Inner Joy Versus Hardship: Insights from Black Girls

Digital Dominoes. So welcome to another episode. I'm really happy to have Alexandria Onuoha. I had the privilege of hearing Alexandria last month do her dissertation, and I was so impressed by it, and I want more people to hear about it. It was all about joy and difficult. Times and joy spaces. So, Alexandria, thank you so much for being here and sharing, and congratulations on your successful PhD.

Thank you. It, it's a, it was a journey, but we made it. We made it, and I'm super excited to be here. I'm really grateful that you reached out. I'm excited to chat more and, and share about how this could be applicable to the digital space, but also like anybody that's interested in adolescence and development.

So I wanted to understand their definitions of joy. I think oftentimes when we think about specific constructs, they're usually. Defined by the adults, right. Us, you know? But I think as someone who is really interested in youth voice, I wanted to understand not only how youth conceptualize concepts, but even the most marginalized groups like black girls, how do they define joy?

The literature is overwhelmingly a deficit based model for black girls and just black children in general. And I think when we talk about different concepts like joy and hope and radical imagination, it allows us to have more of an expansive view of how do we actually promote thriving for young people, right?

So photo voice is a methodology. It's usually. Used in youth participatory action research, which is young people involved in the research, like intentionally involved in the research. So they're helping with the methodology. They may be helping with data analysis. So I wanted to use photo voice because not only do I wanna hear their definitions on a auditory level, but I wanna to visually see it too.

So as far as some of the findings, because I'm writing the papers now and you know I need, and I need to publish them, I won't give all of the, the details. You would have to come to the defense. But I will say there was two things. You know, black girls talked about joy as. Feeling like it's embodiment or feeling like joy is something that is a constant source, so something that somebody cannot take away from you.

Whereas emotions like happiness has been defined as something that is kind of, I. External, right? Like it's kind of the ebbs and the flows, like you're happy or sad, but with joy it's like you can go through really hard, difficult times, but because you have a sense of purpose or you have a higher calling, you know, per se, you feel joy even in the midst of struggle and tribulation.

Like how does it feel to be a black woman conducting research with black girls about similar topics that I've experienced. So yeah, that was the premise of my dissertation. And then there was other papers about my dissertation that. Specifically talked about black anti-fascism and joy and fascism. I think a lot of us, we go to a specific time and place, right?

And it's about this idea of collective futures and building, which was also another concept that I talked about in my papers of this idea of how can adults and community members assist black girls in creating. Joy spaces and creating this idea of building towards a collective future, right? We don't really like our current system, so what does it look like when there is no racial and gender discrimination?

You know, what does it look like for black girls to live in a world where they are free from harm? What is their visions for leadership and activism? Like all of these questions are important rather than only asking about. What is your experience like with racism? Like that's an important question, but it's not the only question that we should be asking.

But if you say, okay, how can I empower you? And what do you need to be empowered? It's something, it's different. And then people. Feel energy to make change if I've un, I'm just trying to phrase it differently to make sure I've understood like that it's a similar concept, right? You're saying that let's focus on joy, let's focus on the positive on the community, and how did you experience that?

Like with the community, like black girls compared to, I don't know if you compare it to other races or, or you know, males and such, like how is that. Yeah, I love what you're saying too. I'll first talk a little bit about like the digital space and this particular study on black girls in middle school with joy.

Fat phobia and what are like, what are you seeing online that, or colorism, right? So they are being shown different messages and it's not like someone is ex explicitly saying. You need to be thin. But if they are constantly seeing skinny people and people that don't necessarily look like them, right? And there's nothing, obviously there's nothing wrong with being skinny, but in our society, skin equals, uh, society, skinny and or thin, and whiteness are equated to being superior.

Like those questions are important because it allows me. As the adult and as the youth practitioner in the room to be like, okay, how, how can we have harm reduction tactics that include making sure your feed, making sure your, the algorithm is fit for what you want? Right? So just having that level of interaction with the black girls was really beneficial and meaningful to me because I've gone through that like.

Next week I'm going to actually interview some data labelers from Kenya. It was one sentence that they spoke at the conference and they said something about labeling a, an image of beauty. Beautiful. And it was just like one sentence. And I, I guess, caught it and I was, oh, I have to have a whole episode about this.

'cause they said they get a clear picture of what is beautiful. Yes. And they had to label it, right? Mm-hmm. Like this whole open my mind, so I asked them and contact them. Does that mean that all this like AI bias, you know, algorithm bias that they're saying is just in the data was actually partially a concrete decision by someone?

And for a lot of people, that boils down to racial socialization and some of the, basically what, what are the messages about other people's race, your race, and how does that shape your preferences or shape how you treat others or how you treat yourself, right? So I do think a lot of that. Boils down to family and again, all of the messages, family socialization.

It was the Suicide Prevention Conference in Massachusetts and suicide prevention. There's just like a lot of, it's also, it's also not my space. It's like not my, you know, my fields, but you know, I was invited to talk about joy and at first I was like. I'm not sure if this is, would be considered suicide prevention only because there's years and years of these traditional ways of thinking about suicide prevention.

You can feel like, well if this is how the world sees me, like what is the point? Right? So I think where I come in is thinking about joy spaces, not just the physical space. 'cause I talk in my dissertation and in my research I talk a lot about the physical space of joy spaces, whether that be, you know, pottery or dance or poetry or like creating youth development opportunities.

But. The, we could create joy spaces online, and black women and girls have done that before. They have created social movements online against people and groups that say like, Hey, you're not good enough, or, you know, you look like this and you look like that. So it has been seen, but I think what's missing.

