April 29, 2022 • 43 mins
Anita Hill interviews author and educator Monique Morris about the adultification of Black and Brown girls, the scrutiny their bodies and behaviors receive, and the work Dr. Morris is doing to shift the narrative around Black girlhood.
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin Getting Even is produced by Pushkin Industries. Subscribe to
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(00:35):
up on the Getting Even show page in Apple Podcasts
or at Pushkin dot Fm. Black girls are often the
most consistent and fervent articulators of injustice because we are
uniquely positioned to see lots of ways in which this
oppression manifests. Doctor Monique Morris is an author, advocate, and
(01:00):
founding president of the National Black Women's Justice Institute. I
believe in a justice that doesn't lead to oppression of
any kind. I write about it, and I work for it.
She's a pioneer in the field of black girlhood studies
who examines how economic and social factors intersect in the
lives of black and brown girls. I anchor my work
(01:24):
in my own experiential knowledge, having been a black girl
in the society. This work, to me is really sort
of less an academic inquiry and really more about a
reclamation of self in order to undo the structural oppressions
that so many black girls live with. By working directly
with black and brown girls, she better understands the harsh
(01:47):
scrutiny they face, and doctor Morris is taking what she
has learned and offering solutions to educators. And I think
Black Girlhood Studies is a way to push past the
stereotypes and tropes that have informed so much of how
we've come to understand and construct black girlhood. Black Girlhood
Studies allows black girls to reclaim that and reshape it.
(02:21):
I'm Anita Hill. This is Getting Even, my podcast about
equality and what it takes to get there. On Getting Even,
I speak with people who are improving our imperfect world,
people who took risks and broke the rules. In this episode,
I'm speaking with doctor Monique Morris about the adultification, sexualization,
(02:46):
and criminalization that black girl's face. Doctor Morris is the
author of five books, including her most recent, Cultivating Joyful
Learning Spaces for Black Girls. Can you explain what some
of the issues are in the way the world sees
(03:06):
black girls? Yeah, black girls are seen as available to
the public. Black girls are in their bodies, in their language,
in their creativity treated as if they are disposable and
that their being is negotiable. And that plays out in
(03:28):
a lot of different ways. It plays out in the
reading of their behaviors as more adult like we now
talk about as adultification of Black girls, and the way
in which that then leads to the reading of their
behaviors as worthy of harsher punishment than their white counterparts,
mostly because it erases their childhood and denies them an
(03:49):
opportunity to express their fullness as a growing young person.
Doctor Jamelia Blake and Rebecca Epstein at the Georgetown Center
on Poverty and Inequality did a report that looked at
adultification and found that Black girls experience this reading of
their behaviors as more adult like from the age of five,
and it peques when they're between the ages of ten
and utine, and that then means that the adults around
(04:13):
them are seeing them as in need of less protection,
less comfort. They are seen as more independent to know
more about a subject matter like sex than their white counterparts,
and so that leads to how we then understand their
capacities around and experiences with trauma, whether we recognize their
trauma or not. So many black girls are seen as
combative and sassy. You know the tropes around the loud
(04:35):
black girl with the attitude quote unquote the attitude for me,
the black girl attitude is an open inquiry and really
is a statement about black girls amazing capacity to identify
injustice in a society that is grounded in the principles
of white men's priorities, and that when we don't articulate
(04:57):
our happiness and well being along those constructs, oftentimes there's
a punishment assigned to that. And so black girls who
do have some volume, who do have some agency in
what they know, are often received as problematic. It's something
that I have been mapping in educational spaces for some
(05:18):
years now, but there are others who have been looking
at how adultification plays out in communities, how it plays
out in health scenarios, how it plays out across the board,
to help us better understand the construct of what black
girls are supposed to be doing in this society, how
they're supposed to behave, quote unquote, how they're supposed to speak,
(05:41):
and what constitutes then a good girl if she's in
a black body. I'm going to back off a little
bit because I mean, there is so much going on.
But you said that you come into this work from
a personal point of view. Do you feel like your
experience adultification as a girl. Oh, I was definitely an
(06:02):
adultified child, and my behaviors and my body were absolutely
treated in the problematic ways that I've described. That seems
to be more routine for other black girls. You know,
me showing up to school in a tank top and
being told I have to go home because I'm too provocative.
But I'm watching my white and Asian counterparts we're the
(06:22):
same thing that I'm wearing, and be allowed to stay
at school or not told that they're provocative. These kinds
of experiences that I had, you know, in the nineteen eighties,
are still happening today. And what's different, I think is
that you know, when it was said to me in
the eighties, I dismissed it as something that was only
(06:43):
happening to me, right. I didn't understand that this was
part of a pattern of black girlhood that was being
experienced across the country. When you're walking through school, to
have your body consistently viewed as something that needs to
be examined for its appropriateness in the learning environment is
(07:04):
deeply problematic. We call that the policing of black girl
bodies in the sense that it's other adults who are
looking at the clothing the way that the clothing fits
on the bodies of our girls, the way that the
clothing is in the appropriate color. A lot of it
has to do with the enforcement of school dress codes.
But the enforcement of school dress codes invites adults to
(07:27):
be looking at the bodies of girls, many of whom
are experiencing early onset puberty, many of whom may just
have fuller figures, and many of whom don't, but still
experience this regular routine surveillance of their bodies in a
way that suggests to them that how they look in school,
(07:48):
how they show up to school with their own bodies,
is more important than the fact that they're there to learn.
You know, I used to joke that I can walk
into a focus group or talk to a group of
girls across the racial groups, and the second I start
talking about the dress code, everyone comes alive. Because girls
inherently understand the dress codes to be a sexist structure,
(08:09):
inherently understand that the enforcement is different for girls and boys.
The enforcement is different for non binary young people. The
enforcement is one that leans into the biases of adults
and the structures that you allow for these biases to
be supported. Many many schools do not have dress codes.
(08:29):
They're more concerned with the fact that young people are
there present in school. They're more concerned with having conversations
about respect than having young people wear clothes that they
feel will be less provocative to the boys, you know,
or make girls bodies less provocative to the boys. When
we talk about this policing of black girl bodies, it
certainly has to do with that. But there's another piece too.
(08:52):
How we normalized this expectation that black girls will be loud, sassey, combative,
and sexualized without talking about remedy. And so I have
brought my own experiences and my experiences as a mother
to two black girls, right. That is about how we
have honest conversations about some of these things, How we
(09:12):
talk about protections from oppressions not just through a lens
of race alone, but race and gender right and sexuality,
and get more complex with our young people who are
ready for those conversations. All of that informs how I
approach my work. You know, I really think that this
lived experience that I had in a black girl body
has absolutely made me receptive to some of the new
(09:35):
language and emergent language that girls are bringing to this work.
I think the other scholars in this space are absolutely
doing the same thing. The work of Dominique Hill around Working,
for example, and some of the other scholars who have
been deeply exploring black girl movements and the ways in
which these are expressive healing modalities as opposed to being
hypersexualized in our popular culture to facilitate a deepening of
(10:00):
the oppression. All really important work. It's also can take
us some time to unpack what this movement really means,
right and what's on the other side of this movement
before we can even begin to get to the other
side to the solutions. I still think people don't understand
(10:21):
the severity of the issues. You've talked about adultification, and
that can have consequences in terms of the responsibilities that
we place on children, but it can also lead to criminalization,
yes of girls. Yes. The way that this adultification then
leads to criminalization is that it denies black girls the
(10:49):
opportunity to have the root causes of their behaviors explored.
