“They Told Me What I Was Before I Could Tell Them What I Was”: Black Girls’ Ethnic-Racial Identity Development Within Multiple Worlds

Intersectionality and ERI

One reason for a lack of consistent findings related to race and gender may be because ERI theories and the associated measures tend to focus on ERI at the exclusion of other aspects of identity (Cross & Cross, 2008; Rivas-Drake et al., 2014). ERI scholars readily acknowledge that ERI gets integrated as one element of identity that is not separate from others and is shaped by experiences in context (Cross & Cross, 2008; Neblett et al., 2012; Umaña-Taylor et al., 2014). Despite this acknowledgment, quantitative measures assessing ERI constructs (e.g., centrality, regard, exploration) are not designed to capture the intersectionality of youth’s identities or lived experiences. Crenshaw (1997) argues that Black women and girls, in particular, have been marginalized by research that either focuses on race or on gender because focusing on either race or gender does not account for intersecting marginalized identities.

Youth make meaning of the direct and indirect messages they receive about race in their daily interactions, and their interpretations get mediated by a number of other factors (e.g., other salient dimensions of identity, cognitive maturation, phenotype, etc.; Spencer et al., 1997; Tatum, 2017). A race-gender experience perspective (Lopez, 2003) emphasizes that although race and gender have no biological basis, there can be different experiences and outcomes among boys and girls of color based on how society is “race(ing)” and “gender(ing)” youth. In contrast to monoidentity perspectives that only focus on race, a race-gender experience perspective asserts that youth of color are constantly being viewed through gendered and racialized lenses, and that shapes their lived experiences and outcomes at a micro-level within social relationships, as well as at a macro institutional level in convergent and divergent ways. To address a lack of focus on the experiences of Black girls and the need to understand their unique ERI development processes, we focus exclusively on Black girls in the present study; while we examine their understanding of race in alignment with a race-gender experience perspective.

Schools and Classrooms

Schools are a critical social context for socialization. Collins (1991, 2016) argues that there is a system of dominant ideologies within institutions based on a combination of racism and sexism that function to justify race, gender, and class inequalities between White and Black women and girls. Within this system, socially constructed “stereotypical” and “controlling” images dehumanize and invalidate the lived experiences of marginalized people, particularly the experiences of Black women and girls (Brittan & Maynard, 1984; Collins, 1991). These ideologies are ingrained within institutions and reflected in decisions concerning classroom structure, academic content, and school norms (King & Swartz, 2015). Therefore, curriculum and instruction may serve as a form of socialization by influencing students’ beliefs and orientations about topics related to race and gender (Banks, 2007; King & Swartz, 2015). Swartz (2013) and Swartz and Goodwin (1992) argue that educators teach history through a Eurocentric frame that perpetuates the “master script”: a Eurocentric “agreed upon version of knowledge” that centers on topics such as exploration, settlement, and colonization that elevate the controlling images of the elite “founding fathers,” while obscuring and erasing the knowledge and experiences of African Americans as well as Indigenous people (e.g., describing enslaved Africans as if they had no homeland, describing “enslavement without enslavers,” and excluding the voices and works of African American and Indigenous people during that time period).

A nationwide survey of 525 elementary, middle, and high school teachers surmised that only —one to two classes, approximately 8% to 9% of the total class time, is devoted to Black history (King, 2017). Furthermore, in surveying 1,000 high school seniors, 1,786 social studies teachers, 10 state standards, and 12 popular textbooks, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC, 2018) found that high school seniors do not have a basic understanding of American enslavement, teachers have difficulties in teaching the subject, and textbooks fail to discuss the history in complicated and meaningful ways. In conducting a content analysis and compositional interpretation of three widely used history texts, Woyshner and Schocker (2015) found that Black women, in particular, were marginalized in history textbooks. For example, in one textbook titled “The Americas,” only 53 of the 306 images of women were Black women and 232 were images of White women. An additional 686 images were of men (see Woyshner and Shocker, 2015, for a discussion of additional findings).

