[nascentthoughts2]

Moved and provoked. 

[nascentthoughts2]

Identity in Formation

Today I read a piece on the ways in which Black girls form identity in independent schools. I have been thinking a lot about the ways in which the experiences of Black girls differ across K12 settings. Independent schools are different from urban public schools are different from rural public schools are different from catholic/private schools. Thus, it is important to keep in mind that Black girls identity formation in independent schools are different than Black girls in other K12 settings. When thinking deeply about this and how we approach solutions to support Black girls in the ways they need to be supported we must always consider context. Context provides nuance and forces researchers, practitioners, and teacher educators to think about the ways in which Black girls intersecting identities are the same in some situations, yet different in others. This researcher examined Black girl critical literacies in independent schools. Her first study spanned over a significant amount of time, allowing her to get to know the Black girls (who she refers to as experts) of their own experiences. Grounded in the work of Collins, hooks, and Brown, the researcher has gleaned that the experiences of Black girls in predominantly white independent schools are different than that of other Black girls in other contexts. Her Black girl critical literacy framework focuses on Black girls’ emotional literacy, agency, activism, and development of critical consciousness. In her conversations with Black girls she suggests that these are for themes that are the precipice for understanding how to create space and place for Black girls to thrive in independent school settings. In addition, she also grounds her assertions and understandings of how Black girls epistemologies and ontologies are taken up by Brown (2013), who suggests that Black girls have a vision, are inventive, have expansive vision beyond their identity, have a sense of radical courage and interdependence, and a praxis that manifest as a result of their action and reflection. It must be said that Black girls are always vigilant and that they are always reading the world, as the world is always reading them. I think this researchers perspective and attention to Black girl critical literacies is an important take. Though Black women and girls are often on the periphery of the conversation, placing their experiences in the center of the conversation helps us to support difference in difference amongst Black girls. We are not a monolith.  

[nascentthoughts2]

A Letter to Black Girls from a Future Teacher Educator

[nascentthoughts2]

“I Can Only Do Me” in Black Girl Magic Beyond the Hashtag: Twenty-First-Century Century Acts of Self-Definition (2019)

Today I read, “I Can Do Me”. In the book chapter the researchers examined the ways in which African American, Caribbean American and West African young adult girls navigate and name themselves in Brooklyn, New York. This piece was particularly close to me because I am from New York and spent my first four years of teaching in Brooklyn. In so many ways the Black girls that I taught are represented in this study. Thinking more recently about which Black girls I would like to engage and work with during my doctoral journey, I recognize the importance of being able to consider “which” Black girls I intend to name because Black girls are not a monolith. Our interlocking oppressions may be similar, but our standpoints are different based on how we see and name ourselves and what our lived experiences are. This is why conversations around intersectionality are so very important. 

Further, I think this study did a really amazing job at recognizing this. The more I read about Black girlhood studies, I recognize that the issues that Black girls face in and out of schools are mainly taken up by Black women. I find this particularly important because I value the work that can be done in affinity spaces. Thus, the research study examines Black girl experiences at KAVI, a violence prevention program, that serves Black girls. It is clear that within the study the Black girls that participate in KAVI have a rapport with the researchers, they speak freely and name themselves for themselves. The researchers are also keenly aware of the language that is often placed on youth, language like “at risk” (has always made me upset”, often in school spaces, I would ask “at risk for what?” The authors instead take up the term “in risk” and also point out that in many ways the very institutions that should be empowering Black girls are same institutions that push them out. Grounded in Black feminists epistemologies, the research conducted by these women came up with four common practices of Black girls, the first is that Black girls are always resisting, the second is that their transnational identities are unique and complicate the narrative of Black girls and how they know and be. Third, Black girls are deeply immersed and loyal to their friends and family (sometimes to a fault, I know this all too well) and last, Black girls are embody Black feminisms centering and naming themselves for themselves. 

All and all, Black girls are not a monolith and in order to support Black girls in and out of schools we must commit to “seeing” them as individuals. Black girls are worthy and sacred! 

[nascentthoughts2]

In Search of Our Mothers Gardens (1972)

“for me the woman who literally covered the holes in our walls with sunflowers” (Walker, 1972). 

Last night I read a piece from Alice Walker (1972). In this piece she pushed back on white supremacist capitalist patriarchy. She talked about the Black woman’s body not being her own and the ways in which writers like Jean Toomer and Virgina Woolfe have failed to consider or ask what it means to live in the Black woman’s body. Historically our mothers and grandmothers have committed to make something out of nothing. Not given the titles of artists for three hundred years because they were forced to operate within spaces that surveilled their creativity and most importantly their bodies. Black women’s bodies were used for white men’s toil, to have babies that were theirs and not theirs at the same time. They were raped and forced to get back up again, to take care of white women and their children. Truly roses who sprouted up from concrete, their poems etched in their spirituality, always creating, always nurturing their artistic selves; they were just forced to be artistic in their own way. Phillis Wheatly is one example and their are countless others whose names we will never know, but they were our great great grandmothers and great grandmothers, not formally named artists, but they were certainly exercising and embodying their capabilities. Their joy as life force, their joy in slithers, their joy as resistance, their joy as erotic, their joy as justice. Alice Walker’s mother is the foci of In Search of Our Mother’s Gardens, reminding us that know and find ourselves is to know whose we are. Lisa etched the importance of education in me and I will do the same for my children and they will do the same for their children. We will continue to make nothing out of something, our bodies free of surveillance because we will trace our lineages and ourselves back to that which is Godly and above all else, we will look to joy and the flowers that our mothers planted for us so that we might be free. This is for the women “who literally covered the holes in our walls with sunflowers” (p. 408). You are love and light. 

