Toward being nobody's darling: a womanist reframing of school climate

This article demonstrates how (bad) girl performances rupture the inherently violent logic undergirding exclusionary discipline through the schooling experiences of five Black girls on probation. In so doing, it reveals a clear need for the abolition of suspension, expulsion and school-based arrest and relays a new focus on freedom dreaming for harmonious, womanist, healing-informed school climates. In so doing, it calls educators to nurture the liberatory promise in Black girls who experience school conflict by affirming their resistance, rejection, or indifference to white femininity and Black respectability. Such a move takes us away from perceptions, policies, and practices reinscribing Black girlhood as problematic and brings us toward schooling experiences that invite and honor the fullness of their being.