When there is disruption, there's a different treatment of black
girl behaviors because there's this assumption that they should know better,
because there's this assumption that they don't need protection or nurturing,
because there's this assumption that they can handle whatever punishment
(11:13):
is deemed necessary, and there is this historical construct around
the need for black children to be experiencing surveillance and
punishment as the remedy for whatever student behavior is deemed
undesirable at that time. In other words, it's an invitation
(11:34):
for state intervention. Yes, And that's where the disposability of
black girl bodies comes in. That's where this question about
how black girls are experiencing school discipline and a removal
from school come into question. One of the things that
I and other folks have mapped is that black girls
are the only group of girls who experience an overrepresentation
(11:55):
at every stage of discipline in the school and at
every educational level. So across the spectrum of discipline and
at every educational level, we see black girls experiencing a
heightened degree of contact. And that is not because black
girls are more likely to make mistakes than other children.
It is largely attributed to how adults are reading the
(12:15):
behaviors and how they are designing structures in the schools
where black girls are that are deeply punitive, that are
not responsive to trauma, and that don't recognize what these
children actually need, you know. And so one of the
ways that I think our society continues to play into
that narrative is by allowing our conversations about black girls
(12:38):
to refer to them as young women. And sometimes we
don't mean it, you know, probably mean it in a
way that honors her agency. But with black girls, it's
it's really important to recognize the child that is in
front of you. Of course, there is the issue of
police officers within schools, yes, and there is the physical
policing of black girls. But there's also the emotional policing, yes, absolutely,
(13:03):
of black girls that not only law enforcement takes party,
but also the teachers take part in. That's right. Can
you talk about that and how you respond to that.
There's also this policing of black girl expressions of joy,
like we saw this incident and upset New York where
girls were actually strip searched because they were laughing and
(13:27):
giddy and they were assumed to be on drugs. It's
again rooted in this perception that black girls just can't
be happy, that they have to be on something if
they're going to be loud, and you can walk into
rooms and experientially talk to people about what it has
been like to laugh in your fullness and be told
that your laugh is too loud, or your laugh is
too disruptive, that your expressions of joy are problematic. And
(13:51):
so there's this routine way that black girls are told
outright and sometimes through other signals, that their presence in
school is problematic, and certainly that that applies to their
anger as well, no question, no question, there's always this
reception that you have to trade off either being traumatized
(14:12):
or angry, right, and black women, black girls will often
tell that I can be both. I can be both
experiencing trauma and angry about it, right, and in my
expression of anger. That doesn't mean that you then say, oh,
she's aggressive, she must not be experiencing pain. That people
(14:34):
manifest pain in different ways and express pain in different ways.
We saw this play out with Makayah Bryant in Columbus.
There was an attempt to talk about what happened with
this fifteen year old girl who had been shot fatally
shot by a police officer in response to an altercation
she was having at her Foster home, and the way
that people were talking about her as a larger bodied
(14:56):
quote unquote young woman was deeply problematic to us in
this work because we were like, no, no, no, we
see a child. What we see is a fifteen year
old girl who was afraid. And if you've worked in
spaces and underst stand that black children are children and
not young adults, then you recognize all the ways in
which they are cognitively children and adolescence the same way
(15:17):
that we can see the adolescence and childhood of other children.
And that's really, you know, part of how we engage
in this question of equity and justice for our girls
is to stand in fierce protection of their childhood, fierce
protection of it. Do you believe that the police officer
(15:40):
who killed mccayah could have avoided his aggression toward her,
No question, There's not a question in my mind. There
has never been a question in my mind. I along
with others who had been in response to conditions that
were similar, where there's a fight that involves a weapon,
(16:01):
not a gun but a knife, and we could tick
through two or three interventions that didn't require her being
shot to death right in ways of de escalating that scenario.
Part of the problem is that we rely on law
enforcement to respond to every single condition, and they are
not equipped to do that. The other problem is that
(16:23):
there was a failure to see a child who was
afraid in that scenario, and there was only a response
to a person who was perceived as an aggressor with
a weapon, and so it was reduced to aggressor with
a weapon as opposed to disregulated child who is afraid
because she's actually defending herself from some adults around her.
(16:47):
The whole situation was unfortunate. So I have to say that,
you know, we never want to see those kinds of
conditions take place in our communities or any communities. But
at the same time, I have talked through conversations with
folks who have worked in foster homes who are like,
I've disarmed girls who have been in fights, you know,
five or six times a month, Right, I know how
to talk to people in a way gets their attention
(17:10):
that can disarm. If he was going to arrive with
the tool he had available to him, which was a gun,
he's a sharpshooter. He knows how to shoot. He could
have just shot her legs, but they're not taught to
do that, and so not that training is the issue,
But there are absolutely several ways where there could have
been a disarming and where there could have been a
de escalation of the issue and the tensions in that
(17:31):
fight that would preserve life. It's always hard for me
to watch the videos whenever these incidents happen. There's this
way that society has now made it routine to display
this level of black pain in our efforts to talk
about these conditions that impact black girls. Again, you know,
(17:55):
there's a replaying of the video or replaying of the scenario,
but they go viral also because some people see this
as a form of entertainment. Unfortunately, I wrote an article
years ago that was like, let's we gotta fall out
of love with black girl fights, right, Like, we have
to understand that that is not entertainment, That this is
no different than the ways that black communities were set
(18:20):
up by design to be in conflict with each other
for the entertainment of those who participated and benefited from
their oppression, and that we have to consider all the
other tools that we have available to us when there
is conflict to engage some of these other modalities and
to bring other people into our communities who love us fundamentally.
The way to deal with conflict is love. I believe
(18:44):
that all the work that I've done with young people
at various stages of their contact with the juvenile court
or criminal legal system, at various stages of their own development,
if you can lead with love and make connections and
understand and love this group of people, then your inclination
is not first to harm them. And so I think
what's exciting in this world are the ways that communities
(19:08):
are thinking innovative about strategies that do not involve law enforcement,
strategies that do not involve others who don't love us.
So I believe there's a lot of work to be
done there, but we've got to continue to elevate conversations
like the one we're having around you know, adultification and
the way that it has shaped our understanding of what
(19:28):
is at the root of some of this conflict or
what are some of the interventions that we can engage.
And that's that's been a lot of my work within
schools to talk to you know, educators about some of
these issues, because in my mind, those are the first
responders to children. After the break, Doctor Morrison I explore
(19:50):
how she is working to undo structural barriers and empower
black girls. You're listening to getting even I'm Anita Hill.
I'm speaking with doctor Monique Morris, who works directly with
(20:13):
black and brown girls to understand the denial of their childhood.
Let's talk a little bit about the historic roots. One
thing that I can recall from a documentary that I
saw just a few years ago but that stuck with me,
is that it was taken from one of the slave narratives,
(20:35):
and I recall this person who had slavery. It ended
when she was a child, but she said that during
slavery there were no such things as children. There were
only smaller slaves. And that to me triggered something that
(20:57):
helped me to think that the roots are in slavery
of this process that we're taking girls through, this denial
of their personhood, their child Absolutely, there's no question about that.
