Between Good and Ghetto: African American Girls and Inner-City Violence

Chapter 4: “Love Make You Fight Crazy”: Gendered Violence and Inner-City Girls

107 Chapter 4 “Love Make You Fight Crazy” GENDERED VIOLENCE AND INNER-CITY GIRLS IT IS 10:30 ON A WEEKDAY MORNING and I am riding the trolley as it moves along its route underneath Philadelphia’s Center City District. I notice two African American girls in their late teens sitting across from one another near the door of the trolley car. They are both dressed in black jeans and white shirts— color combinations that are consistent with the dress code in Philadelphia’s public schools. The girl who is sitting across from me sports the kind of puffy black coat that has been in style for months. In a voice loud enough for other passengers in the car to hear, she addresses her friend, “I can’t believe he choked Justine like that.” Her girlfriend offers no audible reply, but the young woman continues anyway. “That’s what she get,” she says, intuiting that Justine must have done something to instigate the choking. This remark elicits a response from her friend: “She smacked him.” The two talk a bit more about what they both clearly perceive as having been a dumb move on Justine’s part. They do not, however, place all the blame on the victim. “He too big to be hitting on some little-ass girl. He too big to be hitting on Justine. She a little girl.” As I listen, I am troubled by the logic underlying the girls’ exchange, but not surprised. Versions of stories like Justine’s, including her role in what seems to be her own victimization, surfaced during interviews with young women who participated in my study, often when they were talking about the experiences of some other girl: a friend, a family member, or an associate. Generally, the girls I spoke with about such violence believe there is a set of rules governing teenaged girls’ physical conflicts with adolescent boys and men. These rules reflect mainstream expectations of appropriate behavior for boys and girls, and are influenced by—yet are also distinct from—the code of the street. The notion that there are symbolic lines that neither teenaged girls nor women should cross during arguments with their boyfriends or male partners is pervasive. In the different settings I frequented during the three years I spent in the field—the local public school, the city jail, the trolley, neighborhood streets—many of the girls and women I encountered shared this belief. One of the most obvious violations , and one that is likely to produce (deservedly, in some people’s opinions) physical retaliation from a man, is a blow to his face. If a teenaged girl hits a young man in the face and he hits her back—well, as the girls on the trolley put it, “That’s what she get.” At the same time, teenaged girls also have ideas about what men are supposed to do in confrontational situations. In Justine’s case, the man who choked her crossed the line not because he hit her—by their logic, she deserved that because she smacked him in the face—but because he was too big to choke her. The exchange I overheard on the trolley illustrates elements of a common theme regarding teenaged, inner-city girls’ understanding of dating violence. First, although it is generally accepted that men should not hit women, some teenaged girls are quick to offer qualifications. These circumstances, to a troubling degree, point to their peers’ (or sometimes their own) culpability for such violent encounters: A young woman who hits a man should expect to be hit in return, the logic goes. Many young men and young women empathize with this B e t w e e n G o o d a n d G h e t t o 108 “Love Make You Fight Crazy” 109 position. Danielle (introduced in chapter 2), in describing a fight she had with her boyfriend, explained to me that during the fight she became extremely frustrated. Her boyfriend, she said, kept “getting all up in my face.” That combined with continuous back and forth yelling finally resulted in Danielle smacking him across the face. Her boyfriend, who normally is a shy and reserved young man, did not hit her back. Aware that she had crossed a line that left her open to the possibility of retaliation, Danielle said she felt lucky that her boyfriend had not struck...