allegedly designed to support youth through their social, emotional, and intellectual growth. As former teachers who worked in schools where fighting was unfortunately commonplace, it was sickeningly easy for us to imagine the head of a 16-year-old girl being banged on the edge of a sink so hard she fell unconscious. It is the ultimate consequence girls—and even their teachers—rarely consider before they make a choice to fight and a nightmare we would not wish upon anyone. Amy Joyner-Francis, a student at Howard High School of Technology in Delaware, died as a result of complications from a cardiac condition that was triggered by the physical trauma and stress of the beating. She walked into the bathroom hoping to talk out the situation and left the bathroom dying on a stretcher being carried out by paramedics. The fight was apparently over a boy. Eventually three girls, all minors, were charged in Amy’s death. One girl, just 16 years old, is being charged with criminally negligent homicide, punishable by up to 8 years in prison, whereas the other two girls (who based on video evidence were shown not to have hit Amy, but had previously spoken and texted about fighting her) were charged with criminal conspiracy.

Amy Joyner-Francis is dead and three other girls are caught in the school/prison nexus due to jealousy over a high school boy. As former high school teachers, we know that girls fighting over boys is commonplace. One of us attended schools where fighting occurred everyday and, as previously mentioned, we both taught at schools where fights occurred on a regular basis. However, the fact that a young girl died in this attack forced us to ponder the issue of girl fighting—particularly among Black girls in urban schools. What, in this current cultural moment, allows Black girl aggression to be commonplace in schools? How can and should educators respond?

When looking at the cultural context Black girls are asked to navigate, we see that they are bombarded by a popular culture that defines Black femininity along narrow notions of sex appeal, maintaining romantic relationships and having the ability to fight. Racialized reality television stars and social media celebrities, whom millions of people, including young Black women, follow, perpetuate the notion that Black women arrive at their womanhood only after weathering the storms of street life.¹ We do not say this to suggest that street life is inherently problematic or to pass judgment on the cast members and celebrities who knowingly or unknowingly promote these narrow narratives. We take issue, however, with the problem that the messages and images that accompany them are often wholly ignored in schools. Black girls are neither invited in the process of critically examining their popular representation nor supported in thinking through its impact in their own lives. This aspect of the null curriculum, coupled with Black girls’ persistent criminalization (M.W. Morris, 2016), make schools risky places for Black girls. They are left to navigate a society which misunderstands their gender performance without the support or opportunities they need to develop authentic definitions of self, all while being held subject to beliefs, policies, and practices that surveil and contain them. We contend that Black girls need spaces where they are free to lay down the vestiges of the cultural legacy of slavery² and take up new possibilities for Black femininity that are rooted in the cultural memories that have sustained Black women in America for some 240 years (Dillard, 2012; Nelson, 2002). Despite the neoliberal assault urban educators face, this article will argue that urban educators have an epistemic responsibility to critically examine the denigration of Black womanhood in society, incorporate critical media literacy lessons as one response, and pedagogically support Black girls in the creation of counternarratives as a matter of ethical import. Without such practices, urban schools remain complicit in the physical and civic deaths³ of Amy Joyner-Francis, the girls who attacked her, and all other Black girls caught in the web of risk many urban schools leave unexamined.

Theoretical Framework

Intersectionality and Fighting

We cannot discuss girl fighting without contextualizing it. One of the most important ways to contextualize the issue is to ground it within an intersectional framework. Intersectionality assumes that systems of oppression are interlocking (Collins, 2000). Instead of a hierarchical notion of oppression, intersectionality recognizes “one cannot understand domination and resistance, social inequality, and thus the social world without considering the ways that race, class, and gender operate as interlocking systems of domination” (Zerai, 2000, p. 184). Individuals do not experience racism, sexism, classism, or other forms of oppression singularly. Instead, these oppressions are experienced together and can inform and shape each other as they interact. Crenshaw (1991) was one of the first theorists who connected intersectionality with policies and practices. She argued that programs aimed at helping women but which addressed gender only were flawed from the outset because they did not account for the ways other identities may limit women’s options. Crenshaw continued by noting that power and knowledge are co-constituted. Thus, the power that shapes construction and perceptions of, for example, violence also informs the violence itself as well as our society’s response to it.

