“I Love Us for Real”: Exploring Homeplace as a Site of Healing and Resistance for Black Girls in Schools

ABSTRACT

Extant research on the education of Black girls primarily focuses on urban settings, distances study participants from the outcomes of the research, and positions Black girls as problems to be solved, rather than as critical and sociopolitical actors and agents of change. This qualitative case study enacts a humanizing research approach in exploring the experiences of a group of Black twelfth grade girls in a predominantly white high school in order to discover how they developed tools for navigating and resisting the oppression they experience through their racialized and gendered identities. Focusing on the participants’ co-construction of homeplaces for resistance and survival in school, this study reveals the need for teachers and school leaders to develop anti-racist, anti-oppressive school policies and practices. This study highlights how understanding the schooling experiences of Black girls is necessary for developing schools that foster healing, solidarity, and a critical consciousness necessary for social transformation.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Data retrieved from 2015 U.S. News and World Report.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Lauren Leigh Kelly

Lauren Leigh Kelly, Ph.D., is an assistant professor of Urban Social Justice Teacher Education in the Graduate School of Education at Rutgers University. Kelly taught high school English for ten years in New York where she also developed courses in Hip Hop Literature and Culture, Spoken Word poetry, and Theatre Arts. Kelly’s research focuses on adolescent critical literacy development, Black feminist theory, Hip Hop pedagogy, critical consciousness, and the development of critical, culturally sustaining pedagogies.