CONSIDERING RACE, CULTURE, AND GENDER IN P-16 EDUCATION: A FILM-BASED INQUIRY OF BLACK AFRICAN IMMIGRANT GIRLS’ AND WOMEN’S EXPERIENCES

The educational experiences of Black immigrant women in P-16 education are often understudied in critical scholarship about race, ethnicity, and gender. The existing literature on Black students in US higher education tends to overlook within-group diversity, oftentimes highlighting the experience of domestically born African Americans and neglecting the experiences of Black people born outside of the country. To address this gap in the education discourse, we examined the experiences of Black, African immigrant girls and women who have experienced all or part of their P-16 education in the United States. Using a combination of Critical Race Feminism (CRF) and transnationalism as our theoretical frameworks, we sought to answer two research questions: (1) How do Black immigrant women in the film describe their process of racial, ethnic, and gender identity formation? and (2) What are the literacy practices and educational experiences of Black African girls and women? Methodologically, we drew from Saldaña’s (2009) model of film-based qualitative inquiry to analyze the documentary Am I: Too African to be American or Too American to be African? (directed by Dr Nadia Sasso). In our analysis, we foreground the lived experiences of eight women from three African countries: Nigeria, Sierra Leone, and Senegal. Major findings from this qualitative analysis include: (1) the importance of cultural negotiation for immigrant girls and women, (2) the presence of dualities in language and ways of speaking in education, (3) a tumultuous racial identity formation process, and (4) the linked perceptions of students’ gender identity and beauty. Finally, we present implications for immigration policy, inclusive research, and equitable practice across P-16 education.