[nascentthoughts2]

Multiple Identities and Literacies of Black girlhood

As Today I read a piece that talked about the importance of creating space and place for Black girls. The authors grounded the discussion in Black women’s literary societies of the 19th century.  In The Liberator,  an abolitionist newspaper, Black women placed what seems to have been an ad that called other Black women to join a literary society in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Based on the reading,  I gathered that these women saw literacy as a way to  liberate Black women and Black people as whole. Thus, the authors committed to continuing this tradition by creating literate spaces where Black girls from K-12 can thrive in and out of school. It is clear that the authors saw the need to provide such spaces because Black women and girls continue to occupy the margins. Though Black girls often exists on the periphery of conversation in and out of schools, the authors bring them to center, acknowledging their literacy practices. Overall, the piece examines the strengths and challenges of what it means to create space and place for Black girls. Challenges included capacity to continue programming, lack of resources, and negative outlooks on the ways in which Black girls see themselves and how society sees them. The strengths included creating physical space where Black girls could be together, learning about themselves as Black girls, and developing ways to express themselves through writing practices. Overall the work being done to ensure that Black girls thrive and not merely survive is being done by none other than Black women. Our continued fight toward liberation is apart of our healing. I am my sisters keeper. 

[nascentthoughts2]

Untitled

My Black mother knew the consequences of birthing Black bodies/ Black babies

That she could have us and potentially lose us to natural causes or white men 

She is traumatized from the Black bodies being dropped in streets for consumption of Facebook and Twitter for Amerikkka

She worries just a little bit harder 

For my brothers

For her brothers 

For her uncles 

For her husband

Mami’s prayer is that we return home in one piece/ this brings peace/ to her heart/ to her hurt

She smiles just a little bit harder when she see us/ aware that when they see us they see something profoundly different/ not love/ not somebody’s baby/ perhaps strange fruit 

I’ll hug her just a tad bit tighter when I see her 

This embrace is all Mami has to remind her that she made the sacrifice in having us and that we have traveling mercy upon return 

She knew the consequences of having us could potentially end in heartbreak/ but she continues to pray 

Here we are hearing the reasons she worries 

A call is that much more important 

A FaceTime is that much more important 

Because my Black mother worries differently  

[nascentthoughts2]

You could not have told me that I would be here, studying to think about the ways in which to construct space and place with/for the young people I served. Alice Walker is a muse for my thoughts about joy and whether or not it is an act of resistance or whether it is simply apart of Black women and girls ways of being and knowing. My understanding of joy is that it is not ephemeral, instead it is long lasting. It is a conjuring, it something we carry with us as a way to maintain our sanity. I dream of a pedagogy of joy that does not simply imply resistance, but a joy that is centering Black women and girls ways of being and knowing. At the periphery of every movement therein lies women and their children, centering them helps us to think about what grows on the margins and from the concrete. It is here that we will produce change, it is here that we can undergo the process of freedom and love.  We do not possess joy in response to white supremacist capitalist patriarchy, instead we possess it in spite of white supremacist capitalist patriarchy. 

[nascentthoughts2]

I have not been here in a while. I cannot claim to be a writer if I do not actively practice it every single day. Sometimes you  find solace in space, for going back to what you know is best to move forward. 

Getting to Africa Someday 

I can only post Europe 

but Africa be in me 

Deeply ingrained 

In all that I do

In how I build community 

In how I love 

I will get there someday 

- Nascent Thoughts 

[lilybrandin-deactivated20170419]

[tpfnewsdesk-deactivated20181216]

You would think that the above photo is from a foriegn country. Nope. This is currently from Charlotte, NC.

[rubyandmoon-blog]

[purplebuddhaproject]

The most precious gift we can offer anyone is our attention. When mindfulness embraces those we love, they will bloom like flowers.