What does this mean for Black girls who fight? We cannot examine the issue of fighting without also recognizing that the ways girls are positioned due to their race, gender, class, and sexual orientation interact with each other. Some girls may be more privileged than others whereas a girl who occupies more positions of oppression would be further marginalized. In Mikel Brown’s (2003) book, she argued that in areas where poverty and racism interconnect, girls use fighting as a means of protection and survival. This clearly is different from the examples of relational aggression (gossiping or spreading rumors) that may happen when girls do not have to use violence to survive because they are already privileged by race and class.

An intersectional framework also allows us to see that the power shaping violence invites people to participate in it hegemonically. That is, a person’s social location will influence how they view and participate in violence. For example, L. Janelle Dance (2002) has demonstrated that Black and Brown urban students who adopt “tough fronts” are navigating the complex interplay between society’s assumptions about them and the actual circumstances surrounding their lives. She says, “becoming hard is a process facilitated by student experiences of social marginalization within and beyond the walls of the school” (p. 57). Such a reality is inherently intersectional for Black urban youth as they adopt identities shaped by race, class, gender, and sexuality that are sometimes forced to justify violence as a matter of social, and even physical, survival.

Subjectivity Statements

Before critically examining the representations, perspectives, and policies Black girls are subject to when they fight in urban public schools, we find it ethical to our feminist/womanist sensibilities to make clear our position as it relates to the topic.

One of the authors identifies as Latina and is a product of urban schools. She participated in fights in middle and high school as that was the norm for handling conflict in her neighborhoods. Eventually, as a high school teacher and then as a middle school teacher in urban areas, she taught Black and Brown girls. As a teacher who had fought as a student herself, the fights she witnessed and intervened in seemed harmless and part of girls’ coming of age. It was not until she dealt with her own middle school daughter engaging in talk regarding a potential fight over a boy that she began to truly reflect on the meaning of girl fights. She had to explore other options beside violent conflict so that she could teach her daughters ways of handling themselves without violence. She warned her daughters about what happened to Amy Joyner-Francis and encouraged them to be wary of violence. As an academic, this author believes that popular culture is an educative site where people learn about themselves and others (Esposito & Love, 2008; Kellner, 1995). Previously, she has worked with a group of mostly Black and Brown girls on using critical media literacy to understand representations of Black and Brown women to better reflect on how those representations affect girls’ senses of selves.

The other author identifies as a Black woman who knows well the liminality of Black girlhood (Winn, 2011). Although schooled in a socioeconomically privileged community, she taught middle school in an economically disenfranchised urban Black community and was a youth organizer and educational advocate with homeless and runaway youth for many years. In both places, she witnessed the ways in which schools alienate Black girls who do not conform to institutional norms. As a teacher, she often felt powerless in the space between her responsibilities as an educator, her belief in the transformative power of education, and her sensibilities about social justice for Black youth in general and Black girls in particular. She felt small and unsupported in the face of generational impoverishment, overzealous school policing, and curricular demands that were culturally irrelevant. Ultimately, she burned out from teaching. Her work as a youth organizer provided the intellectual freedom to engage the reflective process of critical pedagogy and develop sisterhood circles with girls considered “hard” to reach by the public school system. Critical media literacy was often at the center of the approach she used to build relationships with the girls. She learned that critical media literacy offers both a framework for working in solidarity with youth at the margins and the potential to retain educators in “hard to staff” environments as the process is infused with love, care, and fun (Kellner & Share, 2007). Her experience fosters her interest in Black girls who put up “tough fronts” (Dance, 2002) and the cultural landscapes surrounding them.

Literature Review

Considering the gravity of the fight between Amy Joyner-Francis, Trinity Carr, Zion Snow, and Chakeira Wright, we undertook a review of the literature on girl fighting to try to learn why Black girls fight and what society’s response has been to it. Considering the call for context that an intersectional frame implores, we then turn to an examination of the cultural landscape Black girls navigate. We do this under two assumptions: first, that we all traverse the terrain of popular culture, as the media is ubiquitous and shapes our understanding of both the world and self (Luhmann, 2000); second, that individuals also navigate the cultural landscape of the institutions we interact with. For Black girls, understanding their cultural context asked us to examine notions of Black femininity in the media and the cultural context of urban schooling. After sharing what we have learned about Black girl fighting, we then provide an overview of the changing cultural landscape of Black femininity and the persistent criminalization of Black girls in schools.