You know, thinking about joy, so kind of on a tangent, but as we were talking I was like, yeah, this definitely has impact. Even though my study wasn't on like the digital space, it has so much implications for the digital space and how the harms that actually impacts someone's psychological safety.

Right? So I, I really like that, you know, that comes together for me. Like there's hopelessness. It's because you can't find that joy that is nowhere near the online space because it's within yourself. Yeah. And I think, you know, it's hard because the question becomes, well, how do I get to the joy? How do I get to the joy?

Okay. You know? No. Right. It's, it's controversial. Like I don't need to love them, but would it hurt? Like, you know what I mean? I don't know why you would get into education. I mean, because it's such a hard job. Like yes, that must be really hard to stay motivated. And sometimes in my experience working with teenagers, sometimes it is hard to feel the love.

But love is an action and I think love and joy and hope they all exist in this kind of like circle. And I think. The lack of love and care for black children, I think is why the suicide rates are really high for black girls. I think that's why a lot of black boys don't feel like they have a space, and I.

Right. And that's the beauty about human development, right? Like we are complex. Like one day we like this. The next day we like this. One day we're happy. The next day we're not. It's truly life. And I think more young people, and particularly black children, they need mentors and they need those opportunities, those physical spaces, but also digital spaces that affirm them and that allow them not to have self-deprecating mindsets.

What you said about mentors is so important because this is something you can't really appreciate until you realize when you have it. Because I worked in a, in a place where there was only men in the leadership. I was, I was the CFO and there were no other women. Like the next level was men, all men, and my level was all men, and it was me.

You are different, they're treating you different, and you don't understand exactly that it's happening. If I could ask, because you did mention about the role models for black girls and obviously last year it was the US election, which we could talk about politics for. Oh yes, we, I mean, it's related. It's related to my work, so Yeah, exactly it is.

That's why I wanna ask about that because there was a lot of talk, I mean, and this is in probably a media. Thing, you know, just trying to put kind of black against black, I felt like. How did you experience that and your girls experience that whole situation with Kamala? Yeah, that's a really great question.

Intersectional bias such as misogynoir. One of my research papers was actually about far right misogynoir and um, in that study I did a qualitative study with 17 black women college students in a northeast liberal arts college, and I just asked them. What is your experiences on misogynoir, which is the definition of misogynoir by Dr.

People feel emboldened to disrespect them in the classrooms to not value their contributions. So that's like one of the papers. But then I. In my public facing work, I've definitely talked about the, the ways the far right organizes, or a better word, is how the far right targets black women. And Kamala Harris is just one of the examples, but it's been going on in history, the fact that they attacked her.

'cause the thing is, if you have critiques about someone. It's fair game politics. That's what we do. You know, we want to make sure the person is fitting for the opportunity, but they were attacking her race, her gender, they were attacking her husband, and just all of the things that are associated with misogynoir, right?

'cause, 'cause I was just their, you know, their point person, you know, program development. But I've had conversations with them about, you know, Kamala Harris. Occupant of the White House and a lot of them are in leadership positions and interested in policy. And I think seeing that it does bother them or put another obstacle of, I don't really wanna go through that, like, that's just ridiculous.

Yes, exactly. If you find your joy space and you know it's there, right. Obviously it's, as you say, it's hard. It's very hard. You have to make a decision. Um, and I've heard about other online abuse victims, often they won't report, they won't speak up because they see what happens to other people who do. And, and I've spoken to other people who.

I can imagine. Well, I gotta get that on a shirt. The world could learn a lot from black girls. I will say, I, I'll answer this in two ways, what I learned and then what the world can learn. I think what I learned. From black girls about joy in particular is you have to make a deliberate decision every day to choose it.

You're not gonna wake up and feel joyful, but if you think about the things that you're grateful for, if you think about just being alive and present, like the small joys, just going for a walk like. Breathing. We underestimate those things so much. So black girls for me, has taught me that I can be complaining about so many things, but the fact that I'm alive and I'm breathing like is important and I am a contribution to society.

I just wanna have a level of joy that even when I'm going through something, I have my spirituality or I have, I, I know what my value is. So they've taught me so much about, I feel like these days I'm laughing more, I'm happier of my experience with them. And I think as adults we tend to, you know, we're, we're thinking about a lot of things in life.

You know, and we, there was this level of whimsical frolic and all of these things that we could still integrate in our daily lives. So I've, I've learned that from them and I've also learned from them that. There are specific differences than happiness and joy for sure. As a researcher, like that was important for me to add to the literature and that was their contribution.

You know, they talked about joy not just being something that is merely an emotion, but it's embodiment, it's action. It's, it's multifaceted and what the world can learn from black girls. Hmm. I think I've said it, but I think what the world could learn from black girls is whatever you have be grateful for, but if you have the opportunity to create joy space, and if you have the opportunity to bring light to others, do it.

And what you were saying about there's just so much back and forth and polarization and all of this nonsense, honestly. We all experience joy. We're all human. We all have the same experiences. One person's success does not mean the the reduction of your own. And sometimes especially thinking about political violence.

And I think what you know, people can learn from black girls, even the ones that don't agree with me, is that joy and radical hope is something that is beneficial for all of us. Nobody's losing. Amazing. Really beautiful. Thank you. It is beautiful. I'm so happy that your work exists and I'm looking forward to you continuing it.

Yeah, I, it can make a big difference. People finding their joy. Yes. So thank you so much. Yeah, thank you. And that brings us to the end of this episode of Digital Dominoes. We hope you've enjoyed learning about another piece of the puzzle that makes up the vast and complex digital world. Remember, you can find all our episodes and more at digi-dominoes.com.