I had an opportunity actually to visit one of the
(21:18):
they call them slave houses in West Africa in two
thousand and eight. I went to Goree Island and saw
the dungeons and saw the spaces where you know, many
of our ancestors were held and they separated them according
to adult male, adult female, and the children altogether, but
they absolutely were trafficked the same and they were received
(21:43):
as property the same. Recently visited one of the ports
in South Carolina this year where those Africans who had
been enslaved and captured were brought to these shores. And
it's worth spending time in these historical moments because when
we look at the way that human bodies were trafficked
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to support the economy and the development of this nation,
it becomes critically important in how we then understand the
formation of institutions that are designed to continue to support
this nation and its understandings of who we are and
what we are supposed to be about. Black girls have
(22:28):
long been a part of the spirit of resistance right.
Black girls are often the most consistent and fervent articulators
of injustice because we are uniquely positioned to see lots
of ways in which this oppression manifests not just in
our own lives, but in the lives of others. And
that unique positioning comes from this experience of understanding structural
(22:52):
oppression being treated as just smaller slaves, the way that
black girls are then seen as little adults. But it's
also the routine way that our society has accepted that
and normalized it as something that is acceptable in any way.
So that's why the adultification question is so critically important,
but also the ability for us to unpack the historical
(23:16):
misunderstandings and misrepresentations of black girlhood in terms of reading
them as loud and sassy and combative without unpacking this
question of what is going on, what is happening, what
has been the experience? And when we talk about trauma,
I don't just talk about the sort of lived, experienced
trauma of a person. I'm also talking about the collective,
(23:37):
unresolved grief and historical trauma that being a descendant from
the institution of slavery has produced in our lives, and
being the descendant of those who experienced segregation and other
forms of violence produces in our lives. I'm grateful to
our Indigenous and Jewish communities that have also been participating
in research around historical trauma and inherited trauma, because I
(23:59):
think that there's a lot to learn between our three
communities about how our bodies are formed and shaped and
continued to grow under this pressive system of historical trauma,
and what that means for how we then process and
engage in interactions with institutions but also with people. And
so the more we hide it, the more at festers.
(24:21):
When we come into community and approach it, that's when
we can begin healing. You know, I learned recently that
my great great grandparents were publicly beaten in the period
right after slavery. I learned also that my grandparents were
systematically stolen from I had their land confiscated through economic exploitation.
(24:48):
And of course, now that I know that, I think
about my own work, which at times has focused on
economic exploitation, and my own experiences of being publicly ridiculed,
and I start to understand truly how so much of
our past generational suffering continues to live with us in
(25:13):
tangible ways in terms of lost wealth, but also in
emotional ways, and that we try to have media representations
that make sense of them, but I don't think that
they fully capture. I think in fact, media representations or
(25:34):
misrepresentations have actually played a role in the lives of
some public figures, like you know, the Williams sisters and
Misty Copeland. So there is that element of public scrutiny
and that has some really disturbing consequences in terms of
way these now women, but starting out as girls, have
(25:59):
been perceived. Can you comment on that. I will say
transgenerational trauma is real, and the sort of public presentation
of trauma in black bodies also is triggering for those
of us who have experienced it, and I would love
(26:19):
to see some other ways that the media could begin
to present and discuss some of these issues that don't
facilitate that kind of harm because there's no regulation around
it now and it's outrageous. Around the Williams sisters and
Misty Copeland, I think they unfortunately experienced many of the
same misreadings of black girlhood and black girl bodies that
(26:42):
the rest of us have experienced. In so many ways.
For all three of them, I would say there was
a masculinization of their bodies, which again you could trace
back to the institution of slavery, that because one is
physically strong, their womanhood or girlhood is seen as less present.
(27:02):
And because of our own deeply problematic ways of understanding
a gender idea entity and understanding physical representation and the
diversity of how that can manifest, this society just sort
of treats black girl bodies not only as if they
are publicly available for scrutiny, which we saw, you know,
(27:26):
the Williams sisters and Misty Copeland experience, but that we
can also then present them as somehow incompatible with this
nation's understanding of what a good girl representation is. So
to me, all of this is a part of how
(27:48):
we reclaim right. I think now we see black women
in a lot of ways, and certainly scholars and advocates
stepping into the space to say, no, you're not going
to do that right. These are our girls, These are
our young women, and they are strong, and strength is
an asset, strength is in fact a cornerstone of our
(28:10):
feminine expression. Then we're able to, I think, shift the narrative.
There's a lot of discussion about narrative shift, but I
think a lot of this narrative shift work has to
happen with a deep understanding of how our narratives sometimes
perpetuate harm because we haven't unpacked the tropes and stereotypes
and historical conditions that inform widen this nation's presentation of
(28:32):
black girlhood has been problematic in the first place. So
I like to think that there's growth in that space. Yes,
there's still a lot of work to do. Yes, there
is a lot of work to do. And I think
we cannot forget the fact that in many ways, the
way the Williams sisters were portrayed, the way Mystic Hopeland
was portrayed, were meant to really emphasize some points that
(28:58):
way black girls and women do not belong in the
rarefied settings of American tennis or Erican ballet, and therefore
we will continue to be outsiders even if we are
inside that's right, and we will be marginalized by the
(29:20):
public as well as the media. And so we have
to understand all of the consequences of what is going on,
and in many cases the motivation, conscious or unconscious about
what is happening. This whole idea of masculinity and sexualization
in the sort of combination of the two that gets
(29:40):
placed on black women's bodies and black girl's bodies in particular,
really reminds me of the tragedy of the victims of
r Kelly, ranging over thirty years and involving a number
of young Black women, and in case of Aliyah, a
(30:08):
girl maybe fourteen fifteen years old. We are not quite
sure how old she was, but we know that she
was not an adult. We need to be looking at
what was going on and why it took thirty years
to get a conviction for our Kelly from the point
of view of the women and girls who were exploited.
(30:32):
This is actually the first time I'm ever talking about R. Kelly,
because I don't usually talk about him, but I will
say this, I recognized the predator in the nineties. You
know a predator, and if you talk to people in Chicago,
they all knew. So one of the things that we
have is as a community and that we have to
trust in our conversations about combating the adultification of black girls,
(30:57):
but also the disposability of black girls. There is this
culture of celebrity in this country that forgives the bad behaviors,
evil behaviors, predatory behaviors of those who are successful, those
who have financial wealth, without the deep poverty and the
(31:20):
deep well of justice that we are willing to ignore
just because we like the beat of someone's music or
the way that they talk before a crowd. Black girls
were all alone in that conversation with R Kelly. That's
why nobody did anything. It was seen as a problem
(31:41):
that didn't affect society, but we have to come to
understand that the issues impacting black girls are issues that
impact society very much. So I'm always careful because, you know,
while that's true, I think it's important also for us
to recognize that black girls are also just worthy of
protection and worthy of inquiry in their own right. Absolutely,
(32:03):
our well being shouldn't have to be tied to the
well being of the nation in order for people to
see it as justifiable and worthy. Every community is worthy,
you know. For me, it's really deeply important for all
of us to deepen our understanding of why this work
around black girls is so critical, and I think you've
absolutely made that clear in your work. You are so
(32:29):
creative about your work. I mean, your ability to communicate
the urgency of these issues in ways that really resonate
is so impressive. You know, you've got the book push out,
You've got the documentary, which is beautifully done. Than what
else are you doing? Yeah, thank you for asking that.