Girl Fights

A Google search for key words “girl fights” brought up Instagram and Twitter hashtags, YouTube and Worldstar videos, and numerous other sites dedicated to showcasing the most brutal videos of girls fighting each other. Our society, apparently, is voyeuristically interested in seeing these displays of aggression by girls and young women. Brown and Tappan (2008) noted that the late 1980s and early 1990s saw an increase in public anxiety about female aggression given a seemingly drastic increase in rates of incarceration and violent offenses for girls of color. The public anxiety was not necessary as the “increase” in these numbers was actually due to minor offenses being relabeled more seriously, particularly for girls of color (Brown, Chesney-Lind, & Stein, 2007). As Black girls were being viewed as increasingly more violent, many White girls were engaged in what has been termed “relational aggression” or “relational bullying” (Bright, 2005; Brown, 2003), behaviors such as gossiping, teasing, and social exclusion. Given that femininity has been long defined in terms of Whiteness, docility, and fragility, Black girls have had a precarious relationship to the identity (E. W. Morris, 2007). Morris revealed that Black girls would engage in physical or verbal conflict—defending themselves against real or perceived threats. He argued that this should not be a surprise, “considering the historical experiences of most African American women, who have long struggled against race and gender oppression in ways that differ starkly from White women” (E.W. Morris, 2007, p. 499). Given that White femininity has historically been defined in terms of docility (Poovey, 1984), White girls who fight are seen as disrupting the gendered order whereas Black girls, always under racist and sexist assault, do not have the privilege of being docile and, therefore, their aggression is seen as normal. This does not mean, however, that White girls are less aggressive or less prone to violence than Black girls or other girls of color, only that they are perceived in this way given their relationship to femininity and have more of a vested interest in maintaining hegemonic feminine ideals than Black girls who have already been excluded from this identity. These ideological constructs also invite people in positions of power, namely, teachers, to perceive Black girls as oppositional even before they demonstrate behaviors that are so and thus, to become hypervigilant around policing Black girls’ gender performances (E.W. Morris, 2007).

The reality is that girl fighting occurs in schools and is something that educators are facing. For example, Rajan, Namdar, and Ruggles (2015) analyzed data from 84,734 participants via the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System. These data were based on student self-report regarding their involvement with fighting. Their results showed that fighting and what the researchers termed “aggressive and violent behaviors” still persist in schools. In addition, these data show that Black girls reported higher levels of engagement in physical fighting than other female subgroups. The rates were, however, still markedly lower than boys. Some research suggests that fighting is seen as a normal part of life for some girls depending upon their neighborhood context. For example, a 2005 study of teenagers found that those who had either witnessed violent behaviors or had been victims of violent behaviors were significantly more likely to engage in violent behaviors (Castro & Landry, 2005). Burman (2000) found that 98% of girls in the study had witnessed at least one violent act whereas 70% had witnessed at least five. The prevalence of violent acts in their neighborhoods and schools led them to believe that violence was a normal part of life. In fact, Irwin (2004) found that youth from economically advantaged areas worried about violence but seldom encountered it, but that youth from economically disadvantaged areas did not actively avoid violence because they viewed it as part of their daily lives.

It has been only recently that schools and media have taken girl fighting more seriously. Previously, girl fights were viewed as inconsequential to fights between boys. Much of this devaluation connects to sexism and the fact that girls’ issues are often trivialized compared with boys’. Mikel Brown (2003) noted that girls participate in the subordination of girl fights by claiming girl fights are “dumb” compared with boys, as if girls fight for no reason. The reasons girls fight are varied, but one of the most common reasons is to reify heterosexual norms (Brown & Tappan, 2008). Girls can claim an adherence to traditional gender norms by not fighting. Fighting over the attentions or affections of a boy would destabilize adherence to gender norms but reify an allegiance to heterosexuality. In this way, girls may actively collude in their own subordination. Artz (2004) argued, “Rather than acting against a culture that they have little chance of changing, girls frequently participate in the mistreatment of other girls within the boundaries of these cultural norms” (p. 184). These perceptions align with the changing cultural landscape of Black femininity in the media, which, as will be demonstrated, has increasingly represented women and girls who fight in ways that are glamorized, though irrational.

