Kimberly A. Scott - COMPUGIRLS: How Girls of Color Find and Define Themselves in the Digital Age

The front cover features side profile of four female faces. The first female from the left has brown hair, second has straight black hair, third wears a Hijab, and fourth female has curly black hair.

DISSIDENT FEMINISMS

Elora Halim Chowdhury, Editor

A list of books in the series appears at the end of this book.

How Girls of Color Find and Define Themselves in the Digital Age

kimberly a. scott

All photos are courtesy of the author.

2021 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

All rights reserved

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Scott, Kimberly A., author.

Title: Compugirls: how girls of color find and define themselves in the digital age / Kimberly A. Scott.

Other titles: COMPUGIRLS

Description: Urbana: University of Illinois Press, [2021] | Series: Dissident Feminisms | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2021012056 (print) | LCCN 2021012057 (ebook) | ISBN 9780252044083 (Cloth : acid-free paper) | ISBN 9780252086137 (Paperback : acid-free paper) | ISBN 9780252053023 (eBook)

Subjects: LCSH: Educational technologyUnited StatesCase studies. | Multicultural education CurriculaUnited StatesCase studies. | Education, SecondaryCurriculaUnited States. | Minority high school studentsUnited States. | TeachersIn-service training.

Classification: LCC LB1028.3 .S3788 2021 (print) | LCC LB1028.3 (ebook) | DDC 370.117dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021012056

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021012057

Writing. It has been and probably always will be a challenge for me. Good writing requires an author to reveal a certain level of vulnerability. For academic writers, this poses an issue. Scholarly writing is supposed to be objective, clinical, and nonpersonal. I was taught to defend my thoughts with empirical proof, not emotion or beliefs. And as an African American female professor, the stakes are even higher. Revealing too much of yourself suggests lack of intellect and can quickly lead to suspicion about abilities; revealing too little feeds into the commonplace narrative of being a cold Black woman. Focusing on program development and putting everything I learned throughout the years into building a sustainable enterprise would be easier, more exciting, and less intimidating than writing. At least this is what I thought after completing my doctorate in education. So, why did I spend the better part of the last eight years writing this book? Beginning with my childhood, my lifes chapters provide a partial answer.

Growing up in the 1980s, my parents stressed the importance of education. Given that they both were first-generation college graduates and later earned their doctorates, my sister and I learned that erudition was the key to success. No one can ever take away your education, they taught us. We were to learn from every experience, no matter where, and from every individual, no matter that persons title or lack thereof. This unspoken but very significant expectation carried through in our nonacademic lives.

As I attended school and various church activities, I also participated in an array of community groups. Girl Scouts was great for building a sense of an empowered girl; the YWCA taught me leadership skills. At church, my friends provided me a sense of belonging, and the elders illuminated how educators need not be teachers. Altogether, I felt beholden to something and many people beyond myself. However, I had not yet begun the episode in my life story to know what to do with this sentiment.

Fast forward to the first decade of the new millennium. After observing one too many stressed urban educators yell at students who looked like me, I adopted a new mantra: Comfort the disturbed, disturb the comfortable. This was risky but propelled me to pursue my masters and doctoral degrees and focus on underserved communities. I committed myself to designing projects that positioned girls to be innovative change agents. I resolved to develop education projects that counter stereotypes of and biases against girls of color. My efforts were often questioned.

Academia values published work, not necessarily the effort behind the writing. This mindset comforts academia, distinguishing real research from service (which is far less important to many scholars in higher education). However, I could not in good conscience depart from my commitment. The neighborhoods surrounding my universitys campus housed individuals who led lives very similar to mine in my early upbringing. Yet, many of the most respected academic works captured stories of deficiency and underperformance. Sadly, once I moved across the country to a new academic position, the same images and discourse of those peoples inferiorities appeared. In my new context, the marginalized populations were not predominantly Black, but the stories of Latinx and Native American students were similarly depressing. Biased narratives encouraged me to do more than build programs. I began writing a book describing how I developed COMPUGIRLS, but that story quickly became insufficient. Instead, I wrote this book to document the results of my efforts. I hope that it will invite individuals to join the dialogue about and initiatives for girlhoods of color in this digital age. Together, we can deconstruct simplistic images of girls of color. We can collectively provide girls contexts in which to wrest control over their narratives and lives. Collaboratively, we can prepare them to cultivate a more just future in which they can flourish. Those goals required me to disturb my writing demons and my comfort.

This book is for a diverse audience. I hope that both academic and nonacademic readers will understand that there should be far more attention paid to how broadening technology participation efforts affect girls in more ways than simply boosting their ability to replicate current skills or navigate troubled pathways. Equally important, this book is also for the girls who have privileged me with their stories. While I followed my institutions review board procedures and gained approval to collect and analyze their narratives, I did not feel this was sufficient. Always mindful of Jackie Jordan Irvines assertion that too many scholars treat marginalized communities like plantations, I developed a member checking system with the girls that relied on multiple years worth of communication. I shared drafts of the subsequent chapters with many past participants, some whose stories appear and others who were part of a cohort with whom I maintained contact via e-mail, Facebook, or phone. I asked the stars of this book to provide their own pseudonyms. For those who did not, I still changed their names to maintain confidentiality. Nevertheless, involving the girls in the process of analysis and taking seriously their input were essential research dimensions, ensuring a higher level of credibility. This project cannot be owned solely by adult professionals. If the narratives reveal anything, it is the importance of persistence and the constant need to adapt as participants and investigators work in concert to reimagine reality.