(32:49):
I have two new books that are on the horizon.
One is really designed for teachers about cultivating joyful black
girl spaces learning spaces specifically, and I have a graphic
novel that will be coming out to also unpack what
happens when we support black girls and their gifts. But daily,
i'm President and CEO of Grant Makers for Girls of Color.
(33:11):
We are the nation's only philanthropic intermediary that exclusively focuses
on resourcing organizations that are led by and focused on
girls of color in the US, and so through that work,
we're able to build out a series of funds that
you do grant making in a host of areas that
impact well being of girls of color broadly, but also
(33:33):
black girls specifically. We have the Black Girl Freedom Fund
and actually, you know, in February we have Black Girl
Freedom Week, which allows us to amplify not just the
negative statistics and harmful conditions that black girls are experiencing,
but they're tremendous innovation and investment that is leading to
well being and new outcomes and organizations throughout the country.
(33:54):
So there's an opportunity for us to play many different roles.
For me, it's critically important not just to elevate the problem,
but to also be part of the solution. And you're
bringing your solutions to schools. Correct. Yes, Yes, there's a
growing community of scholars and professional development, technical assistance providers
(34:17):
who are deeply committed to this question of how we
engage schools to be learning spaces that do not make
problematic the bodies of black girls, and that examine and
assess their policies, but also talk about the practices and
the pedagogies that impact black girls. Specifically. The book that
I have sing a Rhythm Dance of Blues, which will
(34:37):
be out in paperback this summer, really does map through
some of the ways that schools are uniquely approaching some
of these issues, the way that they're using arts and
creative expression as a way to engage in some of
the healing work that needs to take place in schools,
but also to provide an opportunity for us to locate,
when it's appropriate, trauma and respond to that trauma so
(34:59):
that the diregulation can actually be remedied as opposed to criminalized.
So I'm excited by the growing body of work. Obviously,
the pandemic has complicated a lot of how schools are operating,
but I think what the pandemic has also done has
provide an opportunity for us to have a broader conversation
about how to make schools locations for healing. So that
(35:21):
they can be locations for learning, which is something that
I've been calling for for years. Now. You're doing so
so much. Is there something that you dream of doing
that you haven't done yet? Always of course, so tell
us what's on the top of your list. I am
(35:43):
working on a project that is like a life project
for me. I used to be a competitive stepper on
my sorority step team. I'm a Delta and I was
a step mistress for the New York City step team
for our step team, and we spend a lot of
time in the world of Black Greek letter organizations and
the Divine Nine or the Pan Hellenic Council that we
(36:05):
refer to ourselves as keepers of a culture around stepping
that is often under explored. You know, people will engage
it just as a dance without understanding the history. And
so I'm working on a project that will unpack and
engage us in a deeper understanding of what it is
to be a stepmaster and what the possibilities are when
you are one. Well, there's lots of joy in that,
(36:26):
lots of way. And this is a final question that
your last comment raised. You are part of a formal sisterhood,
the delta Am. I came late in life to being
an honorary Zeta, so I've had some experience with sisterhood,
but how important has being part of that sisterhood? How
(36:47):
important are friendships and what you're doing, and how did
they inform your work, especially toward healing. I am the
eldest sister in a family, so my framing and understanding
of sisterhood was really as caregiver and really located around
responsibility as a young person. It really wasn't until college,
(37:09):
until I started to actively crave sisterhood that I was
able to understand the value and the healing power and
having a crew, having your people with like mind be
able to be a part of whatever circles you need
when you need them. Sisterhood is something that I think
a lot of people say, but it's actually a practice, right,
(37:33):
and it is an essential part of well being. Has
always been right. There have always been opportunities for us
to engage in the expressions of love that have been
embedded in hair braiding, that have been embedded in just
sitting around and talking or back in the day, talking
on the phone. Nowadays, I don't know, snapping each other,
(37:55):
chat social media, but I do think when you're in
community with each other and able to really uplift a
deep sense of belonging and shared experience, that that in
and of itself is healing. And so at this point
in my life, I prioritize sisterhood, and we recognize that
when we provide opportunities for black girls to have these
(38:16):
experiences younger in their lives, that they're less likely to
engage in the use of aggressive language and behaviors with
each other because they recognize that between them is a
love that is greater than what society is telling them
they should be in conflict about. And so I'm grateful
for the question because it does elevate the opportunity to
(38:40):
really talk about the deep necessity of sisterhood. And we
have a fun holding a sister right because it is
about not just your birth family, but also the chosen families,
the chosen sisterhoods that allow us to thrive in a
society that is rooted in sis, gender heteronormative conditions that
(39:03):
are problematic for so many of us. Thank you, thank
you so much in a wonderful way to end, but
do you have any questions for me? You know, my
deepest question for you is looking back at your black
girl self, what would you tell twelve year old Anita. Well,
(39:28):
I'll tell a quick story. You talk about school a lot.
At the only time that my mother was ever called
to my school was I was younger than twelve. My
mother was called to school because something I had said
had made my teacher cry, And my mother came to
(39:53):
the school and she did what she did, and then
the years later she laughed about it. So what I
would tell my twelve year old self is that maybe
you're on the right track. That maybe when you were
emboldened to speak your mind, that was the track to
(40:14):
be on, and so don't be afraid of that. That's
part of who you are, and it's part of what
you should be. I'll shay all the yeses to that.
Thank you, thank you, thank you for that question. It's
(40:40):
hard for me to accept that black girls routinely face
these toxic misconstructions. I'm distressed by how often we blame
black girls who are victims. But doctor Morris's solutions allow
black and brown girls to reclaim and discover their identities
(41:00):
for themselves. She undertakes her work in an exacting, creative
and compassionate way, and doctor Morrison's manifesto is clear. With
the right support, school environments can be places of healing
for black and brown girls and can offer them the
(41:23):
childhood they deserve. Next week, I'm talking with iconic art
curator Belmont Golden. As a young child, I was so
encouraged in my imagination. I was an early reader, and
the librarians at the Queensboro Public Library allowed me at
(41:43):
a very young age. You know, they'd lift those big,
large art books off the shelf of the art section
and let me sit there and look at them. Getting
Even is a production of Pushkin Industries and is written
and hosted by me Anita Hill. It is produced by
Mola Board and Brittany Brown. Our editor is Sarah Kramer,
(42:07):
our engineer is Amanda kay Wayne, and our showrunner is
Sasha Matthias. Luis Gara composed original music for the show.
Our executive producers are Mia Lobel and Lee Taal Malod.
Our director of Development is Justine Lane. At Pushkin, thanks
(42:28):
to Heather Fane, Carly Migliori, Jason Gambrel, Julia Barton, John Schnarz,
and Jacob Weisberg. You can find me on Twitter at
Anita Hill and on Facebook at Anita Hill. You can
find Pushkin on all social platforms at pushkin Pods, and
(42:50):
you can sign up for our newsletter at pushkin dot Fm.