The Changing Cultural Landscape of Black Femininity in the Media

Representation matters—especially among marginalized groups (Hall, 1980; 1993). The history of Black people in the media—particularly in television and film—clearly demonstrates this. The history of race in American media (which can be defined as print, television, film, and radio communication) mirrors the history of the country in general as Black people and other minoritized groups were excluded from or relegated to stereotypical, demeaning, and/or marginal roles on the airwaves or screen in much the same way they were and arguably, continue to be, in society at large. Black people have had to fight to develop portrayals that represent the diversity, dignity, and complexity of experience which constitutes the reality of Black life in America. Black women, in particular, were cast based on stereotypes and caricatures deeply embedded within the historical legacy of slavery (Bogle, 2001; Collins, 2005; Springer, 2007; Stephens & Phillips, 2003)—through roles meant to communicate that Black women belonged in places of subservience, deference, and ignorance.

With the awakening and spread of Black consciousness and the Black feminist perspective in the late 1960s and through the 1970s, these representations were challenged as Black women began to critically interrogate representations of both White and Black womanhood (hooks, 1993). As a result, Black women began to be cast in ways that represented their strength, empowered sexuality, and commitment to community (Dunn, 2008). This is not to suggest that these representations were perfect, or that they signal a complete departure from the markings of internalized racism and overt sexism, but instead, points to the ways in which Black television and film from the late 1960s and through the 1970s ushered in space for Black counternarratives in the media. Actresses such as Diahann Carroll, Eartha Kitt, Isabel Sanford, Ruby Dee, Cicely Tyson, Abbey Lincoln, Pam Grier, and Tamara Dobson accepted roles portraying the dignity, strength, love, conflict, and realities of being a Black woman in America in ways that opened their representations to dialogue about the centrality of race and racism in U.S. society.

The influx of Black exceptionalism on television and in film during the 1980s was in large part possible because of the critical consciousness fostered in the previous era. Shows like The Cosby Show, The Jeffersons, Amen, and 227 were built upon the previous generation’s emphasis on Black dignity by insisting upon representations of upward mobility and respectability. It can be argued that this era of TV did much to quell the radical demands for racial and gender justice fostered through the activism of the 1970s. At that time, TV turned away from representations causing audiences to confront the ways race and racism function in U.S. society toward images and themes calling for inclusion. This is not to suggest that representations in the late 1960s and through the 1970s were unproblematic, but rather to demonstrate the shift from a sentiment in Black popular culture highlighting difference to one suggesting that Black people held the same values as Whites and were, thereby, “normal.” Mainstream Black popular culture during the 1980s was also, in many ways, disconnected from the blossoming hip-hop cultural movement—reflecting the sensibilities of Black people who benefited from integration and the gains of the civil rights movement and largely ignoring the realities of those who did not. Black women, in particular, were cast as mothers, professionals, scholars, or intelligent partners to successful and upstanding Black men all the while maintaining the sharp and witty bravado that is emblematic of Black women’s culture. In essence, Black women on television during the 1980s were the dream representation of the Club Women’s Movement of the early 20th century (Higgenbotham, 1993).

The cultural appropriation of hip-hop, beginning in the late 1980s and growing in strength and totality through the 1990s, introduced narratives of the “street” to mainstream television, though not in ways that represented the complexities and nuance of the Black working class. Shows like The Fresh Prince of Bel Air, Martin, Hangin’ With Mr. Cooper, and Family Matters maintained the narrative of Black exceptionalism although through the style, language, and fashions of hip-hop culture. This move interpreted hip-hop culture through the lens of Black respectability, taking a step away from its working class emanation, to make hip-hop culture palatable to a mainstream audience. This form of commercialization did much to displace hip-hop from its roots as a unique expression of Black American experience to its current form—largely a medium to advance the interests of capital. By the end of the 1990s, the corporate domination of hip-hop culture was complete and the diversity in sound and expression, once emblematic of the art form, was narrowed into a single representation—namely, the style and tenor of gangsta rap, with its unchallenged narrative of misogyny, violence, and hypercapitalism (Rose, 1994). Several archetypes of Black womanhood on screen emerged as a result. The Mammy, Sapphire, and Jezebel of old evolved into freaks, gold diggers, divas, dykes, and ride-or-die bitches (Jeffries, 2009; Stephens & Phillips, 2003)—representations continuing a historical oversimplification of the ways in which Black women’s performativity is rooted in a matrix of raced, classed, gendered, and sexualized realities.

