After years of not reading often due to the trauma of being forced to endure “To Kill a Mockingbird” in ninth-grade honors English, I’ve finally decided to go back to my roots of being the kid checking out five books at the library (the limit) and reading every single one. So I’ve made it one of my New Year’s goals to read five books this year (I’m reading two at the same time because I simply cannot chill), and one of them is “Hood Feminism” by Mikki Kendall.
Although I’m only five chapters into this book that my mom gifted me for Christmas, those pages are underlined, sticky-noted and exclamation-pointed.
Hood Feminism examines how the modern-day feminist movement centers women who are already privileged.
As Kendall puts it in her introduction: “Instead of a framework that focuses on helping women get basic needs met, all too often the focus is not on survival but on increasing privilege. For a movement that is meant to represent all women … often centers around those who already have most of their needs met.”
Her sentiments of how food insecurity, poor access to quality education and safe neighborhoods, and how calling little Black girls “fast” are all feminist issues deeply resonates with me, especially after I heard yet another Black girl was failed by her community.
Little Black Girls Aren’t ‘Fast’
Na’Ziyah Harris, a 13-year-old Black girl who’s been missing since Jan. 9, 2024, hasn’t had the privilege of making national outlets. Her story has been largely confined to Detroit local news and social-media outcries. She doesn’t get her Netflix documentary; in fact, she doesn’t even get the dignity of being found. Moreover, we are just now hearing about her story a full year after her disappearance.
Despite Black folks making up 14% of the U.S. population, we make up 40% of missing-person cases for people under age 18. Black women’s and children’s cases are left untouched for decades—marked as runaways, marked as unworthy, marked as the “imperfect victim.”
When little Black girls go missing, it’s a deafening silence with a reminder that maybe if we were “good” girls or white girls, we’d be found.
Harris’ story reflects a common experience of young Black girls.
I can guarantee if you’re a Black woman between the ages of 5 and 100, you’ve heard of what being “fast” is, and you’ve been warned or scolded numerous times not to be a fast girl.
Now, I was blessed that whenever I went through a phase of wearing exclusively red lipstick in the eighth grade, my mom reluctantly drove me to Target (not without giving me a “You’re beautiful without makeup” speech, paired with an eye roll, of course). And whenever my dad would drop me off at the mall on Saturdays and I’d come back with an $8 Forever21 crop top, he’d let me wear it because as he put it: “I’m not going to argue with you about clothes.”
But not every young Black girl lives in an environment where they can express girlhood and where puberty isn’t an invitation for predatory eyes and shaming remarks.
All too often, when little Black girls start to like little boys and when little Black girls like lipgloss, big lashes and rips in their jeans; when they have their first period; when they stop wearing training bras; or maybe when they laugh too loud with their other little Black girl friends, they’re fast, supposedly.
An attempt to protect young girls from being perceived as sexually promiscuous quite literally does the opposite. In fact, 40% to 60% of Black girls are sexually abused before the age of 18, and sexual abuse is a key factor in young women of color ending up in the school-to-prison pipeline.
Racial stereotypes of a fast Black girl perpetuate the idea that these girls cannot be victims of rape because their bodies are commodities. This is rooted in post-slavery Jim Crow where Black women literally did not have the right to deny consent to white men, making them “un-rapeable,” as Kendall puts it.
Calling little Black girls fast for expressing their femininity and exploring their sexuality allows for the adultification of these girls, making them be seen as not needing protection.
‘You Are the Monster’
Na’Ziyah Harris’ uncle, 42-year-old Jarvis Butts, is on trial for the alleged sexual abuse and alleged murder of Harris. Using disturbing text messages and documents, prosecutors allege that Butts had been abusing her since 2022, along with other young girls and women. Prosecutors allege that the text messages show Butts groomed her into believing they had a romantic relationship; eventually found out she was pregnant; and conducted Google searches on ways to terminate pregnancy, on obtaining abortion pills and on drinking red anti-freeze.