If you love this show and others from Pushkin Industries,
consider subscribing to Pushkin Plus. Subscribe to Pushkin Plus and
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free and receive exclusive bonus episodes. Sign up on the
(43:13):
Getting Even show page at Apple Podcasts or at pushkin
dot fm. To find more Pushkin podcasts, listen on the
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen
Pushkin Getting Even is produced by Pushkin Industries. Subscribe to
Pushkin Plus and you can hear Getting Even and other
Pushkin shows add free and receive exclusive bonus episodes. Sign
(00:35):
up on the Getting Even show page in Apple Podcasts
or at Pushkin dot Fm. Black girls are often the
most consistent and fervent articulators of injustice because we are
uniquely positioned to see lots of ways in which this
oppression manifests. Doctor Monique Morris is an author, advocate, and
(01:00):
founding president of the National Black Women's Justice Institute. I
believe in a justice that doesn't lead to oppression of
any kind. I write about it, and I work for it.
She's a pioneer in the field of black girlhood studies
who examines how economic and social factors intersect in the
lives of black and brown girls. I anchor my work
(01:24):
in my own experiential knowledge, having been a black girl
in the society. This work, to me is really sort
of less an academic inquiry and really more about a
reclamation of self in order to undo the structural oppressions
that so many black girls live with. By working directly
with black and brown girls, she better understands the harsh
(01:47):
scrutiny they face, and doctor Morris is taking what she
has learned and offering solutions to educators. And I think
Black Girlhood Studies is a way to push past the
stereotypes and tropes that have informed so much of how
we've come to understand and construct black girlhood. Black Girlhood
Studies allows black girls to reclaim that and reshape it.
(02:21):
I'm Anita Hill. This is Getting Even, my podcast about
equality and what it takes to get there. On Getting Even,
I speak with people who are improving our imperfect world,
people who took risks and broke the rules. In this episode,
I'm speaking with doctor Monique Morris about the adultification, sexualization,
(02:46):
and criminalization that black girl's face. Doctor Morris is the
author of five books, including her most recent, Cultivating Joyful
Learning Spaces for Black Girls. Can you explain what some
of the issues are in the way the world sees
(03:06):
black girls? Yeah, black girls are seen as available to
the public. Black girls are in their bodies, in their language,
in their creativity treated as if they are disposable and
that their being is negotiable. And that plays out in
(03:28):
a lot of different ways. It plays out in the
reading of their behaviors as more adult like we now
talk about as adultification of Black girls, and the way
in which that then leads to the reading of their
behaviors as worthy of harsher punishment than their white counterparts,
mostly because it erases their childhood and denies them an
(03:49):
opportunity to express their fullness as a growing young person.
Doctor Jamelia Blake and Rebecca Epstein at the Georgetown Center
on Poverty and Inequality did a report that looked at
adultification and found that Black girls experience this reading of
their behaviors as more adult like from the age of five,
and it peques when they're between the ages of ten
and utine, and that then means that the adults around
(04:13):
them are seeing them as in need of less protection,
less comfort. They are seen as more independent to know
more about a subject matter like sex than their white counterparts,
and so that leads to how we then understand their
capacities around and experiences with trauma, whether we recognize their
trauma or not. So many black girls are seen as
combative and sassy. You know the tropes around the loud
(04:35):
black girl with the attitude quote unquote the attitude for me,
the black girl attitude is an open inquiry and really
is a statement about black girls amazing capacity to identify
injustice in a society that is grounded in the principles
of white men's priorities, and that when we don't articulate
(04:57):
our happiness and well being along those constructs, oftentimes there's
a punishment assigned to that. And so black girls who
do have some volume, who do have some agency in
what they know, are often received as problematic. It's something
that I have been mapping in educational spaces for some
(05:18):
years now, but there are others who have been looking
at how adultification plays out in communities, how it plays
out in health scenarios, how it plays out across the board,
to help us better understand the construct of what black
girls are supposed to be doing in this society, how
they're supposed to behave, quote unquote, how they're supposed to speak,
(05:41):
and what constitutes then a good girl if she's in
a black body. I'm going to back off a little
bit because I mean, there is so much going on.
But you said that you come into this work from
a personal point of view. Do you feel like your
experience adultification as a girl. Oh, I was definitely an
(06:02):
adultified child, and my behaviors and my body were absolutely
treated in the problematic ways that I've described. That seems
to be more routine for other black girls. You know,
me showing up to school in a tank top and
being told I have to go home because I'm too provocative.
But I'm watching my white and Asian counterparts we're the
(06:22):
same thing that I'm wearing, and be allowed to stay
at school or not told that they're provocative. These kinds
of experiences that I had, you know, in the nineteen eighties,
are still happening today. And what's different, I think is
that you know, when it was said to me in
the eighties, I dismissed it as something that was only
(06:43):
happening to me, right. I didn't understand that this was
part of a pattern of black girlhood that was being
experienced across the country. When you're walking through school, to
have your body consistently viewed as something that needs to
be examined for its appropriateness in the learning environment is
(07:04):
deeply problematic. We call that the policing of black girl
bodies in the sense that it's other adults who are
looking at the clothing the way that the clothing fits
on the bodies of our girls, the way that the
clothing is in the appropriate color. A lot of it
has to do with the enforcement of school dress codes.
But the enforcement of school dress codes invites adults to
(07:27):
be looking at the bodies of girls, many of whom
are experiencing early onset puberty, many of whom may just
have fuller figures, and many of whom don't, but still
experience this regular routine surveillance of their bodies in a
way that suggests to them that how they look in school,
(07:48):
how they show up to school with their own bodies,
is more important than the fact that they're there to learn.
You know, I used to joke that I can walk
into a focus group or talk to a group of
girls across the racial groups, and the second I start
talking about the dress code, everyone comes alive. Because girls
inherently understand the dress codes to be a sexist structure,
(08:09):
inherently understand that the enforcement is different for girls and boys.
The enforcement is different for non binary young people. The
enforcement is one that leans into the biases of adults
and the structures that you allow for these biases to
be supported. Many many schools do not have dress codes.
(08:29):
They're more concerned with the fact that young people are
there present in school. They're more concerned with having conversations
about respect than having young people wear clothes that they
feel will be less provocative to the boys, you know,
or make girls bodies less provocative to the boys. When
we talk about this policing of black girl bodies, it
certainly has to do with that. But there's another piece too.
(08:52):
How we normalized this expectation that black girls will be loud, sassey, combative,
and sexualized without talking about remedy. And so I have
brought my own experiences and my experiences as a mother
to two black girls, right. That is about how we
have honest conversations about some of these things, How we
(09:12):
talk about protections from oppressions not just through a lens
of race alone, but race and gender right and sexuality,
and get more complex with our young people who are
ready for those conversations. All of that informs how I
approach my work. You know, I really think that this
lived experience that I had in a black girl body
has absolutely made me receptive to some of the new
(09:35):
language and emergent language that girls are bringing to this work.
I think the other scholars in this space are absolutely
doing the same thing. The work of Dominique Hill around Working,
for example, and some of the other scholars who have
been deeply exploring black girl movements and the ways in
which these are expressive healing modalities as opposed to being
hypersexualized in our popular culture to facilitate a deepening of
(10:00):
the oppression. All really important work. It's also can take
us some time to unpack what this movement really means,
right and what's on the other side of this movement
before we can even begin to get to the other
side to the solutions. I still think people don't understand
(10:21):
the severity of the issues. You've talked about adultification, and
that can have consequences in terms of the responsibilities that
we place on children, but it can also lead to criminalization,
yes of girls. Yes. The way that this adultification then
leads to criminalization is that it denies black girls the
(10:49):
opportunity to have the root causes of their behaviors explored.
