Odd Girl Out (33 page)

The front door swung open and the principal, pale and wispy as his combover, moseyed out, followed by Keisha, a frequent contributor to my freshman group discussions. Buxom and strong, Keisha was dressed stylishly in black capris and a purple button-down shirt with matching sandals, one of which she was carrying in her hand. She was walking the way my grandmother always tells me to, chest forward, shoulders back.

"That's the girl who beat her up," Pam whispered.

Keisha followed the principal to a sedan and opened the passenger door as though she had done it before.

Pam sighed. "He's taking her home."

I met Keisha during my first week at Ridgewood. She seemed to love our group discussions, and she filled the room with laughter and stories. Her group, a random mix of girls from driver's education and study hall, was mostly African American. In response to the question, "When you are mad at someone, do you tell them about it?" she did not hesitate. "I do," she said. "I do let her know. If I'm sad, I'm going to act sad. I'm not going to put on a fake smile and walk around like everything's perfect every day. If I'm sad, don't talk to me. Be warned."

"Yeah, you better not!" her friend Brittney confirmed, snickering and pretending to cower.

"Yeah, if I'm mad at you, I'll tell you what you did," Keisha continued. "I'm not going to keep it back. That would be childish, just to sit there and be mad at someone and not even—I mean, I don't know." Many of the girls nodded. When I asked them where they learned to confront the people that upset them, nearly all of them responded, "My mother."

African American mothers are renowned for their determination "to mold their daughters into whole and self-actualizing persons in a society that devalues black women." Research indicates that many parents socialize their daughters to use independence and self-confidence as a means to resist the oppression likely to touch their lives. Scholar Janie Ward observed that "parents provide their children with ways of thinking, seeing, and doing," a "psychological script" that is transmitted intergenerationally and intended to empower offspring. Girls learn to expect to work and use education to attain power.
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These mothers "know that if daughters fit too well into the limited opportunities offered black women, they become willing participants in their own subordination." Like some working-class girls, black girls may learn to walk a fine line between fitting in and speaking up. Ward also found that significant numbers of African American parents used personal experiences and feelings to introduce their progeny to the problems of racism. In one example, a parent told a researcher, "I don't teach it's an even playing field, all men are created equal, do what's right and you will be treated fairly."
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African American families typically enjoy extended kin networks; some children have "othermothers," women who share in childrearing responsibilities. These women live out a "more generalized ethic of care where black women feel accountable to all the black community's children."
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When a freshman at Clara Barton told me about trying to ignore a problem with a girl who was bothering her, her cousin Tanya wouldn't have it. "My cousin will be like,
'Tell her!
' You'll be like, 'No, I don't want to, I don't want to.' She'll be like, 'Tell her.' Then your cousin will come up and say, 'If you don't tell her, I'm gonna beat your behind.'"

The older women in her life, she explained, "tell you you're supposed to do it like this, do it like that. They just trying to teach you because out here it's like a game. It's just a big game. You got to play. You got players in the game. And the game is a player's game."

Such marked differences in parenting practices distinguish the socialization of some black girls in at least two important ways from many of their white, middle-class counterparts. First, psychologists have linked the withering of girls' self-esteem to an avoidance of authentic relationships and feelings. Many African American parents, however, are apparently blunt about the pain and anger they have felt as black citizens. As a result, their daughters are in some senses shielded from the "idealized relationships" that signal the onset of a girl's alienation from her true self. Instead, many girls are urged to confront the realities of human behavior, especially aggression.

Second, the everyday threats of racism and oppression make it unsafe for some girls of color to put relationships first and be "nice" to everyone. The African American girls I met, from the middle and working class, used their own language to set boundaries between themselves and others and so resisted creating the social conditions that end up damaging many girls' friendships. In groups and private interviews, they differentiated between "friends," peers they trusted and were committed to, and "associates," or acquaintances. They used the words to demarcate clearly who was deemed trustworthy and who wasn't. On the other hand, like Brown and Gilligan, I heard white, middle-class girls "distinguish between 'real, real good' friends, those they could trust not to whisper or talk about them behind their backs, and 'just' friends"—those who might.
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The concept of "associates" clarifies the status of those girls who have yet to prove themselves as true friends. It rejects the expectation that a girl must be everyone's friend, that she ought to be nice and accept everyone she meets. "Associates" empowers a girl by allowing the choice, rather than the assumption, of a relationship.

African American girls made further distinctions between associates and girls who are two-faced, that is, those who lie or are otherwise duplicitous. For some girls, being exposed as two-faced can be grounds for a confrontation. Where white girls often felt resigned about the frequency of behind-the-back whispering—"As soon as we walk out of this room we're going to talk about what everyone said!"—many African American girls spoke in unequivocal terms about avoiding relationships with such individuals and about having been raised by their mothers to do so.

When I talked with Danielle, a freshman at Clara Barton, she told me it's important to confront someone who is talking behind your back. "I learned that from the streets. I was raised in ... two projects. In both places you got to learn how to stick up for yourself. You can't let people push you down. Supposed to tell people how you feel." A black fifth grader in Ridgewood told me when she hears someone is talking about her, "I'll say, 'If you have something to say, say it to my face.'"

Other girls referred to two-faced behavior as a deal breaker in a friendship, or a red flag. Tamika, a sixth grader, said, "If you have to act two different ways to be yourself, then your friends aren't your friends." Evelyn, her classmate, agreed. "I don't want to be her friend anymore." Chanel, a Ridgewood freshman, remarked, "When a girl goes behind another girl's back, that other girl don't know what the other girl is saying about her. When a girl goes behind another girl's back, I think it's to steal her boyfriend or do something to hurt her real bad."

Finally, African American girls from different class backgrounds commonly referred to trustworthy, true friends as "real." Someone who is real will never be two-faced but will always bring a problem directly to you for resolution.

