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MIAMI UNIVERSITY The Graduate School CERTIFICATE FOR APPROVING THE DISSERTATION We hereby approve the Dissertation of Monique Gabrielle Cherry-McDaniel Candidate for the Degree: Doctor of Philosophy ------------------------------------------------ Director Dr. Denise Taliaferro Baszile ------------------------------------------------ Reader Dr. Lisa Weems --------------------------------------------------- Reader Dr. Sally Lloyd -------------------------------------------------- Graduate School Representative Dr. Gwendolyn Etter-Lewis ABSTRACT CALL ME BY MY RIGHT NAME: THE POLITICS OF AFRICAN AMERICAN WOMEN AND GIRLS NEGOTIATING CITIZENSHIP AND IDENTITY by Monique Gabrielle Cherry-McDaniel African American women and girls have struggled to define themselves independent of a public curriculum, supported by education, politics, social commentary and community, that continues to define us in relationship to work, sex and motherhood. This study will select current manifestations of controlling images, and, in the tradition of Critical Race Feminism, historicize and speak back to the ideologies that support such derogatory images of African American womanhood. This study will provide a discussion of the multiple discourses of citizenship and public curriculum, and then connect them to the histories and heritages which have constructed differentiated citizenship in America, and has created the public curriculum which legitimates it. This study will serve as the foundation for the larger work of creating a curriculum for African American women and girls to use to support our efforts to strategize and act in ways to garner fuller forms of citizenship and identity within an American socio-historical context. CALL ME BY MY RIGHT NAME: THE POLITICS OF AFRICAN AMERICAN WOMEN AND GIRLS NEGOTIATING CITIZENSHIP AND IDENTITY A DISSERTATION Submitted to the Faculty of Miami University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Educational Leadership by Monique Gabrielle Cherry-McDaniel Miami University Oxford, Ohio 2012 Dissertation Director: Dr. Denise Taliaferro-Baszile © Monique Gabrielle Cherry-McDaniel 2012 TABLE OF CONTENTS Dedication:………………………………………………………………………..iv Acknowledgements:………………………………………………………………v Preface:……………………………………………………………………………vi Chapter One: The State of African American Women in America:………………1 Chapter Two: The Influence of Public Curriculum and Citizenship: …………….14 Chapter Three: Methodology and Method:………………………………………..37 Chapter Four: Text Analysis:……………………………………………………….48 Chapter Five: Discussion: ………………………………………………………….84 References:………………………………………………………………………….94 iii Dedication I would like to dedicate the completion of this project to my mother, Lurlene Annette Moore, and to the women and girls in my life, who have shown me the unwavering courage it takes to live with dignity in spite of …. I would also like to dedicate the completion of this project to the best husband in the world! I thank you Marcus, for allowing me the time and space to realize this accomplishment. I thank you for the slack you picked up, and for motivating me, even in my stubbornness, to keep writing, and keep moving. I cannot wait to live the rest of our lives. We have so much more work to do and so much more life to experience. I’m ready if you are! iv Acknowledgements I am so thankful that I have a God that favors me and saw fit to pour into me the gifts and the talents that I will need to do His will in this life. I am thankful that when I did not know any better and when I wondered how I wound up here, he sent awesome people, events, and inspiration to remind me that He foreknew me, and His promises and plans for my life are far better than I could ever imagine. I am thankful for my birth parents, may they rest in peace. I thank Lurlene Annette Moore, my mother, for providing a shining example of what real compassion and empathy looks like. I am thankful for the times that you took me to work with you, and for the times you demanded that I learn how to love people at their best and their worst. I know that you are proud of me, and I am proud of you. I thank Michael Glenn Cherry, my father, for showing me that I have a right to question the world, and to endeavor to make it better. I am thankful for the times that you held my hand and listened to me, and I am thankful that you showed me that there are things we cannot compromise if we are to be the best people we can be. I am thankful for my sisters, who have been in my corner all of my life, and who have given so much of themselves so that I can reach my dreams. Tiffany, I thank you for being a mother figure and for instilling in me a love for reading and culture. Melitta, I thank you for expanding my worldview, even if it