When there is disruption, there's a different treatment of black
girl behaviors because there's this assumption that they should know better,
because there's this assumption that they don't need protection or nurturing,
because there's this assumption that they can handle whatever punishment
(11:13):
is deemed necessary, and there is this historical construct around
the need for black children to be experiencing surveillance and
punishment as the remedy for whatever student behavior is deemed
undesirable at that time. In other words, it's an invitation
(11:34):
for state intervention. Yes, And that's where the disposability of
black girl bodies comes in. That's where this question about
how black girls are experiencing school discipline and a removal
from school come into question. One of the things that
I and other folks have mapped is that black girls
are the only group of girls who experience an overrepresentation
(11:55):
at every stage of discipline in the school and at
every educational level. So across the spectrum of discipline and
at every educational level, we see black girls experiencing a
heightened degree of contact. And that is not because black
girls are more likely to make mistakes than other children.
It is largely attributed to how adults are reading the
(12:15):
behaviors and how they are designing structures in the schools
where black girls are that are deeply punitive, that are
not responsive to trauma, and that don't recognize what these
children actually need, you know. And so one of the
ways that I think our society continues to play into
that narrative is by allowing our conversations about black girls
(12:38):
to refer to them as young women. And sometimes we
don't mean it, you know, probably mean it in a
way that honors her agency. But with black girls, it's
it's really important to recognize the child that is in
front of you. Of course, there is the issue of
police officers within schools, yes, and there is the physical
policing of black girls. But there's also the emotional policing, yes, absolutely,
(13:03):
of black girls that not only law enforcement takes party,
but also the teachers take part in. That's right. Can
you talk about that and how you respond to that.
There's also this policing of black girl expressions of joy,
like we saw this incident and upset New York where
girls were actually strip searched because they were laughing and
(13:27):
giddy and they were assumed to be on drugs. It's
again rooted in this perception that black girls just can't
be happy, that they have to be on something if
they're going to be loud, and you can walk into
rooms and experientially talk to people about what it has
been like to laugh in your fullness and be told
that your laugh is too loud, or your laugh is
too disruptive, that your expressions of joy are problematic. And
(13:51):
so there's this routine way that black girls are told
outright and sometimes through other signals, that their presence in
school is problematic, and certainly that that applies to their
anger as well, no question, no question, there's always this
reception that you have to trade off either being traumatized
(14:12):
or angry, right, and black women, black girls will often
tell that I can be both. I can be both
experiencing trauma and angry about it, right, and in my
expression of anger. That doesn't mean that you then say, oh,
she's aggressive, she must not be experiencing pain. That people
(14:34):
manifest pain in different ways and express pain in different ways.
We saw this play out with Makayah Bryant in Columbus.
There was an attempt to talk about what happened with
this fifteen year old girl who had been shot fatally
shot by a police officer in response to an altercation
she was having at her Foster home, and the way
that people were talking about her as a larger bodied
(14:56):
quote unquote young woman was deeply problematic to us in
this work because we were like, no, no, no, we
see a child. What we see is a fifteen year
old girl who was afraid. And if you've worked in
spaces and underst stand that black children are children and
not young adults, then you recognize all the ways in
which they are cognitively children and adolescence the same way
(15:17):
that we can see the adolescence and childhood of other children.
And that's really, you know, part of how we engage
in this question of equity and justice for our girls
is to stand in fierce protection of their childhood, fierce
protection of it. Do you believe that the police officer
(15:40):
who killed mccayah could have avoided his aggression toward her,
No question, There's not a question in my mind. There
has never been a question in my mind. I along
with others who had been in response to conditions that
were similar, where there's a fight that involves a weapon,
(16:01):
not a gun but a knife, and we could tick
through two or three interventions that didn't require her being
shot to death right in ways of de escalating that scenario.
Part of the problem is that we rely on law
enforcement to respond to every single condition, and they are
not equipped to do that. The other problem is that
(16:23):
there was a failure to see a child who was
afraid in that scenario, and there was only a response
to a person who was perceived as an aggressor with
a weapon, and so it was reduced to aggressor with
a weapon as opposed to disregulated child who is afraid
because she's actually defending herself from some adults around her.
(16:47):
The whole situation was unfortunate. So I have to say that,
you know, we never want to see those kinds of
conditions take place in our communities or any communities. But
at the same time, I have talked through conversations with
folks who have worked in foster homes who are like,
I've disarmed girls who have been in fights, you know,
five or six times a month, Right, I know how
to talk to people in a way gets their attention
(17:10):
that can disarm. If he was going to arrive with
the tool he had available to him, which was a gun,
he's a sharpshooter. He knows how to shoot. He could
have just shot her legs, but they're not taught to
do that, and so not that training is the issue,
But there are absolutely several ways where there could have
been a disarming and where there could have been a
de escalation of the issue and the tensions in that
(17:31):
fight that would preserve life. It's always hard for me
to watch the videos whenever these incidents happen. There's this
way that society has now made it routine to display
this level of black pain in our efforts to talk
about these conditions that impact black girls. Again, you know,
(17:55):
there's a replaying of the video or replaying of the scenario,
but they go viral also because some people see this
as a form of entertainment. Unfortunately, I wrote an article
years ago that was like, let's we gotta fall out
of love with black girl fights, right, Like, we have
to understand that that is not entertainment, That this is
no different than the ways that black communities were set
(18:20):
up by design to be in conflict with each other
for the entertainment of those who participated and benefited from
their oppression, and that we have to consider all the
other tools that we have available to us when there
is conflict to engage some of these other modalities and
to bring other people into our communities who love us fundamentally.
The way to deal with conflict is love. I believe
(18:44):
that all the work that I've done with young people
at various stages of their contact with the juvenile court
or criminal legal system, at various stages of their own development,
if you can lead with love and make connections and
understand and love this group of people, then your inclination
is not first to harm them. And so I think
what's exciting in this world are the ways that communities
(19:08):
are thinking innovative about strategies that do not involve law enforcement,
strategies that do not involve others who don't love us.
So I believe there's a lot of work to be
done there, but we've got to continue to elevate conversations
like the one we're having around you know, adultification and
the way that it has shaped our understanding of what
(19:28):
is at the root of some of this conflict or
what are some of the interventions that we can engage.
And that's that's been a lot of my work within
schools to talk to you know, educators about some of
these issues, because in my mind, those are the first
responders to children. After the break, Doctor Morrison I explore
(19:50):
how she is working to undo structural barriers and empower
black girls. You're listening to getting even I'm Anita Hill.
I'm speaking with doctor Monique Morris, who works directly with
(20:13):
black and brown girls to understand the denial of their childhood.
Let's talk a little bit about the historic roots. One
thing that I can recall from a documentary that I
saw just a few years ago but that stuck with me,
is that it was taken from one of the slave narratives,
(20:35):
and I recall this person who had slavery. It ended
when she was a child, but she said that during
slavery there were no such things as children. There were
only smaller slaves. And that to me triggered something that
(20:57):
helped me to think that the roots are in slavery
of this process that we're taking girls through, this denial
of their personhood, their child Absolutely, there's no question about that.
