From Candy Girls to Cyber Sista-Cipher: Narrating Black Females' Color-Consciousness and Counterstories in and out of School

Abstract

In this article, Carmen Kynard provides a window into a present-day "hush harbor,"a site where a group of black women build generative virtual spaces for counterstories that fight institutional racism. Hidden in plain view, these intentional communities have historically allowed African American participants to share and create knowledge and find their voices in hostile environments, which, in the case of this study, involve an academic institution. Kynard also discusses the need for critical scholar/student alliances that interrogate taken-for-granted institutional practices that invalidate out-of-school literacies. The article parallels the instructional practices that disenfranchise black students with research agendas that claim to alleviate inequity while really perpetuating it.