Conversations in Color: Conceptualizing an Intersectional Awareness of Anti-Black Gendered Racism Among University-Based Black Girls

Abstract

University-based and high school Black girls in Circle of Sisters, a within-high-school identity-based dialogue program, increasingly attributed intersectional oppression to societal structures. Discussion supported their lived experience processing, enriching their intersectional awareness and activism. University-based Sisters enrolled in the facilitation training course Conversations in Color identified their program facilitation as resistance to misogynoir. Accordingly, I assert that the intersectional awareness scaffolded within such programs helps Black girls reconcile the contrast between their academic and sociopolitical prowess and (internalized) gendered-racial stereotypes. Further, I use this dissertation to argue that Conversations in Color and Circle of Sisters combat school misogynoir by countering Black feminine intersectional invisibility (thus directly responding to calls in psychological and education literature). Thus, I am conducting focus groups and interviews using Critical Conversation Space and Sista Circle methodologies to investigate how university-based Black girls developed an intersectional awareness of misogynoir. This dissertation also endeavors to make plain the dimensions conceptualized to comprise an intersectional awareness. My dissertation is an act of Black feminist praxis, relying on Black feminist thought; positive youth development for girls of color; and critical consciousness theory as theoretical frameworks. Ultimately, I intend to counteract the misattribution and usurping of Black girls’ sociopolitical praxis through my dissertation study.