Many of the African American girls I met demonstrated the effectiveness of developing a vocabulary for girls' relationships. They provided a glimpse of an alternative scenario for girls, one in which relationship may be chosen and the need for aggression acknowledged. A shared language anchored the girls as they negotiated their increasingly complex relationships, giving voice to the betrayals that are so often swept under the rug. In addition to the cultural permission that enabled them to express overt aggression, language acted as an additional buffer to the social pressure that would move these girls into false, conflict-free connections with others. Language helped girls stay with their feelings simply by providing a means to communicate them.

In some urban Hispanic and black communities, the language of relationship is common. Losing or avoiding a conflict can brand a girl a "punk," leaving her exposed to further violence. "Punking out" means choosing not to fight back when attacked, which is "staying hit," a cardinal sin in some households. "I believe if a girl hits me," Nydia, a Puerto Rican sophomore, told me, "I'm not going to stay hit. If I do stay hit, everybody's going to think that they could tease me." Lauren, a black sixth grader at Ridgewood, explained, "Sometimes people will call you, they'll say, 'Oh, you're so ugly.' You can't just say, 'Well, thank you very much.' You have to say, 'Okay, your mom's so fat she can't fit in the doorway of her car!'"

Fifteen-year-old Jacqueline Ruiz, a Puerto Rican freshman at Sojourner Truth, said a punk "don't speak up for herself. She doesn't think. She doesn't stick up for herself. Somebody's yelling at her or cursing at her, she'll just stay really quiet all the time." Although Jacqueline sometimes felt the impulse to avoid confrontation, she had concluded she was better off being direct in the long run. "What I learned through experience," Jacqueline explained, "is that you have to say it, and there are ways of saying it. If you attack the problem when it starts, you can avoid future problems. By not saying anything, people call you a punk or you feel like a punk because you don't never say anything to that person and she continues doing what she does. That just makes everything worse."

 

when cultures collide

An awareness of their feelings, the ability to distinguish between levels of relationship, and a willingness to speak out do not necessarily insulate black, urban, or working-class girls from losing self-esteem at adolescence. Nor do they refrain from alternative aggressions. Researchers point out that "[b]eing able to speak out in some situations, however, did not necessarily suggest a confidence or willingness to speak out in all relationships."
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For instance, high-achieving African American girls can dissociate psychologically and become silent as they move deeper into mainstream white academic culture, attempting to avoid raising the ire of others who might resent their success. Other black girls may resort to a self-destructive form of resistance, in which a girl's outspoken behavior endangers herself and her future.
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The middle-class African American girls I met reported difficulties thriving in a white social universe. With uncanny regularity, girls confided frustration when their attempts at truth telling were rebuffed and even punished. "I'm trying to tell the truth," Michelle explained to me in one such instance, "but they think I'm a bitch." These girls struggle in a social desert between "nice," where no anger is shared, and "bitch"; they inhabit female identities of assertiveness and truth telling, identities that the culture, and consequently most girls, pathologize as "mean," "bitchy," or "skanky."

Some of the urban Latina girls I met expressed a willingness to engage in conflict that would be considered problematic in certain Hispanic communities. The socialization of Latina girls most resembles that of their white, middle-class counterparts. Latin American culture is family centered, and parents socialize children along traditional gender lines. Wives and daughters are expected to be nonaggressive and honor the authority of men. Women are "traditionally idealized as pure and self-sacrificing, like the Virgin Mary," and rules of behavior for girls can be extremely restrictive.
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The Dominican and Puerto Rican girls I met were mostly working class or poor first-generation Americans. They came from homes where parents spoke little or no English, where the girls had to translate notes and report cards sent home. These girls live in two worlds: the one more traditional and sheltered, and the other a contrary world of youthful license and temptation. Their personalities reflect the convergence of different cultural forces: the legacy of obedience imposed by their community, alongside the self-protective armor necessary to survive in lower-income communities.

Thirteen-year-old Jasmine found herself in a world of privilege that contrasted sharply with her working-class upbringing. When I came to Arden Country Day, where she was on full scholarship, Jasmine sat close to me, raising her hand often, eager to participate. We met a few weeks after school let out for the summer at a pizza joint near school. Jasmine had long, black kinky hair and a full beautiful face, which she made up expertly every day. After seven years as the only Latina in an all-black public school in her neighborhood, Jasmine transferred to Arden to begin seventh grade.

Jasmine's mother is an immigrant from the Dominican Republic. "I can describe my family," Jasmine told me plaintively, "as loose strings held together by a knot. That knot was my grandmother." The family congregated at her grandmother's small apartment every weekend for meals and conversation. When she died, Jasmine said, "all these strings went every which way. They disintegrated. The whole family." Jasmine had been growing closer with her grandmother at the time of her death, and the loss weighed heavily on her.

Jasmine's grief felt especially keen, since she had seen so much of herself reflected in her grandmother's stewardship of the family. Jasmine's own mother, she told me, could be "weak-minded." The contrast between this and her own strength made Jasmine uneasy. "She's always been the kind of person that listens to what other people tell her a lot." Jasmine perceived her mother as inconsistent, allowing Jasmine something once and then forbidding it without explanation. When mother and daughter argued, Jasmine was sometimes told she didn't deserve what was being lobbied for. Jasmine vehemently disagreed.

"I feel that I do [deserve] a lot. I wake up at five in the morning to get to school. I get home at 6:30. I do my homework. Iron my clothes, take a shower, go to sleep. I end up going to sleep at one or two, and I get up at five." Jasmine complained that her mother wanted her to clean the apartment too much on the weekends. "She forgets that I just turned thirteen. She's so used to me having like an older mentality that she kind of thinks I can take more things and responsibility."