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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.
Anita Hill
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Dr. Morris
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.
Anita Hill
Dr. Monique Morris is an author, advocate, and founding president of the National Black Women's Justice Institute.
Dr. Morris
I believe in a justice that doesn't lead to oppression of any kind. I write about it and I work for it.
Anita Hill
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.
Dr. Morris
I anchor my work in my own experiential knowledge having been a black girl in this 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.
Anita Hill
By working directly with black and brown girls, she better understands the harsh scrutiny they face and Dr. Morris is taking what she has learned and offering solutions to educators.
Dr. Morris
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.
Anita Hill
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 Dr. Monique Morris about the adultification, sexualization, and criminalization that black girls face. Dr. 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 black girls?
Dr. Morris
Yes, 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 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 opportunity to express their fullness as a growing young person.
Dr. 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 peaks when they're between the ages of 10 and 14, and that then means that the adults around them are seeing them as in need of less protection, less comfort. They are seen as more independent, to know more about adult 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, the tropes around the loud black girl with the attitude. 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 our happiness and wellbeing 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 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, how they're supposed to speak, and what constitutes then a good girl if she's in a black body.
Anita Hill
I'm going to back up 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 you were experienced adultication as a girl?
Dr. Morris
Oh, I was definitely an 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. 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 wear the 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 in the 1980s are still happening today, and what's different I think is that when it was said to me in the eighties, I dismissed it as something that was only happening to me. 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 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 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, how they show up to school with their own bodies is more important than the fact that they're there to learn.
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. They 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 allow for these biases to be supported.
Many, many schools do not have dress codes. 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 or make girls' bodies less provocative to the boys. And when we talk about this policing of black girl bodies, it certainly has to do with that. But there's another piece too, how we normalized this expectation that black girls will be loud, sassy, 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 that is about how we have honest conversations about some of these things, how we talk about protections from oppressions, not just through a lens of race alone, but race and gender 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. 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 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 twerking, 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 the oppression, all really important work. It's also going to take us some time to unpack what this movement really means and what's on the other side of this movement.
Anita Hill
Before we can even begin to get to the other side, to the solutions, I still think people don't understand the severity of the issues. You've talked about adulation, and that can have consequences in terms of the responsibilities that we place on children, but it can also lead to criminalization.
Dr. Morris
Yes.
Anita Hill
Of girls.
Dr. Morris
Yes. The way that this electrification then leads to criminalization is that it denies black girls the 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 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.
Anita Hill
In other words, it's an invitation for state intervention.
Dr. Morris
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 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 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. 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 to refer to them as young women, and sometimes we don't mean it, probably mean it in a way that honors her agency, but with black girls, it's really important to recognize the child that is in front of you.
Anita Hill
Of course, there is a issue of police officers within schools and there is the physical policing of black girls, but there's also the emotional policing.
Dr. Morris
Yes, absolutely.
Anita Hill
Of black girls that not only law enforcement takes part in, but also the teachers take part in.
Dr. Morris
That's right.
Anita Hill
Can you talk about that and how you respond to that?
Dr. Morris
There's also this policing of black girl expressions of joy. We saw this incident in upstate New York where girls were actually strip searched because they were laughing and 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 so there's this routine way that black girls are told outright and sometimes through other signals that their presence in school is problematic.
Anita Hill
And certainly that applies to their anger as well.
Dr. Morris
No question. No question. There's always this perception that you have to trade off either being traumatized or angry. And black women, black girls will often tell that I can be both. I can be both experiencing trauma and angry about it. 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 manifest pain in different ways and express pain in different ways. We saw this play out with Makaya Bryant in Columbus. There was an attempt to talk about what happened with this 15 year old girl who had been 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 "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 15 year old girl who was afraid. And if you worked in spaces and understand that black children are children and not young adults, then you recognize all the ways in which they are cognitively children and adolescents, the same way that we can see the adolescence and childhood of other children. And that's really 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.
Anita Hill
Do you believe that the police officer who killed Makaya could have avoided his aggression toward her?
Dr. Morris
No question. There is 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, not a gun, but a knife, and we could tick through two or three interventions that didn't require her being shot to death in ways of deescalating 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 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 dysregulated child who is afraid because she's actually defending herself from some adults around her. The whole situation was unfortunate. So I have to say that. 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 five or six times a month.
I know how to talk to people in a way that gets their attention that can disarm if he was going to arrive with the tool he had available to him, which was a gun. He's a sharp shooter, 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 deescalation of the issue and the tensions in that 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, there's a replaying of the video, a 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 we got to fall out of love with black girl fights. We have to understand that that is not entertainment, that this is no different than the ways that black communities were set 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 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 are thinking innovatively 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 adultification and the way that it has shaped our understanding of what is at the root of some of this conflict or what are some of the interventions that we can engage. And that's been a lot of my work within schools is to talk to educators about some of these issues because in my mind, those are the first responders to children.
Anita Hill
After the break, Dr. Morrison, I explore how she is working to undo structural barriers and empower black girls.
You are listening to Getting Even. I'm Anita Hill. I'm speaking with Dr. Monique Morris who works directly with 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. And I recall this person who had slavery had 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 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 childhood.
Dr. Morris
Absolutely. There's no question about that. I had an opportunity actually to visit one of the... They call them slave houses in West Africa in 2008. I went to Gory Island and saw the dungeons and saw the spaces where 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 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 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 it's understandings of who we are and what we are supposed to be about. Black girls have 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 oppression, IE 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 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 experience trauma of a person.
I'm also talking about the collective 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 experience 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 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 oppressive 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 it festers. When we come into community and approach it, that's when we can begin healing.