While prior research has not examined the effects of excluding the contributions of Black women and girls in classroom materials on the ERIs of Black girls, many studies have found positive benefits of centering the contributions of Black women and girls throughout history. For example, Black girls who participated in Young Empowered Sisters (YES!), a 10-week culturally relevant school-based after-school intervention that teaches African American history and contemporary culture through critical pedagogy and holistic learning, had higher levels of centrality, racism awareness, collectivist orientation, liberatory youth activism, and Africentric values at the end of the program (Thomas et al., 2008). Similarly, Black girls who participated in Sisters of Nia, an in-school rites of passage program aimed at cultivating ethnic identity and school engagement for African American girls, had significantly higher levels of racial centrality, private regard, and humanism than the control group six weeks after the intervention (Jones et al., 2018).

Peer Groups

Collective identity and peer group membership for youth of color become more meaningful during adolescence and can play a role in adolescents’ subjective meanings of race. Crosnoe (2011) observed that schools function as mini “adolescent societies,” complete with their own shared rules, customs, and guidelines. These rules, customs, and guidelines mirror macro-societal norms and images as they relate to race, gender, class, sexuality, and ability status and, therefore, students may hold stereotypes and biases about marginalized groups of students. In turn, social interactions are affected by status and hierarchies (i.e., social position, Coll et al., 1996), where some students and groups are teased and ostracized on the basis of their social identities (see Mulvey and colleagues, 2018, for a greater discussion of non-bias-based bullying and bias-based bullying). Accordingly, Suárez-Orozco (2004) and Lei (2003) found that peer group norms can reproduce stereotypical or controlling images as they relate to race and ethnicity and reinforce the pattern of marginalization by peers.

Black girls may experience a unique form of peer racial marginalization due to their social location. For example, while Seaton and Tyson (2019) found no gender differences in the reported experiences of racial discrimination from peers for African American boys and girls, African American girls discussed different discriminatory experiences than African American boys, such as hair scrutiny (e.g., White kids in class touching Black girls’ hair) and romantic desirability (e.g., White boys not being open to dating Black girls). Through interviews and observations, Holland (2012) found stark differences in the social experiences of African American and Latinx youth, with African American and Latino males occupying a higher social status and describing more positive schooling experiences. African American girls were often low on the status hierarchy, and reported being underestimated by teachers and peers, and stereotyped as loud, hostile, or otherwise unapproachable. In another qualitative study of Black girls’ experiences at a California High school, Wun (2016) documents how anonymous students at the school developed a faux Instagram account and posted photos of adolescent girls, mostly Black female students, without their consent. While many of the Black girls were upset by the faux account, many of their non-Black peers were dismissive and reductive, saying it was just “drama” and a form of attention-seeking (p. 11). Their peers also discussed how Black girls ‘pull out each other’s weaves’ for attention (p.11). Combined, these studies suggest that the social experiences of Black girls in predominantly White schools may be negative due to peer hostility.

Families

There is robust literature on the ways that families socialize youth in relation to racial beliefs and ideologies (e.g., Hughes et al., 2009). As stated in the introduction, racial socialization refers to “the transmission of parents’ world views about race and ethnicity to children by way of subtle, overt, deliberate and unintended mechanisms” (Hughes, 2003, p. 15). As Hughes and colleagues’ note, “Some parents teach group differences, discrimination, and disadvantage; others teach history, culture, and traditions; others emphasize the value of diversity and egalitarian perspectives; still others do some combination or all of these” (p. 10). A large body of research has found extensive benefits of parental racial socialization on children’s well-being and development throughout childhood (Anderson et al., 2018; Hughes et al., 2006; Neblett et al., 2012). During adolescence, in particular, experiences of racial bias can often serve as a catalyst for youth to engage in discussions of race with their parents (Hughes & Johnson, 2001).

The nature and the content of the socialization messages Black youth receive from their parents may differ by gender. For example, Chavous and Cogburn (2007) argue that while many Black families endorse egalitarian views of gender, patriarchal perspectives may persist more broadly within the Black community, leading to differential socialization of boys and girls. Importantly, more research is needed that explores how Black girls receive or interpret the socialization they receive from caregivers. In other words, how a Black girl interprets her parents’ messages in relation to her own identities is an important avenue for understanding ERI, just as much as a report from parents about their practices (Chavous and Cogburn, 2007). Therefore, both the level and the type of socialization Black girls receive, as well as the meaning they ascribe to those messages are important considerations in understanding the role of parents in Black girls’ ERIs.