These historical shifts undergird the contemporary moment, with the rise of reality television coming into relationship with corporate conceptions of hip-hop culture. This has resulted in a genre of racialized reality television which invites cast members to make hegemonic representations of themselves (Edwards & Esposito, 2016). Shows like Love and Hip Hop, Black Ink Crew, Real Housewives of Atlanta, Basketball Wives, Marrying the Game, T.I. & The Family Hustle, and K. Michelle: My Life reify problematic discourses of materialism, sexism, and even Black dysfunction. Although these themes have not been absent on Black TV in the past, the confessional nature of reality TV offers a more intimate representation of Black womanhood. When cast members talk about their experiences, it is as if your best girlfriend is giving you advice. The women share intimate details about their experience, seem to take to heart the advice given to them by other cast members, and then relay to the audience how they arrived at the conclusions they did—whether their actions were justified or not. This way of communicating their experience as Black women draws viewers in, makes them identify with and empathize for cast members, and invites them to locate their own experience within the choices cast members make. The women overwhelmingly discuss their decisions to fight other women—usually over Black men—in these confessional scenes. This, combined with the immense popularity these shows enjoy, suggest the notion that Black women fighting over Black men is both a popular and appropriate response to handling conflict in relationships—even when the source of the conflict lies with the misdeeds of men. The contemporary moment in Black television is qualitatively different from past generations in that it offers an interactive format where viewers are introduced to the interiority of cast members’ actions—rather than having to imply their reasons from the more distanced position of watching a plot unfold.

Impoverished Black girls are vulnerable to the contemporary representations perpetuated by racialized reality television. This does not mean that girls do not critically read or resist this imagery, but it is important to acknowledge the power of the media—namely, that it does serve as a cultural influencer (Luhmann, 2000). Whereas some Black girls will consume contemporary racialized reality television and offer a negotiated or oppositional reading (Hall, 1980; Edwards, 2016) of it, others will identify with it in ways that bring them into harm. In discussing the ways in which impoverished Black girls are led into human trafficking, for example, M. W. Morris (2016) stated that society’s use of women and girls’ bodies to sell products in the media serves as powerful medium coercing girls into selling their own bodies. The lure is strong for middle and upper class youth as well, but for economically marginalized Black girls, rampant commercialism is dangerous as girls struggle to provide for their basic needs and meet the material expectations hip-hop media demands. These representations, combined with the reality that girls fight in schools, exacerbate and entrench cycles of criminalization in urban schools whereby Black girls find themselves caught in a society that leaves unexamined the glamorization and rationalization of violence.

Black Girls’ Criminalization in Schools: The Confluence of Perception and Policy

Black girls are 16% of the student population, but 46% of girls are suspended multiple times and compose 34% of school-based arrests (M. W. Morris, 2016; U.S. Department of Education, Office of Civil Rights, 2009). This overrepresentation among students receiving exclusionary discipline is indicative of the ideologies, perceptions, and policies which effectively criminalize Black girls in schools. As the previous section on the changing cultural landscape of Black femininity attests, racist ideology continues to permeate society through the media in ways associating Blackness with dysfunction, hypersexuality, and criminality (Edwards, 2016). As a result, teachers carry an implicit bias against Black girls—judging them as “loud,” “defiant,” or “promiscuous” (E. W. Morris, 2007), without examining where these perceptions come from or considering how Black girls’ behaviors resist a society and school system calling for their erasure. In fact, Black girls are often penalized for the very characteristics associated with high student achievement. Throughout the years, Black girl research has demonstrated that they are assertive, independent, resilient, freely expressive, and bold (Evans-Winters, 2011; Ladner, 1979; E. W. Morris, 2007; Orenstein, 1994; Taylor, Gilligan, & Sullivan, 1995)—all characteristics which are widely accepted as central to academic success.

