Black girls' Invisibility In high school

Invisibility is a microaggression rooted in gendered racial oppression. Black adolescent girls, unfortunately, encounter multiple discriminatory injustices such as racism and sexism in schools, which may hinder academic performance and well-being. Little is known about the myriad ways Black girls experience gendered racism in schools, more specifically, invisibility. This study defines invisibility as Black girls’ perceptions that their experiences, voices, and feelings are silenced or invalidated.

This qualitative study employed a grounded theory approach with two rounds of one-on-one virtual semi-structured interviews with a socioeconomic diverse sample of 13 U.S. Black adolescent girls ages 14-18. Interview topics included personal definitions and experiences of invisibility, unfair treatment including racism/sexism, academic performance, mental health, and school-based solutions.

Data were analyzed inductively via initial and post-coding memos, line-by-line coding, focus coding, analytic memos, and team discussions. Our analysis found that Black girls often described invisibility with the following:

• Feeling socially excluded and isolated
• Having a lack of support from school staff
• Feeling dismissed 
• Feeling unheard and minimalization of complaints
• Feeling unacknowledged for accomplishments