Thích Nhất Hạnh (via purplebuddhaproject)

[nativeamericanconfessions-deact]

There should be a White History Month in America. That way we can teach all about the things White Americans have done in history, like:

1 Cherokee Trail of Tears 2 Japanese American internment 3 Philippine-American War 4 Jim Crow 5 The genocide of Native Americans 6 Transatlantic slave trade 7 The Middle Passage 8 The history of White American racism 9 Black Codes 10 Slave patrols 11 Ku Klux Klan 12 The War on Drugs 13 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo 14 How white racism grew out of slavery and genocide 15 How whites still benefit from slavery and genocide 16 White anti-racism 17 The Southern strategy 18 The rape of enslaved women 19 Madison Grant 20 The Indian Wars 21 Human zoos 22 The colonization of aboriginals in australia 23 White flight 24 Redlining 25 Proposition 14 26 Homestead Act 27 Tulsa Riots 28 Rosewood massacre 29 Tuskegee Experiment 30 Lynching 31 Hollywood stereotypes 32 Indian Appropriations Acts 33 Immigration Act of 1924 34 Sundown towns 35 Chinese Exclusion Act 36 Emmett Till 37 Vincent Chin 38 Islamophobia 39 Indian boarding schools 40 King Philip’s War 41 Bacon’s Rebellion 42 American slavery compared to Arab, Roman and Latin American slavery 43 History of the gun 44 History of the police 45 History of prisons 46 History of white suburbia 47 Lincoln’s racism and anti-racism 48 George Wallace Governor of Alabama 49 Cointelpro 50 Real estate steering 51 School tracking 52 Mass incarceration of black men 53 Boston school busing riots

By the way  I got this list from facebook so I’m not an expert but I encourage everyone to look some of this stuff up, and so much more, if I missed something, go ahead and add!

Oh yeah,

54 chopping off indigenous women´s breasts off of leisure during the genocide

55 slamming indigenous children against huge rocks during the genocide

56 spaniards dividing into groups the indigenous women each white settler was gonna own and rape during the american genocide

57 In the catholic missions nailing native americans on crosses to represent the 12 disciples

58 and this: (I recommend the book The American Holocaust)

I don´t think yall understand how wicked these people are

[nativeamericanconfessions-deact]

59.  The Unangan evacuation and internment during World War II

[alwaysbewoke]

60. Dropping an Atomic Bomb on Japan even though the military knew that Japan was beaten and was near surrender.

61. The government assassination of Martin Luther King Jr

62. White america’s support of Apartheid

63. Nazism

64. Skinheads

65. Various lies attempting to paint Ancient Egyptians as white Europeans 

66. “Modifying” authentic Egyptian artworks that demonstrate Black characteristics so they instead made it seem that Egyptians were white

67. Raping of Native American women and girls

68. The murder of Taíno Natives on the island of Ayiti (which we now call Haiti)

69. White racism ingrained in GI Bill, New Deal, Social Security Act and more

70. Second class badge (The History of Racism within Police Departments)

71. The ordering by the PBA to have cops terrorize NYC’s black and Puerto Rican communities

72. The destruction of Black Wall Street

73. The destruction of at least 10 other thriving Black communities

74. The History of Serial Killers (aka white males on murderous rampages)

75. White corporate sweatshop (Nike, Adidas)

76. Human trafficking

77. High rate of child molestation and rape among white communities

78. Forced sterilization of Blacks and Native women

79. Racist indoctrination of Black women through the media (ex: convincing Black women that unless they straightened their hair, they would not be considered beautiful, hired for jobs, make a living and etc)

80. “Last Hired, First Fired” racist hiring practices

81. Creation of various racial slurs

82. Poisoning of the environment through illegal disposal of toxins

[morenitadelaluna-deactivated201]

🙃

[reverseracism]

👀 y'all still want it or???

[itzyaboy-dame]

[badgyal-k-deactivated20190901]

They always ask for it every February

[blondie]

83. Whitewashing in Hollywood 84. Using National Guard to barricade black folk in a literally burning neighborhood during Watts Rebellion (portrayed as Watts Riots) 85. Mass cultural appropriation by white-owned and white-market brands for profit of Navajo, African-American, Hindi, etc. traditions

[general-sassy-pants]

This is the America they’re referring to when they say Make America Great Again.

[stankyleg-deactivated2918973]

You know, this would make this BEST master post.

[bratzpiink]

OMG YAS HO

[nibxi]

So if there was a white history month it has to be about every bad / atrocious event they’ve ever had in history? I don’t see black history month being about all the shit that race has been a part of..? Not seeing how this even makes a point really (we don’t need a white history month but holy shit at least make a point in the right direction)

[microgoeswild]

Lmao all this shit happened!!! It’s not taught! Black people are casually reminded of our fuck ups every time one of us dies unarmed. But we still KNOW. You don’t see giving people an accurate depiction of how white ppl have been fucking this country up for centuries as a point in the right direction?

[onlyblackgirl]

there a whole lot of non white people who don’t know about this stuff either. This really just history that needs to be taught period. 

[whenindoubtapplymoreglitter]

A good place to start is reading Howard Zinn’s “A People’s History of the United States”. It’s not perfect but it’s 100x more accurate account of US history than any college or secondary textbook.

[nascentthoughts2]

As a US History teacher I will say that we teach all the things!!

[purplebuddhaproject]

[rubydat98]

Shoutouts to the guys that make their girl feel like the most beautiful girl in the world

[nascentthoughts2]