In addition to marginalizing their gender performance, Black girls are even more egregiously subject to a gaze stigmatizing their physical bodies. Hannon, Defina, and Bruch (2013) found that colorism increases Black girls’ chances of getting caught in the school/prison nexus, with dark-skinned girls being 3 times more likely to be suspended than light-skinned girls. Black girls have been punished for wearing natural hair styles (Francois, 2015; “High School Students Threatened With Suspension for Wearing Natural Hair,” 2016; Kim, 2014) and are regularly policed through school uniform policies scrutinizing their body shapes (M. W. Morris, 2016). This reality communicates to Black girls that even before they act, their mere presence is at odds with school expectations.

These ideologies and perceptions go largely unexamined in urban public schools and, within the contemporary neoliberal educational policy-scape, exacerbate the creation of antagonistic learning environments for Black girls. Neoliberal ideology holds that social challenges are best solved through solutions found in the free market (Apple, 2001). In education, this takes shape in the form of standardization—as schools and their performance are tightly measured through prescriptive standards that may or may not hold relevance in both students’ lives and the community context in which a school is situated. Neoliberal educational policy, namely, through the vestiges of No Child Left Behind (NCLB), also renders corporal control a fundamental necessity in public schools. Although we acknowledge that NCLB has recently been overturned, we assert that the impact of NCLB will continue to influence schools into the near future. Also, its replacement, the Every Student Succeeds Act of 2015, remains a product of neoliberal educational theory. “Accountability” will remain a central organizing principle by which schools function and as a result will maintain high-stakes testing and value-added assessment. As long as this limited framework guides curriculum and instruction, schools will remain bound to practices which surveil and contain students. If teacher evaluation is dependent upon standardized test scores, they will be compelled to prioritize test performance and behavioral conformity over teaching in ways that invite organic and student-led inquiry (Hursh, 2007; Thompson & Allen, 2012). Furthermore, because neoliberal policy is more widely used and deeply felt in urban impoverished communities of color (Lipman, 1998), it is fair to surmise that the criminalization Black girls face will remain deeply embedded in the fundamental approach to schooling public schools employ.

Black girls in urban schools are policed even before they get in trouble, so when they do fight, they become victims of institutional violence themselves. M. W. Morris (2016) asserted,

In today’s climate of zero tolerance, where there are few alternatives to punishing problematic student behavior, the prevailing school discipline strategy, with its heavy reliance on exclusionary practices—dismissal, suspension, or expulsion—becomes a predictable, cyclical, and ghettoizing response. (p. 38)

Her book demonstrates that there is an interiority to the fight experience that schools fail to probe. She reports that schools mete out swift and harsh consequences before understanding why girls fight and without providing opportunities for them to learn from their mistakes (M. W. Morris, 2016). These practices overlook the fact that some Black girls caught in the school/prison nexus face multiple oppressions outside of schools which have some bearing on their behavior and performance in school, including inadequate food, employment, and health care, as well as trauma and sexual abuse (M. W. Morris, 2016). It is true that urban schools serving predominately impoverished student bodies tend to be underresourced and are often ill-equipped, by their districts, to respond to the many needs students in trouble have. Still, as long as schools seek punishment first, they remain complicit in introducing risk in the lives of Black girls who fight.

Black girls are not innately violent and do not deserve schools masquerading as institutions dedicated to their futures, but practicing as if they are not. Black girls in trouble deserve caring and empathetic schools that are as committed to their development as human beings as they are the creation of a conciliatory school climate. Punitive school environments only reify violence among students. Nothing is solved by excluding youth from school. Doing so only provides respite. The time away solidifies their alienation as they fall behind in coursework, miss opportunities to make meaningful social connections, and return to school marked “bad” girls—all realities suggesting that girls who fight in school will fight again.

Discussion: How Should Schools Respond?

