This research will explore the notion that black women grow up learning that it’s our job to defend black men, even if they’re misogynistic or abusive to black girls, as a twisted definition of racial solidarity. The black community is so used to supporting black men due to police brutality, gun violence, and overall racism that it has become natural to rally behind them and feel like they need our protection, completely ignoring the innocence being taken away from black girls as victims of abuse. I will be referencing the cases of R. Kelly, using information from the “Surviving R. Kelly” documentary, court cases, articles, interviews, and social media comments. I anticipate that I will find a large population of black women choosing to support abusers like R. Kelly because they feel like the media is trying to set him up, the victims were “too fast”, or because they would feel guilty as if they’re letting the black community down for speaking against this black man who has made black music for black people for decades. Overall, it will become clear that the protection of guilty black men is more important than the protection of innocent black girls.

In 2017, Georgetown University’s Law Center published a groundbreaking report entitled Girlhood Interrupted that analyzed how the “adultification” of young Black girls has contributed to further racial inequities in schools through violent discipline practices which ultimately culminate in unsympathetic and cruel treatment within the juvenile and criminal justice systems. Thus, my specific research will examine how state consented violence against young Black girls is perpetuated through American educational institutions. To aid me in navigating this complex topic I will utilize a Black Feminist framework, Object Relations Theory, and The Three Pillars of Anglo American Thought. Through my research I anticipate confirming that due to the historical hyper-sexualization of the Black girl body, violent racial and gendered discipline practices are continuously operating in the lives of Black girls further allowing for their institutional objectification to violence. In terms of future analysis in the field of Girls Studies, my research seeks to express the dire importance of addressing the trauma faced by Black girls as a result of the abuse inflicted by educational institutions. Lastly, my research proposes possible solutions through the use of social media resistance movements such as #BlackGirlMagic and #BlackGirlsRock.
 

 
 
 

My research investigates how ideological differences within the Black activist community have created a lack of intersectional advocacy in the Black Lives Matter Movement (BLM). The dominant narrative, as publicized by both the media and BLM followers, centers cisgendered heterosexual able-bodied Black men targeted through police brutality, though the movement was created to advocate for justice for all Black identities affected by all forms of state sanctioned violence.
 
Fundamentally, there are two activist cultures at conflict in this movement: the radically queer, leftist, feminist culture held by the creators of BLM, and many of the movement’s followers who subscribe to the traditional Black liberal political activism as seen in the Civil Rights Movement. Through conducting field work, online research and archival findings, I investigate how these ideological differences have manifested into movement actions, and how this caused followers, and subsequently the media, to fail to incorporate intersectionality into the spotlight of the movement. BLM founders Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullers, and Opal Tometi were very intentional with this inclusion, coming from queer, feminist, leftist and labor justice backgrounds themselves. My research will show that the dominant leaders and spokespeople of the movement, as well as the values elevated reflect a contradictory ideology that inhibited the movement’s intersectional potential.

“Black, lesbian, mother, warrior poet” Audre Lorde asserts that, “it is through poetry that we give name to those ideas which are... about to be birthed, but already felt.” This inherent feeling inspired my investigation of the legacy of ancestral memory conveyed through poetry. Poetry has become the channel through which I explore the concept of ancestral memory within the context of the African Diaspora. The poems in this presentation reflect and reflect upon my personal confrontation with ancestral past through the lens of generational memory. My summer 2018 trip to Ghana inspired a series of works exploring how localized memories, descended from my ancestors’ experiences, shape my consciousness and story as a Black woman.  I would like to discover how art and memory can function to address the future.Evolutionary psychologist Brian Boyd contends that through storytelling, humans unearth shared cultural pasts to simulate the impending future. For descendants of the African Diaspora, storytelling is an act of commemorative vigilance—an awareness of our need for narratives and language that confront the realities of bygone, contemporary, and "destined" existence in light of our collective memory. The gravity of our stories lies not in their existence, but in our power to tell them.