I had an opportunity actually to visit one of the
(21:18):
they call them slave houses in West Africa in two
thousand and eight. I went to Goree Island and saw
the dungeons and saw the spaces where you know, many
of our ancestors were held and they separated them according
to adult male, adult female, and the children altogether, but
they absolutely were trafficked the same and they were received
(21:43):
as property the same. Recently visited one of the ports
in South Carolina this year where those Africans who had
been enslaved and captured were brought to these shores. And
it's worth spending time in these historical moments because when
we look at the way that human bodies were trafficked
(22:07):
to support the economy and the development of this nation,
it becomes critically important in how we then understand the
formation of institutions that are designed to continue to support
this nation and its understandings of who we are and
what we are supposed to be about. Black girls have
(22:28):
long been a part of the spirit of resistance right.
Black girls are often the most consistent and fervent articulators
of injustice because we are uniquely positioned to see lots
of ways in which this oppression manifests not just in
our own lives, but in the lives of others. And
that unique positioning comes from this experience of understanding structural
(22:52):
oppression being treated as just smaller slaves, the way that
black girls are then seen as little adults. But it's
also the routine way that our society has accepted that
and normalized it as something that is acceptable in any way.
So that's why the adultification question is so critically important,
but also the ability for us to unpack the historical
(23:16):
misunderstandings and misrepresentations of black girlhood in terms of reading
them as loud and sassy and combative without unpacking this
question of what is going on, what is happening, what
has been the experience? And when we talk about trauma,
I don't just talk about the sort of lived, experienced
trauma of a person. I'm also talking about the collective,
(23:37):
unresolved grief and historical trauma that being a descendant from
the institution of slavery has produced in our lives, and
being the descendant of those who experienced segregation and other
forms of violence produces in our lives. I'm grateful to
our Indigenous and Jewish communities that have also been participating
in research around historical trauma and inherited trauma, because I
(23:59):
think that there's a lot to learn between our three
communities about how our bodies are formed and shaped and
continued to grow under this pressive system of historical trauma,
and what that means for how we then process and
engage in interactions with institutions but also with people. And
so the more we hide it, the more at festers.
(24:21):
When we come into community and approach it, that's when
we can begin healing. You know, I learned recently that
my great great grandparents were publicly beaten in the period
right after slavery. I learned also that my grandparents were
systematically stolen from I had their land confiscated through economic exploitation.
(24:48):
And of course, now that I know that, I think
about my own work, which at times has focused on
economic exploitation, and my own experiences of being publicly ridiculed,
and I start to understand truly how so much of
our past generational suffering continues to live with us in
(25:13):
tangible ways in terms of lost wealth, but also in
emotional ways, and that we try to have media representations
that make sense of them, but I don't think that
they fully capture. I think in fact, media representations or
(25:34):
misrepresentations have actually played a role in the lives of
some public figures, like you know, the Williams sisters and
Misty Copeland. So there is that element of public scrutiny
and that has some really disturbing consequences in terms of
way these now women, but starting out as girls, have
(25:59):
been perceived. Can you comment on that. I will say
transgenerational trauma is real, and the sort of public presentation
of trauma in black bodies also is triggering for those
of us who have experienced it, and I would love
(26:19):
to see some other ways that the media could begin
to present and discuss some of these issues that don't
facilitate that kind of harm because there's no regulation around
it now and it's outrageous. Around the Williams sisters and
Misty Copeland, I think they unfortunately experienced many of the
same misreadings of black girlhood and black girl bodies that
(26:42):
the rest of us have experienced. In so many ways.
For all three of them, I would say there was
a masculinization of their bodies, which again you could trace
back to the institution of slavery, that because one is
physically strong, their womanhood or girlhood is seen as less present.
(27:02):
And because of our own deeply problematic ways of understanding
a gender idea entity and understanding physical representation and the
diversity of how that can manifest, this society just sort
of treats black girl bodies not only as if they
are publicly available for scrutiny, which we saw, you know,
(27:26):
the Williams sisters and Misty Copeland experience, but that we
can also then present them as somehow incompatible with this
nation's understanding of what a good girl representation is. So
to me, all of this is a part of how
(27:48):
we reclaim right. I think now we see black women
in a lot of ways, and certainly scholars and advocates
stepping into the space to say, no, you're not going
to do that right. These are our girls, These are
our young women, and they are strong, and strength is
an asset, strength is in fact a cornerstone of our
(28:10):
feminine expression. Then we're able to, I think, shift the narrative.
There's a lot of discussion about narrative shift, but I
think a lot of this narrative shift work has to
happen with a deep understanding of how our narratives sometimes
perpetuate harm because we haven't unpacked the tropes and stereotypes
and historical conditions that inform widen this nation's presentation of
(28:32):
black girlhood has been problematic in the first place. So
I like to think that there's growth in that space. Yes,
there's still a lot of work to do. Yes, there
is a lot of work to do. And I think
we cannot forget the fact that in many ways, the
way the Williams sisters were portrayed, the way Mystic Hopeland
was portrayed, were meant to really emphasize some points that
(28:58):
way black girls and women do not belong in the
rarefied settings of American tennis or Erican ballet, and therefore
we will continue to be outsiders even if we are
inside that's right, and we will be marginalized by the
(29:20):
public as well as the media. And so we have
to understand all of the consequences of what is going on,
and in many cases the motivation, conscious or unconscious about
what is happening. This whole idea of masculinity and sexualization
in the sort of combination of the two that gets
(29:40):
placed on black women's bodies and black girl's bodies in particular,
really reminds me of the tragedy of the victims of
r Kelly, ranging over thirty years and involving a number
of young Black women, and in case of Aliyah, a
(30:08):
girl maybe fourteen fifteen years old. We are not quite
sure how old she was, but we know that she
was not an adult. We need to be looking at
what was going on and why it took thirty years
to get a conviction for our Kelly from the point
of view of the women and girls who were exploited.
(30:32):
This is actually the first time I'm ever talking about R. Kelly,
because I don't usually talk about him, but I will
say this, I recognized the predator in the nineties. You
know a predator, and if you talk to people in Chicago,
they all knew. So one of the things that we
have is as a community and that we have to
trust in our conversations about combating the adultification of black girls,
(30:57):
but also the disposability of black girls. There is this
culture of celebrity in this country that forgives the bad behaviors,
evil behaviors, predatory behaviors of those who are successful, those
who have financial wealth, without the deep poverty and the
(31:20):
deep well of justice that we are willing to ignore
just because we like the beat of someone's music or
the way that they talk before a crowd. Black girls
were all alone in that conversation with R Kelly. That's
why nobody did anything. It was seen as a problem
(31:41):
that didn't affect society, but we have to come to
understand that the issues impacting black girls are issues that
impact society very much. So I'm always careful because, you know,
while that's true, I think it's important also for us
to recognize that black girls are also just worthy of
protection and worthy of inquiry in their own right. Absolutely,
(32:03):
our well being shouldn't have to be tied to the
well being of the nation in order for people to
see it as justifiable and worthy. Every community is worthy,
you know. For me, it's really deeply important for all
of us to deepen our understanding of why this work
around black girls is so critical, and I think you've
absolutely made that clear in your work. You are so
(32:29):
creative about your work. I mean, your ability to communicate
the urgency of these issues in ways that really resonate
is so impressive. You know, you've got the book push out,
You've got the documentary, which is beautifully done. Than what
else are you doing? Yeah, thank you for asking that.