Where Fighting, the Media and Criminalization Meet: A Case for Critical Media Literacy

Kellner and Share (2005) asserted, “Media are . . . highly coded constructions that are not windows on the world” (p. 375). Yet, the naturalness of its messages or “what-goes-with-out-saying” (Barthes, 1998, p. 11) makes it seem as if its remitting signs are true and authentic representations of individuals and groups. Today’s representations of Black women in the media, namely, through reality television, suggests that Black women are perpetually at the center of stressful, materialistic, and dysfunctional relationships. The confessional aspect of reality television solidifies the seeming authenticity of the narratives it promotes; so when Black women seem to offer their interior motivations for the choices they make, audiences are invited into a relationship with cast members that may feel personal. This, coupled with the pushout experience, creates an opportunity for Black girls “in trouble” to find affirmation, support, and a sense of escape in the discourse of contentious Black womanhood represented in the media.

M. W. Morris (2016) asserted that for vulnerable Black girls, schools “need to be a place of stability and consistency, a place they can learn how not to play the circumscribed role the rest of the world casts them in” (p. 114). As long as educators’ first response is punitive, urban public schools will continue to push Black girls in trouble deeper into a web of risk, repeating cycles of troublesome behavior instead of offering opportunities for them to find their place in the world, meaningfully connect, and ultimately heal.

We assert that critical media literacy offers a starting point from which to do this. It is an approach to literacy moving beyond traditional concepts of print to include popular culture, new technology, and mass communication (Kellner & Share, 2007). It foundationally asserts that all media messages are constructed, that media makers operate by their own rules, embed values in media content, and function to gain profit and/or power. Still, people do not experience the same representations in the same ways (Kellner & Share, 2005); viewers have the capacity to negotiate their own readings of what is presented (Hall, 1980). These foundational assumptions offer a framework for decoding media, as teachers can work with girls to locate the context from which representations emerge, identify the spoken and unspoken values perpetuated, help negotiate their own readings of and respond to the media, and uncover who benefits and who loses by upholding certain representations.

Critical media literacy recognizes that consumers are able to “recognize and engage with the social and political influence of media in everyday life” (Hoechsmann & Poyntz, 2012, p. 149). Hoechsmann and Poyntz (2012) raised three key points in their definition of media literacy: (a) media literacy can be learned both inside and outside of schools; (b) using media texts in the classroom allows teachers to create a more engaging and fun learning environment; and (c) teaching students to become media producers is a crucial part of media literacy.

Critical media literacy offers an opportunity to support youth in clarifying the nature of the world around them—helping them see how society functions and make their own decisions about how they choose to represent themselves as a result. This opportunity is full of potential for Black girls in trouble. Rather than being pushed out into a society, as indicated in the popularity of reality television, which glamorizes violence and justifies fighting among women, girls—especially those caught in the school/prison nexus—deserve the opportunity to think critically about and respond to the way they are stereotyped by society at large. This is not to say that Black girls in “trouble” need to be protected from the media. Such a position is both naïve and unrealistic. Our contemporary reality is media-saturated, technologically dependent, and globally connected. To leave the “flattening of the world” unexamined serves as another way in which schools neglect youth and the realities they face. Critical media literacy empowers (Buckingham, 2003; Kellner & Share, 2009), as youth are able to name, interrogate, respond to, and make choices based on new perceptions of how their realities are portrayed versus how they actually are. It also builds upon their understanding of the choices in media they consume and allows them to think critically about the context surrounding the choices they have made. Girls are invited to ask themselves whether or not their decisions to fight are actually justified or if they do so from some deeper emotion or circumstance requiring more reflection, support, and opportunities to change. Examining the relationship between media and youth practices has been central to claims that the media is actually a form of public pedagogy (Buckingham & Sefton-Green, 2003). In other words, the media exists as a central tool in teaching youth about themselves and about others. Given that this is already occurring, it is imperative, then, that educators recognize this and help youth understand the myriad ways media affects their behavior and choices.

Last, critical media literacy is engaging (Choudhury & Share, 2012; Redmond, 2012). It is dialogical as the girls are able to share what they know and enjoy about the cultural elements that are relevant to their daily lives. In this way, girls are positioned as knowers, not just learners (Brown, 2013). Teachers are able to use their power in ways that share authority, rather than in ways that dominate as they learn from the girls and use their awareness, experience, and judgment to raise critical questions, challenge the girls’ assumptions, and provide information that might lead to transformative insight. This process can reduce the sense of alienation girls in trouble often feel in school as they go from being stigmatized or even feared to being partners in the educational process.

