Other People’s Daughters - Critical Race Feminism and Black Girls’ Education

Oct 15, 2026

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Other People’s Daughters examines critical race feminism and how Black girls’ education is shaped by legal scholarship, feminist and race-based epistemologies, and urban schooling contexts. It highlights Regina Austin’s call for minority female scholars to advocate strategically for poor and working-class minority women, and argues that educational needs of Black girls have been neglected. Drawing on Fordham’s findings about stereotyped identities and race-less performance, it contrasts these with ethnographic work showing resilient African American girls embracing strong Black female identity and family-based knowledge for confronting oppression.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages14

Reading Time35 min

AccessFree to download

Research with Black Girls in Mind

Stereotypes and identity strategies in classrooms

Resilience through Black female identity and family conversations

Implications for education scholarship and pedagogy

Other People’s Daughters: Critical Race Feminism and Black Girls’Education By Venus E. Evans-Winters & Jennifer Esposito Venus E. Evans-Winters is an assistant professor with the Department of Educational Administration and Foundations in the College of Education at Illinois State University, Normal, Illinois; Jennifer Esposito is an assistant professor with the Department of Educational Policy Studies in the College of Educaiton at Georgia State University, Atlanta, Georgia. The intellectual product of the minority feminist scholar should incorporate in a formal fashion the ethical and moral consciousness of minority women, their aspirations, and their quest for liberation. Her partisanship and advocacy of a minority feminist jurisprudence should be frankly acknowledged and energetically defended. Because her scholarship is to be grounded in the material and ideological realities of minority women and in their cultural and political responses, its operative premises must necessarily be dynamic and primarily immanent; asthe lives of minority women change, so too should the analysis. —Regina Austin (1995, p. 426) The above quote is extracted from legal scholar Regina Austin’s 1995 article,“Sapphire Bound!” In the article Austin calls for minority female scholars in the legal field to straightforwardly, unapologetically, and strategically use their intellectual pursuits to advocate on behalf of poor and working class minority women. At-risk of being stereotypically identified and labeled as overly aggressive, overbearing, loud, audacious, or in other words, the “angry Black woman”(e.g. a bitch), Austin encourages minority female scholars to redefine the Sapphire stereotype to testify to the social and political circumstances impacting minority women. She believes that legal scholars, like herself, embody the necessary attitude and agency it takes to bear the burden of collective struggle alongside, with, and on behalf of other minority women. The legal scholar suggests that collective struggle is overdue considering the marginalization of poor minority women, especially of Black women, in the U.S. political economy. Even though Austin is arguing from the perspective of a woman of color, with experience and interest in the legal field, her comments are also relevant to conceptual, theoretical, methodological, and pedagogical efforts in the field of education. In this article, we are mainly concerned with Austin’s (1995) personal and professional insights for its implications and relevancy to urban girls, in particular, African American girls being schooled in urban school communities. There is a need for more scholarship in the field of education that looks at the educational experiences and schooling processes of African American girls. Because feminist epistemologies tend tobe concerned with the education of White girls and women, and raced-based epistemologies tend to be consumed with the educational barriers negatively effecting Black boys, the educational needs of Black girls have fallen through the cracks (Evans-Winters, 2005) . Like Austin suggests above, there is a need for more minority female scholars in the field of education and other related areas, to directly confront, unabashedly, the social and educational needs of minority girls of color. Female scholars of color have documented the unique challenges young Black women encounter in many of our urban schools, due to their raced, classed and gendered status. Research with Black Girls in Mind Fordham (1993) has suggested that students and school officials alike have stereotyped African American girls as loud, aggressive and masculine. However, Fordham suggests that many Black girls have embraced a loud and tough personain order to be heard and not overlooked in classrooms and school buildings that tend to ignore them and marginalize them as students. In later work, based on data from ethnographic work at a U.S. high school, Fordham (1996) made the c

FAQs

What does Regina Austin’s 1995 argument emphasize for minority female scholars?

Austin calls on minority female scholars in legal fields to use their intellectual work straightforwardly and strategically to advocate for poor and working-class minority women. She also encourages redefining the “Sapphire” stereotype to reflect social and political realities affecting minority women.

How does Fordham explain African American girls’ behavior in schools?

Fordham suggests students and officials stereotype African American girls as loud, aggressive, and masculine, and that many girls adopt a loud, tough persona to be heard. In later work, she argues high-achieving Black girls may adopt a “race-less persona” to succeed academically by rejecting an ascribed Black identity.

What alternative findings does O’Connor present about high achieving African American girls?

O’Connor concludes that high-achieving African American girls embrace a strong positive Black female identity and that resilience is supported by family conversations about race, class, and gender oppression. Resilient students are socialized to commit to fighting race, class, and gender injustices at school, in the community, and in society.

Oct 15, 2026

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