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The 1980s brought a sharp upturn in punitive practices in U.S. schools. One negative result of harsh school discipline is that poor students of color have been punished at disproportionate rates, with the racial disproportionality in sanctions being especially dramatic among girls. Some argue that support services might undermine race, class, and gender inequalities in punitive exclusion, although there are questions about whether and how support services might mitigate these inequalities. During a 13-year ethnography of responses to girls' rule violations (especially violence) in a high school in Oahu, Hawai'i, I found that school staff and girls had conflicting definitions of school safety. Consequently, girls were left alone to defend themselves from race-, gender-, and class-based demoralizations, and if girls relied on physical aggression to protect themselves, they were often punished and referred to therapeutic programs. Therapeutic support blunted some harsh edges of punishment for individual girls, but therapy did not address the larger inequalities giving rise to girls' outbursts. Insights from critical race theory and intersectional and black feminist theories are used to explain the processes through which multiple inequalities are advanced in the punitive and therapeutic responses to the girls in this study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article draws on existing feminist theoretical perspectives to develop a Black Feminist Criminology to better understand African American womens involvement in criminal activity as victims and/or offenders. Expanding on Black feminist and critical race feminist frameworks in the development of Black Feminist Criminology allows for the recognition of the significant connection between structural and cultural restraints and victimization and offending. A thorough review of the contributions of Black feminists, Black feminist theory, and critical race feminist theory is provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents a study which focused on feminist and womanist discourse in African American politics. Significance of naming African American womanists and feminists; Misconceptions about African American feminists; Function of Africana womanism.

Analyzes the politics of dissent or bravery among African American feminist intellectuals. Relationship between African American feminism and nationalism; Ideological conflict between feminism and nationalism; Gender-related issues facing women.

Patricia Hill Collins, Bernice Reagon, and other black feminists have identified an African American women's tradition described as "othermothering"--that is, assuming responsibility for the nurturance and welfare of black children who are not the blood relatives of the othermother. I have extended their definition to include the rhetoric of certain black women, notably Mary Ann Shadd Cary. Shadd Cary was the first black woman in North America to own and publish a newspaper. With her editorials and articles, she assumed responsibility for nurturing the political thought of at least fifteen thousand black fugitives from slavery and free blacks who crossed the border into Canada between 1853 and 1857. She used rhetoric to shape the identity of a new black citizenry destined to live in the Ontario Province. Her theory of racial uplift was to be instrumental in developing the the identity of this new citizenry. Shadd Cary was a radical thinker who stood apart from black male and female abolitionists and other black women engaged in racial uplift. I demonstrate that her editorials and articles were a rhetorical form of Africana othermothering by doing a qualitative content analysis as my principle methodology. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]