It is true that urban schools struggling with the problem of girl fights tend to be underresourced and struggle to adequately address the multiple factors leading to violence. As critical media literacy is within the bounds of the contemporary curricular policy-scape with its focus on improving literacy, it also offers a tangible and easily accessible preventive approach to transformative change.

McArthur (2015) has demonstrated that Black parents, most of whom are also members of the hip-hop generation, often consume the same forms of entertainment their daughters do. Although parents may discuss their shared choices in consumption, they do not always invite a critical reading of shows they find problematic. Considering that parents cannot always be counted upon to examine representations of Blackness and Black womanhood in the media, it is imperative that Black girls be provided with spaces where they can interrogate, interrupt, and (re)imagine dangerous scripts of femininity. We contend that offering critical media literacy in urban schools offers great promise to do so. Black girls (as well as all students) must navigate a culture that condones violence and, sometimes, celebrate it. As such, students must decide if violence is a necessary part of their identities or something that the media has construed as necessary. Given that critical media literacy may help students better understand the various cultural tropes available to them as they make choices regarding their identities, it should be an integral part of schooling.

Conclusion

When Amy Joyner-Francis and the girls who beat her went into the school bathroom on the day of her death, they did not go in there alone. They walked in with the markings of a society which has normalized racist, sexist, and heteronormative assumptions of femininity. Given the contemporary cultural moment, as demonstrated by representations of Black women in the media, Black girls are excluded from notions of idealized feminity reserved for White women—those that classify women as worthy of being loved, cherished, protected, honored, respected, and visible. Instead, the discourse suggests that Black girls are their bodies and the accouterments they buy to adorn them. Such narratives convey to women and girls that their worth, respect, and validation are rarities that are worth fighting for—especially when their feelings of significance come through romantic relationships. To deny youth in general and Black girls in particular, the space to critically interrogate the discourses which surround and, indeed, create them is to deny them an opportunity to see who they really are.

We do not know what caused the young women to decide to fight, but we do know that their decision is one that is both common and affirmed in the larger cultural context surrounding them. So, when schools offer punitive responses to girls’ decisions to fight, they in essence fight fire with fire—exacerbating the problem instead of working toward resolution at the root level. Amy Joyner-Francis and her attackers have all died—whether physically or civically—and schools, through an intentional denial to read the world around youth (most readily and easily available in the media), are not in a position to prevent such tragedies from occuring again. We offer that critical media literacy offers a starting point from which to begin the process of transforming schools into institutions of affirmation, hope, and positive self-identity as girls are invited to think through their position within and the relationship to the world around them. It offers an opportunity for young women to begin to fashion an identity that is truly authentic as they clarify the values created by the historical legacy of slavery and perpetuated by the media and evaluate them in relationship to their own. If schools are truly designed to provide education, a responsibility which we believe endows people with freedom, it is imperative for the livelihood of Black girls that schools become spaces of critical investigation of the world around them. Indeed, we borrow Grossberg’s (1996) discussion about the necessity of cultural pedagogues “intervening into contexts and power . . . in order to enable people to act more strategically in ways that may change their context for the better” (p. 143).

Let Amy Joyner-Francis, the girls who will carry the weight of her death, and their families not endure the depth of their pain in vain. Let us learn from this tragedy and, finally, let us not turn a blind eye and feign ignorance suggesting that we as educators and scholars can do nothing to prevent it from happening again. We offer Critical Media Literacy as one possible roadmap toward transformative change.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

Author Biographies

Jennifer Esposito is a professor of Educational Policy Studies at Georgia State University. Her work centers on the intersections of race, class, gender, and sexual orientation as they relate to urban schooling. She also examines the ways popular culture represents marginalized groups, particularly women of color.

Erica B. Edwards is a doctoral candidate in Educational Policy Studies at Georgia State University. Her research concentrates on racial and gender equity in school discipline and humanizing approaches to educational research. Recognizing the central ideological role the media plays in school-to-confinement processes, she also takes interest in representations of Black women and girls in popular culture.

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