Participants

Data for the present study were drawn from a longitudinal, mixed methods study of more than 200 middle school students. The larger project was focused on how racial/ethnic diversity plays a role in students’ social experience and included participants from two racially diverse public middle schools in the Southeastern United States. Oak Forest Middle School had a student body that was 5% Asian American, 19% Black/African American, 20% Hispanic/Latinx, 7% Multiracial, and 48% White. In contrast, the student body at Mountainview Middle School was 4% Asian American, 9% Black/African American, 7% Hispanic/Latinx, 7% Multiracial, and 72% White. Just under half (45%) of students at Oak Forest and about one third (31%) of students at Mountain View met state-determined criteria for economic disadvantage ( i.e., eligible for free/reduce lunch, receiving Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), eligible for Medicaid, migrant or homeless). Based on initial survey data, only 11 girls in the sample self-identified as Black or African American (including both mono-racial and multiracial identities) in the study. See Table 1 for girls’ self-identification during the current interviews. All 11 Black girls in the larger study were included in the analysis. The 11 Black girls were divided fairly evenly across the two schools (six and one and five at the other), and nine of them qualified for free or reduced-price lunch.

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Table 1.

Black Girls’ Self-Identified Race.

Pseudonym	Self-Identified Race
Aaliyah	“Um, African American [pause] basically. That’s it.”
Desiree	“Um, well, I’m mixed with White, American Indian, and African American, but I’m—I really don’t have nothing to do with American Indian and White.”
Esther	“Uh, I’m Black.”
Ezra	“Um, well, I have a lot [of cultures]. I’m a mutt. So, like, I have a lot of races. I’m um, Indian, French, Puerto Rican, Black, White, I forget the rest.”
Indiya	“Well, I would choose mine as American Indian and, like, African American—because I’m both.”
Jasmine	“I’m, uh, I’m mixed. And then on my dad’s side, it’s—like part Indian.”
Melissa	“Like, Black American. Um, yeah.”
Mya	“African American and, um, hum, I don’t know”
Naomi	“Uh, like African American?”
Shara	“Um, [pause] African American.”
Terry	Terry does not define her racial background. She describes how she avoids using racial descriptors “because I think, like, if you think of it, like, race and culture might be relate something bad and stuff like that. That’s why we use, like foods [oreo, caramel, dark chocolate], to talk about it.”

Procedure

All procedures and materials were approved by and in compliance with the university’s Institutional Review Board. Students were recruited in the cafeteria and their homeroom class and a letter was sent home to participate in this study. Students and their caregivers who were interested in participating in this study were asked to sign and return assent and consent forms. In the current study, face-to-face individual interviews and friend group interviews conducted during the 2016–2017 academic year were analyzed. This data collection process took place in schools, with the race and gender of the interviewers matching the race and gender of the youth. Friend group interviews were organized based on students’ friend nominations. Among the eleven Black girls, five of the six Black girls in School 1 and three of the four Black girls in School 2 were interviewed together as a friend group. The other two students at each school were interviewed with friends who did not identify as Black/African American. The face-to-face interviews took approximately 15 minutes, and the group interviews took approximately 20 minutes to complete.

Interviews

As part of the larger study, interviews were designed to guide students through a set of questions on social relationships as well as their sense of belonging in school. In the group interview, students also collaborated on drawing, labeling, and discussing a “cafeteria map” of peer groups in their grade. In the cafeteria map activity we developed, students identified and labeled where different student groups sat using a mockup of the school cafeteria. Then, students were asked to answer questions about the student groups on the map like “which groups get along and which groups may not get along and why?” All group interviews were both audio and video recorded.

In the individual interview, students were asked to reflect on their experiences with topics related to cultural diversity. Data from this article came from a series of questions about race, ethnicity, and culture. Sample questions included “Can you tell me what the word “race” means to you?” “How do you define your own racial [ethnic/cultural] background?” “How did you learn about race/ethnicity/culture?” and “What does being [your race] mean to you?” All individual interviews were audio recorded. Following data collection, all group and individual interview transcriptions were transcribed, cleaned to ensure transcription accuracy, and preliminarily processed by a team of researchers using a standardized form to promote data familiarity.

