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Abstract
The identity of Black girls is constantly subject to scrutiny in various spaces, particularly within Hip Hop and education. Previous scholarship has noted that, as Black girls are compelled to navigate the margins of respectability politics, the images and messages of Hip Hop culture have always created a complicated and complex space for Black girls' identity development. The purpose of this article is to explore how Black adolescent girls construct their identities, particularly as it relates to ratchet-respectability identity politics, a concept called the Cardi B-Beyoncé complex. In examining the Cardi B-Beyoncé complex, I look at the intersection of ratchetness and respectability in educational settings and the influence of Hip Hop artists and images on the construction of ratchet-respectability identities. Further, this theme informs the need for a transformative, ratchet educational space for Black girls where the multiplicity of the Black girlhood experience will be appreciated and not silenced.
When I was 12 years old, Cash Money Records was takin over for the '99 and the 2000 and Gangsta Boo was asking where dem dolías at? At 12 years old, I was at a nexus of leaving my childhood self behind and discovering who I was and who I wanted to be. Hip Hop played a significant role in discovering my Black femininity; it dictated what I defined as Blackness, how I performed my femininity, and how I conceptualized sexuality. While the world told me who I was supposed to be, Hip Hop allowed me to be my free, unapologetic self; weaving through the complicated intersections of race, gender, region, and respectability politics to find myself and define myself. While the world told me to be a classy, silent Southern belle, Hip Hop allowed me to be unapologetically loud and ratchet, giving me space and voice to be loud and free to move/manipulate my body in ways that were not deemed respectable. While many believe that 12-year-olds are just children who do not know/understand the influence of media and cultural structures, at 12 years old, I was challenging and critiquing notions of Black femininity to curate an unapologetic femininity that I could call my own.
At 12 years old, youth are entering adolescence, a time developmental theorists discuss as a complicated time of...