While the mainstream media continues to narrowly define justice and reduce the site of its presence or absence to murder scenes and court cases, justice is often foreclosed long before someone is murdered and we must #SayHerName. To expand the project of Black mattering beyond race and physical death, this essay animates how body policing through school dress code policy sanctions racial-sexual violence and provide girls with an ultimatum: either abandon body sovereignty and self-expression, or accept the consequences of being read as a distraction, a problem. (Re)membering classic Black feminist theory and the 2013 case of Vanessa Van Dyke, this essay locates these underrecognized facets of state violence as an extension of the #SayHerName project. Through a Black girlhood studies framework, the author underscores embodiment as an essential measure of justice and reframes mattering through the importance of Black girls’ crowns.
AnnammaSubini AncyAnyonYolandaJosephNicole M.FarrarJordanGreerEldridgeDowningBarbaraSimmonsJohn. 2019. Black girls and school discipline: The complexities of being overrepresented and understudied. Urban Education54 (2): 211-42.
CrenshawKimberléMorrisMonique W.OcenPriscillaMasterSamanthaSherefNadiyah. 2016. #BlackGirlsMatter: Countering criminalization in and out of school. African American Policy Forum. https://vimeo.com/161634174.
9.
EssienIdaraWoodJ. Luke. 2021. I love my hair: The weaponizing of Black girls hair by educators in early childhood education. Early Childhood Education Journal49: 401-12.
10.
GillLyndon K.2012. Situating Black, situating queer: Black queer diaspora studies and the art of embodied listening. Transforming Anthropology20 (1): 32-44.
11.
GilmoreRuth Wilson. 2007. Golden gulag: Prisons, surplus, crisis, and opposition in globalizing California. Oakland, CA: University of California Press.
12.
HillDominique C.2018. Black girl pedagogies: Layered lessons on reliability. Curriculum Inquiry48 (3): 383-405.
HullAkasha (Gloria T.)Bell-ScottPatriciaSmithBarbara, eds. 1982. All the women are white, all the Blacks are men, but some of us are brave: Black women’s studies. New York, NY: The Feminist Press at the City University of New York.
15.
JordanJune. 2007. Directed by desire: The collected poems of June Jordan. Port Townsend, Washington: Copper Canyon Press, 309-312.
16.
KwakyeChamara JewelHillDominique C.CallierDurell M.2017. 10 years of Black girlhood celebration: A pedagogy of doing. Departures in Critical Qualitative Research6 (3): 1-10.
MartensenKayla Marie. 2020. Review of carceral state studies and application. Sociology Compass14 (7): e12801. doi:10.1111/soc4.12801.
19.
MorrisEdward W.PerryBrea L.2016. The punishment gap: School suspension and racial disparities in achievement. Social Problems63 (1): 68-86. doi:10.1093/socpro/spv026.
20.
MorrisMonique W.2016. Pushout: The criminalization of Black girls in schools. New York, NY: New Press.
WilliamsPatricia. 1987. Spirit-murdering the messenger: The discourse of fingerpointing as the law’s response to racism. University of Miami Law Review42: 127-58.
28.
WunConnie. 2016. Against captivity: Black girls and school discipline policies in the afterlife of slavery. Educational Policy30 (1): 171-96.
29.
WunConnie. 2018. Angered: Black and non-Black girls of color at the intersections of violence and school discipline in the United States. Race Ethnicity and Education21 (4): 423-37.