Descriptive Definitions of Race

Table 2 presents Black girls’ definitions of race. Black girls’ definitions were consistent with previous studies showing that youth often begin with literal meanings of race before moving to more abstract definitions that account for the social realities of race (Quintana, 2008). There was not a great deal of variation among the responses in our sample. Most girls reported concrete, literal definitions of race that only referred to physical characteristics. For example, Mya and Shara only described race as skin color. Indiya also focused on skin color, saying that race “means to me—it means to me, like, what color you are.” Some girls included culture in their definitions of race. Esther, for instance, began to expand the definition to include culture but had a difficult time with terminology. She said, “um, like, your ethnicity—your eth-eh, okay. I can’t say that word today” followed by “um, so, like, the color of your skin and stuff like that.” Jasmine’s definition, “what type of culture you’re from and, like, mostly like your skin color,” also began to expand the definition beyond physical characteristics. However, only two students began to link the definition of race to the “social realities” of race (Quintana, 2008). Melissa did not provide a definition because she felt like race “doesn’t mean anything to me because I don’t make fun of people’s race” and Terry described race as a physical characteristic (“Um, so pretty much what color you are,”) part of your culture (“Like, who, like, what race your family is),” and a set of behaviors (“the way you act”).

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Table 2.

Black Girls’ Definitions of Race.

Pseudonym	What does race mean to you?
Aaliyah	“So one’s when you’re running or, like, your culture and stuff.”
Desiree	“The first term means like if you-like in a competition, you’re racing. The second term means like different people, like Black, White, Indian, and all of that.”
Esther	“Um, like, your ethnicity—your eth-eh, okay. I can’t say that word today.” “Um, so, like, the color of your skin and stuff like that.”
Ezra	“Um, someone’s, like, heritage of where they come from. And, like, a mixture sometimes, like, some biracial, some African American and some Caucasians—and Hispanics.”
Indiya	“So, race, it means to me—it means to me, like, what color you are.”
Jasmine	“What type of culture you’re from and, like, mostly like your skin color.”
Melissa	“Um, it doesn’t really mean anything to me because I don’t make fun of people’s race, like, I don’t care what they are. I’ll still be their friend and stuff.”
Mya	“Skin color”
Naomi	“Uh, race means [pause] I don’t know. Um, basically, I guess, comparing whites versus blacks or different—maybe different races like different types of people like African-American, White, Hispanic, all that.”
Shara	“Different colored people”
Terry	“Um, so pretty much what color you are. Like, who, like, what race your family is. So, like, if you’re, like, African American, White—be like, European, Canadian or something like that. And I guess, like the way you act. I mean, like, at our school there’s two types of Black . . .”

The Influence of Socialization Experiences in Shaping What It Means to be Black Among Black Girls

While Black girls’ definitions of race tended to be more abstract, Black girls’ responses to what being their race meant to them was grounded in their own social realities. In other words, the attitudes and beliefs about their own race was about more than the color of their skin. Desiree, for example, said that being her race meant “having a darker skin,” but she also tied it to where she once lived, adding that it also meant “um, [pauses]—maybe the projects, maybe.” She made this connection because she once lived in a “bad” neighborhood with her family and had to move.

Terry began her definition by discussing how her and her friends used food names, like “chocolate truffle” or “dark chocolate” to discuss the color of people’s skin, but she also described the social implications of being African or African American in school. Terry described how there are “two types of Black” at her school—the “ghetto one” and the “African one.” In using the mock-up map of the cafeteria provided during the interview, Terry pointed to where “pretty much all the people that were Black sit”; however, she distinguished between the spot where Black students with one or both parents who are from Africa sit (where she sits) and where the other group where “the ghetto, like African Americans sit.” She continued to say that she thought her group was more approachable by non-Black peers because “when they think of ghetto, then you relate that to, like, bad stuff, like shootings—and like braids and stuff like that.” Aaliyah also reflected on the negative stereotypes associated with being African American held by peers, saying that being African American was “um, being something people don’t like, and yeah.” She continued, describing how being African American has been used as a means to “disrespect people” and enslave them and it is associated with “how, like, we act bad and, like, all that stuff.”

According to Ezra, “having a lot of races” meant that she would be misunderstood by peers. She said that people often think she is “fully Black” and make assumptions about her race that make her “uncomfortable” because people “expected me to be something I’m not.” She elaborated, saying, “because, like, like, if you like . . . it bothered me because, like, they told me what I was before I could tell them what I was.” Notably, only two girls provided positive beliefs and attitudes about their own ethnic-racial identities. Mya defined being African American as “what I am and what my parents are” and Naomi defined being Black as “uh Black and proud, I guess.” Another student, Shara, said “I don’t know [what it means to me].”