(32:49):
I have two new books that are on the horizon.
One is really designed for teachers about cultivating joyful black
girl spaces learning spaces specifically, and I have a graphic
novel that will be coming out to also unpack what
happens when we support black girls and their gifts. But daily,
i'm President and CEO of Grant Makers for Girls of Color.
(33:11):
We are the nation's only philanthropic intermediary that exclusively focuses
on resourcing organizations that are led by and focused on
girls of color in the US, and so through that work,
we're able to build out a series of funds that
you do grant making in a host of areas that
impact well being of girls of color broadly, but also
(33:33):
black girls specifically. We have the Black Girl Freedom Fund
and actually, you know, in February we have Black Girl
Freedom Week, which allows us to amplify not just the
negative statistics and harmful conditions that black girls are experiencing,
but they're tremendous innovation and investment that is leading to
well being and new outcomes and organizations throughout the country.
(33:54):
So there's an opportunity for us to play many different roles.
For me, it's critically important not just to elevate the problem,
but to also be part of the solution. And you're
bringing your solutions to schools. Correct. Yes, Yes, there's a
growing community of scholars and professional development, technical assistance providers
(34:17):
who are deeply committed to this question of how we
engage schools to be learning spaces that do not make
problematic the bodies of black girls, and that examine and
assess their policies, but also talk about the practices and
the pedagogies that impact black girls. Specifically. The book that
I have sing a Rhythm Dance of Blues, which will
(34:37):
be out in paperback this summer, really does map through
some of the ways that schools are uniquely approaching some
of these issues, the way that they're using arts and
creative expression as a way to engage in some of
the healing work that needs to take place in schools,
but also to provide an opportunity for us to locate,
when it's appropriate, trauma and respond to that trauma so
(34:59):
that the diregulation can actually be remedied as opposed to criminalized.
So I'm excited by the growing body of work. Obviously,
the pandemic has complicated a lot of how schools are operating,
but I think what the pandemic has also done has
provide an opportunity for us to have a broader conversation
about how to make schools locations for healing. So that
(35:21):
they can be locations for learning, which is something that
I've been calling for for years. Now. You're doing so
so much. Is there something that you dream of doing
that you haven't done yet? Always of course, so tell
us what's on the top of your list. I am
(35:43):
working on a project that is like a life project
for me. I used to be a competitive stepper on
my sorority step team. I'm a Delta and I was
a step mistress for the New York City step team
for our step team, and we spend a lot of
time in the world of Black Greek letter organizations and
the Divine Nine or the Pan Hellenic Council that we
(36:05):
refer to ourselves as keepers of a culture around stepping
that is often under explored. You know, people will engage
it just as a dance without understanding the history. And
so I'm working on a project that will unpack and
engage us in a deeper understanding of what it is
to be a stepmaster and what the possibilities are when
you are one. Well, there's lots of joy in that,
(36:26):
lots of way. And this is a final question that
your last comment raised. You are part of a formal sisterhood,
the delta Am. I came late in life to being
an honorary Zeta, so I've had some experience with sisterhood,
but how important has being part of that sisterhood? How
(36:47):
important are friendships and what you're doing, and how did
they inform your work, especially toward healing. I am the
eldest sister in a family, so my framing and understanding
of sisterhood was really as caregiver and really located around
responsibility as a young person. It really wasn't until college,
(37:09):
until I started to actively crave sisterhood that I was
able to understand the value and the healing power and
having a crew, having your people with like mind be
able to be a part of whatever circles you need
when you need them. Sisterhood is something that I think
a lot of people say, but it's actually a practice, right,
(37:33):
and it is an essential part of well being. Has
always been right. There have always been opportunities for us
to engage in the expressions of love that have been
embedded in hair braiding, that have been embedded in just
sitting around and talking or back in the day, talking
on the phone. Nowadays, I don't know, snapping each other,
(37:55):
chat social media, but I do think when you're in
community with each other and able to really uplift a
deep sense of belonging and shared experience, that that in
and of itself is healing. And so at this point
in my life, I prioritize sisterhood, and we recognize that
when we provide opportunities for black girls to have these
(38:16):
experiences younger in their lives, that they're less likely to
engage in the use of aggressive language and behaviors with
each other because they recognize that between them is a
love that is greater than what society is telling them
they should be in conflict about. And so I'm grateful
for the question because it does elevate the opportunity to
(38:40):
really talk about the deep necessity of sisterhood. And we
have a fun holding a sister right because it is
about not just your birth family, but also the chosen families,
the chosen sisterhoods that allow us to thrive in a
society that is rooted in sis, gender heteronormative conditions that
(39:03):
are problematic for so many of us. Thank you, thank
you so much in a wonderful way to end, but
do you have any questions for me? You know, my
deepest question for you is looking back at your black
girl self, what would you tell twelve year old Anita. Well,
(39:28):
I'll tell a quick story. You talk about school a lot.
At the only time that my mother was ever called
to my school was I was younger than twelve. My
mother was called to school because something I had said
had made my teacher cry, And my mother came to
(39:53):
the school and she did what she did, and then
the years later she laughed about it. So what I
would tell my twelve year old self is that maybe
you're on the right track. That maybe when you were
emboldened to speak your mind, that was the track to
(40:14):
be on, and so don't be afraid of that. That's
part of who you are, and it's part of what
you should be. I'll shay all the yeses to that.
Thank you, thank you, thank you for that question. It's
(40:40):
hard for me to accept that black girls routinely face
these toxic misconstructions. I'm distressed by how often we blame
black girls who are victims. But doctor Morris's solutions allow
black and brown girls to reclaim and discover their identities
(41:00):
for themselves. She undertakes her work in an exacting, creative
and compassionate way, and doctor Morrison's manifesto is clear. With
the right support, school environments can be places of healing
for black and brown girls and can offer them the
(41:23):
childhood they deserve. Next week, I'm talking with iconic art
curator Belmont Golden. As a young child, I was so
encouraged in my imagination. I was an early reader, and
the librarians at the Queensboro Public Library allowed me at
(41:43):
a very young age. You know, they'd lift those big,
large art books off the shelf of the art section
and let me sit there and look at them. Getting
Even is a production of Pushkin Industries and is written
and hosted by me Anita Hill. It is produced by
Mola Board and Brittany Brown. Our editor is Sarah Kramer,
(42:07):
our engineer is Amanda kay Wayne, and our showrunner is
Sasha Matthias. Luis Gara composed original music for the show.
Our executive producers are Mia Lobel and Lee Taal Malod.
Our director of Development is Justine Lane. At Pushkin, thanks
(42:28):
to Heather Fane, Carly Migliori, Jason Gambrel, Julia Barton, John Schnarz,
and Jacob Weisberg. You can find me on Twitter at
Anita Hill and on Facebook at Anita Hill. You can
find Pushkin on all social platforms at pushkin Pods, and
(42:50):
you can sign up for our newsletter at pushkin dot Fm.
If you love this show and others from Pushkin Industries,
consider subscribing to Pushkin Plus. Subscribe to Pushkin Plus and
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free and receive exclusive bonus episodes. Sign up on the
(43:13):
Getting Even show page at Apple Podcasts or at pushkin
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