was on the Colonial Gardens bus to the Village. You showed me that I could accomplish more than what I saw in front of me. Elisa, I thank you for being a firecracker, and I thank you for the luxury of your humor and your ride or die support since we were little girls. I am thankful for my mother-in-law, Toni Campbell. I am thankful for the way you encouraged me, motivated me, prayed for me, and really mothered me through this process and in my maturing into who I am now. I am thankful for my pastors, Pastor Glendon and Tina Jones, for the example of leadership, love, and humility you have been to Marcus and me this past two years. You have, through words and action, encouraged me so much. I am thankful for my advisor and mentor, Dr. Denise Taliaferro-Baszile. You are so many things to so many people already, but you have really been a wonderful advisor. You have been all at once patient and motivating. I appreciate all of the professional v advice you have given me, and for the fact that you did not forget my humanness and my need to be present in life beyond this process. I am thankful for my mentor, Dr. Lisa Weems. You really pushed me to a new level of confidence in my work and my thoughts. I am thankful that you trusted me with the projects we’ve worked on together. I am thankful for my entire dissertation committee, Dr. Taliaferro Baszile, Dr. Lisa Weems, Dr. Sally Lloyd, and Dr. Gwendolyn Etter-Lewis for the time, effort and expertise each of you lent to the completion of this project. Each of you has been a consummate example of the type of professional I hope to be to those who will seek the same mentorship, encouragement, and guidance that I sought from you. I thank my Church of Judah family, The Cherry family the Moore family, the McDaniel family, the Corbitt family, Ms. Angel Archer-Harris, Dr. Lara Chatman, Mrs. Amy Fisher-Young, Mrs. Lauren Isaac, Dr. Ray Terrell, Ms. Gail Rose, Dr. Joanna Hill- Thornton, Ms. Alicia Rutledge, Ms. Autumn Hicks, Ms. Tyra Simmons, Ms. Marnitka Coleman, Ms. Kasia and Ms. Yesenia Gibbs, and many others for the endorsement, support, prayers, encouragement, friendship, meals, motivation and much more that you have lent to this process. vi Preface How this Journey Began… There are many times in a woman’s life when she is told and/or reminded of who she is. Depending on who she is and what she is, those times can be affirming or denigrating. As I sit in a secluded study room in the library, I am thinking about the times when I have been reminded that I live in a body marked female, black and young, and the hurt and trauma that often accompanied the times when I have been reminded of my positionality. I remember when I was sixteen years old. I lived in a small town with my three sisters. Our parents were both ill, and because they could not work, we were without health insurance. Due to the stress of having two terminally ill parents, my own body was beginning to break down. I was having recurring tonsil infections, and after two rounds of antibiotics I obtained illegally from one of the oncology nurses on my mother’s hospital floor, I decided to seek medical attention at a clinic. When I walked in, alone, and approached the receptionist, she looked at me with a knowing, and silently pushed the standard forms my way. I completed them as best I could, and patiently waited for a doctor to see me. When I was finally seen, hours later, I began explaining to the doctor that my tonsils were swollen, and visibly infected. She listened to me between scribbles onto a chart. When I was finished, she, looked up and asked, with a sterile, objective and unapologetic air, “When was the last time you performed oral sex, and with how many partners?”. I was dumb-founded, and offended, but not fast enough to offer the response she deserved. There was nothing on the forms I completed that inquired about my sexual history, and neither had she or anyone else in the clinic! Why would she assume that I was sexually active, that I performed oral sex, and that I had done so with multiple partners? What about me warranted those questions? I left that appointment confused, I knew something was wrong, but, at sixteen years old, I did not have the words to name it. Today, I still find myself struggling to name what happened to me that day in the clinic, and what has happened to me countless times since then, when a doctor, teacher, neighbor, politician, store clerk, or even friend assumes who and what I am, and what my interests should be. It is complicated; I cannot adequately call it racism, sexism, 1 classism, or any other ism, as doing so disregards the symbolic and material implications of the intersections of race, gender, class and other markers of difference.

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