Anita Hill
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, had their land confiscated through economic exploitation. 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 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 them. I think in fact, media representations or misrepresentations have actually played a role in the lives of some public figures like the Williams Sisters and Misty Copeland. And 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 been perceived. Can you comment on that?
Dr. Morris
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 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 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. And because of our own deeply problematic ways of understanding gender identity 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 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 we reclaim. 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. 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 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 why this nation's presentation of 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.
Anita Hill
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 Misty Copeland was portrayed, were meant to really emphasize the point that we, black girls and women, do not belong in the rarefied settings of American tennis or American ballet.
Dr. Morris
That's right.
Anita Hill
And therefore we will continue to be outsiders even if we are inside.
Dr. Morris
That's right.
Anita Hill
And we will be marginalized by the 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 and the sort of combination of the two that gets placed on black women's bodies and black girls' bodies in particular really reminds me of the tragedy of the victims of R. Kelly ranging over 30 years and involving a number of young black women.
And in case of Aaliyah, a girl maybe 14, 15 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 30 years to get a conviction for R. Kelly from the point of view of the women and girls who were exploited.
Dr. Morris
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 recognize the recognized a 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, 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 deep well of justice that we are willing to ignore just because we liked the beat of someone's music or the way that they talked 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 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 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.
Anita Hill
Absolutely.
Dr. Morris
Our wellbeing shouldn't have to be tied to the wellbeing of the nation in order for people to see it as justifiable and worthy. Every community is worthy. 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.
Anita Hill
And I think you've absolutely made that clear in your work. I mean, you are so creative about your work. I mean, your ability to communicate the urgency of these issues in ways that really resonate is so impressive. You've got the book, Pushout. Got the documentary, which is beautifully done.
Dr. Morris
Thank you.
Anita Hill
What else are you doing?
Dr. Morris
Yeah, thank you for asking that. 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. 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 do grant making in a host of areas that impact wellbeing of girls of color broadly, but also black girls specifically.
We have the Black Girl Freedom Fund. And actually 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 there are tremendous innovation and investment that is leading to wellbeing and new outcomes and organizations throughout the country. 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.
Anita Hill
And you're bringing your solutions to schools, correct?
Dr. Morris
Yes. Yes. There's a growing community of scholars and professional development, technical assistance providers 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, Singer Rhythm Dance Blues, which will 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 that the dysregulation 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 is provide an opportunity for us to have a broader conversation about how to make schools' locations for healing so that they can be locations for learning, which is something that I've been calling for years.
Anita Hill
You've doing so, so much. Is there something that you dream of doing that you haven't done yet?
Dr. Morris
Always, of course.
Anita Hill
Tell us what's on the top of your list.
Dr. Morris
I am working on a project that is 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 Panhellenic Council that we refer to ourselves as keepers of a culture around stepping that is often underexplored. 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 step master and what the possibilities are when you are one.
Anita Hill
Well, there's lots of joy in that. Lots of joy. And this is a final question that your last comment raised. You are part of a formal sisterhood, the Deltas.
Dr. Morris
I am.
Anita Hill
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 important are friendships and what you're doing and how do they inform your work, especially toward healing?
Dr. Morris
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 and until I started to actively crave sisterhood that I was able to understand the value and the healing power in 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 and it is an essential part of wellbeing, has always been. 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 through Snapchat, through 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 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 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 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 cisgender heteronormative conditions that are problematic for so many of us.
Anita Hill
Thank you. Thank you so, so much. So wonderful way to end. But do you have any questions for me?
Dr. Morris
My deepest question for you is looking back at your black girl self, what would you tell 12 year old Anita?
Anita Hill
Well, I'll tell a quick story. You talk about school a lot, and the only time that my mother was ever called to my school was I was younger than 12. My mother was called to school because something I had said had made my teacher cry, and my mother came to the school and she did what she did, and then the years later, she laughed about it. So what I would tell my 12 year old self is that maybe you are on the right track. That maybe when you were emboldened to speak your mind, that was the track to 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.
Dr. Morris
All the yeses to that. Thank you.
Anita Hill
Thank you. Thank you for that question.
It's hard for me to accept that black girls routinely face these toxic mis-constructions. I'm distressed by how often we blame black girls who are victims. But Dr. Morris's solutions allow black and brown girls to reclaim and discover their identities for themselves. She undertakes her work in an exacting, creative, and compassionate way, and Dr. Morris'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 childhood they deserve. Next week, I'm talking with iconic art curator, Delmont Golden.
Delmont Golden
As a young child, I was so encouraged in my imagination. I was an early reader and the librarians at the Queens Borough Public Library, allowed me at a very young age, they'd lift those big large art books off the shelf of the art section and let me sit there and look at them.
Anita Hill
Getting Even is a production of Pushkin Industries, and it's written and hosted by me, Anita Hill. It is produced by Mo LaBorde and Brittani Brown. Our editor is Sarah Kramer. Our engineer is Amanda Kay Wang, and our showrunner is Sachar Mathias. Luis Guerra composed original music for the show. Our executive producers are Mia Lobel and Leital Molad. Our director of development is Justine Lang. At Pushkin, thanks to Heather Fain, Carly Migliori, Jason Gambrell, Julia Barton, Jon Schnaars, 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 you can sign up for our newsletter at Pushkin.fm. If you love this show and others from Pushkin Industries, consider subscribing to Pushkin Plus. Subscribe to Pushkin Plus and you can hear Getting Even and other Pushkin shows ad free and receive exclusive bonus episodes. Sign up on the Getting Even show page in Apple Podcast or at Pushkin.fm. To find more Pushkin podcasts, listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you like to listen.