But, regardless of the ultimate verdict, we aren’t hearing her story everywhere. There is little public evidence that this little girl had anyone in her corner.
During a preliminary hearing in January, 36th District Judge Aliyah Sabre ruled there was enough evidence for Butts to stand trial in the murder of Harris. The judge stated then that the child’s mother wasn’t to be found and questioned her grandmother’s testimony.The judge said the child’s school counselor never showed up when she asked to speak to someone before her disappearance.
“Na’Ziyah deserved so much more,” the judge stated prior to her ruling. “And while I mentioned that other people failed her, Jarvis Butts, you are the monster in this whole picture.”
Who is going to protect our girls?
Harris is not and will not be the only little Black girl society fails if we don’t cut the crap.
The adultification of Black girls is not exclusive to the Black community. In fact, the first time I found out that wearing a tank top made me a “slut” was from my white middle-school friends, even though we wore the same things.
The White Bystander Effect
The same racial stereotypes used to justify the sexualization of Black women are the same racial stereotypes that justified angry white mobs killing Black men for the thought of even looking at a white woman. And these same racial stereotypes are the same racial stereotypes fueling anti-immigration policies, even though Black, Hispanic and Indigenous women are more likely to experience sexual assault, and white men commit more sexual assault than men of any other race.
And yet, when we think about rape culture, #metoo or the modern feminist movement, too many don’t think of women of color—even though sexual violence has been a means to impose colonialism and white supremacy.
Kendall mentions research in Chapter 4, “Of #FastTailedGirls and Freedom,” that highlights this phenomenon all too well.
In a study entitled “White Female Bystanders’ Responses to a Black Woman at Risk for Sexual Assault,” researchers found that white women bystanders were less likely to intervene to help a Black woman at risk for sexual assault than a woman perceived to be white. A similar study about college-aged women found the same results.
Ain’t I a Woman?
When Trump was first elected to office in 2016, I joined the wave of national women’s marches, flooded with white women in pink hats. I was 15 and a self-proclaimed intersectional feminist and honestly didn’t want to go, but in true fashion, my dad made me. Despite being in a crowd of women, I felt alone. I didn’t feel empowered; I felt helpless. I felt as though I was fighting by myself for myself.
Kendall’s first chapter, “Solidarity Is Still for White Women,” highlights this exact feeling. In a movement aimed to fight for the rights of all women, we continue to see the harmful and historic effects of white feminism on women of color. We see 53% of white women voting for a man who promises a world where their virtue is protected.
This isn’t a call-out; I think we’ve exacerbated the phone bill on that. These are just some hard conversations we must have. The lack of solidarity doesn’t just harm women of color; it harms the white women who fall at the abuse of a system promising them more. As Fannie Lou Hamer said, “Nobody’s free until everybody’s free.”
When Kimberlé Crenshaw coined the phrase “intersectional feminist,” she examined the way in which inequality is not created equally and how people’s social identities overlap. We often approach race, gender and sexuality as singular topics; however, they can be experienced all at once.
When we experience the acts of the current administration, they are all feminist issues because they affect women. When a woman is deported because of her immigration status and is no longer able to pick her children up from school, it is a feminist issue. When tariffs are put on the price of food and clothes and a single mother is no longer able to feed her children, it is a feminist issue. When a disabled woman is no longer able to work from home and pay her bills, it is a feminist issue. When a woman is fired from her job for being a “DEI” hire, it is a feminist issue. When a young trans woman is barred from sports, it is a feminist issue. And when another little Black girl is called fast and disappears, it is a feminist issue.
When will we wake up and realize that if nothing is done, these women will eventually become us?
This MFP Voices opinion essay does not necessarily represent the views of the Mississippi Free Press, its staff or board members. To submit an opinion for the MFP Voices section, send up to 1,200 words and sources fact-checking the included information to voices@mississippifreepress.org. We welcome a wide variety of viewpoints.