What is surprising about the difference in how Black girls defined race and what being their own race meant to them is that while Black girls’ definitions of race focused on concrete definitions, such as physical appearance, their own self-understanding focused on the interactions they had within their microsystems. Therefore, we believe it is important to distinguish between students’ knowledge of the definition of race and their application of that knowledge to their own lives. The large number of Black girls who described negative social incidents associated with being their race indicate that social experiences play an important role in the self-understanding of Black girls in early adolescence.

Exploring the Specific Messages Received in Black Girls’ Multiple Worlds

Next, the girls were asked how they learned about race. Black girls’ responses fell within the four central worlds (i.e., families, peer groups, classrooms and schools) as outlined in Phelan et al. (1991) Multiple Worlds model. Black girls most often reported that they learned about race in school, specifically in history class. In alignment with previous findings about the racial socialization process within families during adolescence, the discussions of race and racism in school often served as a catalyst for additional discussions about race within families (Hughes & Johnson, 2001). Peer groups played the second largest role, with classroom discussions of race and racism influencing the nature of the bullying and teasing of Black girls by peers. It is important to differentiate the worlds and the messages and experiences that occur within that world because each setting may hold a different level of importance and influence. Therefore, the following paragraphs explore each setting in detail, exploring the messages and experiences described by the girls who identified that setting as a place where they learned about race.

Limitations

First, this study did not explicitly ask Black girls about what they heard and learned about being a Black girl within their worlds. The larger study was designed to understand race and did not ask about both race and gender, which may have impacted the ways that Black girls described their experiences and the absence of explicit discussions of gender as well as other identities in conjunction with race. In addition, we only explored what students learned about race within the world that they identified during the interview. Therefore, we were unable to explore patterns of contradiction or congruence between each of their social worlds. Future research should ask about what they learned about race within each of their social worlds to examine the congruence or dissonance between worlds. Second, this study acknowledges the role of institutions in shaping the education and lived experiences of Black girls; future research should explore how factors such as academic tracking, discipline, and other school-wide policies shape the educational experiences of Black girls. Finally, the larger study from which we drew our analytic sample was not designed to explore classroom-level effects; future observational research is needed to examine the role of specific lessons on outcomes.

Implications

This study took place in a Southern State, where the role of confederate history is still prominent. This may partially explain why so many of the girls brought up slavery when discussing their knowledge of what it means to be Black; however, curricular standards for middle grades U.S. history classes are also at play and may be representative of national trends across middle grades (SPLC, 2018). Bishop (2009) argues that educators can de-stigmatize slave ancestry by “placing the responsibility for slavery outside the enslaved, and by focusing on the ways enslaved people actively sought to liberate themselves, if not physically, then psychologically” through the pursuit of freedom, love for their family, and the importance of learning to read. It was evident that the girls in the present study had not been exposed to a “de-stigmatized” telling of African enslavement and were left to figure out on their own how to make sense of this history in relation to their personal ERI.

While this study emphasizes individuals’ phenomenological experiences and does not claim blanket generalizability, other students may be processing the same messages in their worlds. Future studies should continue to examine ERI meaning making in context. Importantly, this study also illustrates potential pathways for the production and reproduction of “damaging” and “controlling” ideologies (i.e., through school curriculum and by peers). These pathways may be important in understanding other marginalized students experiences in schools, which may have implications for youth’s sense of group pride, affirmation, and belonging, and their views on how others feel about their group (i.e., public regard; Rivas-Drake et al., 2014; Sellers et al., 1998).

The award-winning author Jacqueline Woodson asked herself “What am I going to do about a time of my life in which the brilliance of black girls had no mirror?” as she wrote Another Brooklyn, a story about Black girlhood (Patrick, 2017). This question is also relevant for the field of education: How can we actively support the identity development of Black girls as they navigate classrooms and hallways and other spaces during the school day that convey messages that Black girls are devalued? For instance, how can educators integrate liberatory narratives of Black girlhood that serve as mirrors, reflecting Black girls’ lived experiences across history? How might teachers integrate all students’ personal biographies to provide windows (Bishop, 1990; Style, 1988) into the lived experiences of a diverse classroom in ways that promote inclusiveness and identity affirmation? In what ways can parents and schools work together to promote racial pride? How can educators promote critical consciousness—advancing knowledge that pushes students to challenge the status quo master narrative (Ladson-Billings, 1995)? Answers to these questions offer exciting avenues for future research.