What Black Girl Advocacy on the
“The Chi” Looks Like
“The Chi” Looks Like
By Tamara D. Hill, Ph.D.
Lena Waithe is an Emmy award winner and creator of the acclaimed show “The Chi.” The core of her show is the telling of a contemporary “coming of age” drama set on the Southside of Chicago with both genders who vary in age that experience pain, loss, and happiness with a modicum of humility. However, the residents are at times associated by coincidence but in a tangible way are seeking redemption and a sense of recognition in a city that is overcome with gang violence, decreased economic opportunities, and political corruption. Jeryl Brunner, author of “Here’s Everything We Know So Far About the Showtime Hit,” The Chi Season 3, “Series creator Lena Waithe peels back the layers on Chicago’s gritty South Side, where residents are doing all they can to survive—and desperately trying to thrive. In this tough neighborhood, danger looms everywhere. Everyday choices not only kill dreams, but they often have life or death consequences.”
In season 3 of The Chi, sister and brother, Kevin and Keisha are embracing their LGTBQ parents’ wedding in the first episode titled “Foe Nem.” When the episode starts, Kevin and Keisha’s mom Nina is marrying Dre, her longtime lover. Keisha, the track star, has decided to attend college away from home on a full scholarship and is excited at her prospects. At the end of Nina and Dre’s wedding day, while the couple honeymoons at a local inner-city hotel, Keisha goes out to pay the final catering bill and to wait for “someone” at a local bus stop. However, it is never revealed to the audience whom she is waiting for at this dark and precarious stop. The next thing the audience sees is that Keisha has vanished into thin air and all that remains of her is her cracked cell-phone. As the episode progresses, we see that Keisha, this beautiful “Black girl,” who is on the cusp of obtaining her dream is indeed missing.
Utilizing the lens of Psychological criticism and New Historicism, we can examine the trauma that Nina, Dre, and Kevin are faced with now that Keisha is missing. Their anxiety, mental anguish and stress lets the audience experience what it is like to have a child that is missing from an African American perspective. The Women’s Media Center affirms that, “The harsh reality is that an estimated 64,000-75,000 Black women and girls are currently missing in the U.S. Arguably due to pressure from activists and advocacy groups such as Black and Missing Foundation, Inc., which documents and brings awareness to missing Black people, and growing national interest in human trafficking, major news outlets such as CNN ran stories in 2019 about the alarming number of missing Black children and Black women in the United States.” By the same token, when Black girls or women go missing, they are usually not acknowledged as being innocent or that a pedophile has truly abducted them. No, because the perception of Black women or girls that are missing are riddled with negative stereotypes and harsh judgements about their home life, much like how Keisha is depicted in the Chi. Safiya Charles, a news reporter from the Montgomery Advertiser affirms, “Black girls are often classified as runaways rather than missing persons; shifting the focus from public safety to personal responsibility. According to Black and Missing, stereotypes about African Americans and crime also play a role in the disparity in media coverage. Black people are often labeled as criminal associates, involved with drugs and gangs, or assumed to live in areas where crime is a part of their daily lives.”
The audience is now a formal witness to how society perceives “Black girls” when they go missing. Usually, when they disappear into thin air, there was an ambivalence from law enforcement because local authorities to begin an immediate search for Keisha, who is a prototype of “Black girls” from the Southside of Chicago and Black communities in general. This element of truth is often displayed in the news when they have reported that “Black girls” have gone missing in major cities in comparison to their White counterparts such as Amanda Berry, 26, Gina DeJesus, 23, and Michele Knight, 32 who were all kidnapped at ages 16 and 14, where a massive search by local authorities was conducted until they were exhausted. Psychologically, this unforeseen tragedy which traumatizes Keisha and her family exemplifies that “Black boys and girls” are not valued and there is no national interest in their lives, missing or not. Historically, the mainstream media does not report “missing Black girls” the same way they do their White counterparts. But you will find magazines like Essence and Ebony that highlight missing “Black women and girls” and giving constant updates as their stories progress. Harmeet Kaur, from CNN remarked, “In fact, data shows that missing White children receive far more media coverage than missing Black and Brown children, despite higher rates of missing children among communities of color.”
Conversely, we witness the strength of Black mothers despite their internal pain, when viewing the “Chi” in their own community who not only empower one another but refuse to wait on the City of Chicago police to take Keisha’s disappearance seriously. These Black women in the “Foe Nem” episode have experienced the trauma of their children being murdered or missing and relive it every time they hear the sound of bullets on the Southside of the city. The sound of bullets or another child that goes missing triggers their emotional response to empower themselves to protect their own because the city of Chicago nor the local government will not. Moreover, for the natives of the Chicago, when you see a pair of “sneakers” hanging off a telephone wire it is an informal memorial which usually means that another life was lost in the community. Even with the women suffering internal anguish, Tracy has sought to establish a refuge for Southside mothers that advocate for their lost or murdered children. For that reason, when watching the “Foe Nem” episode, it can be deduced that the mothers are suffering from PTSD or Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome. The American Psychiatric Association explains that PTSD is:
Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a psychiatric disorder that may occur in people who have experienced or witnessed a traumatic event such as a natural disaster, a serious accident, a terrorist act, war/combat, or rape or who have been threatened with death, sexual violence or serious injury. PTSD can occur in all people, of any ethnicity, nationality or culture, and at any age. PTSD affects approximately 3.5 percent of U.S. adults every year, and an estimated one in 11 people will be diagnosed with PTSD in their lifetime. Women are twice as likely as men to have PTSD. Three ethnic groups – U.S. Latinos, African Americans, and American Indians – are disproportionately affected and have higher rates of PTSD than non-Latino whites. People with PTSD have intense, disturbing thoughts and feelings related to their experience that last long after the traumatic event has ended. They may relive the event through flashbacks or nightmares; they may feel sadness, fear or anger; and they may feel detached or estranged from other people. People with PTSD may avoid situations or people that remind them of the traumatic event, and they may have strong negative reactions to something as ordinary as a loud noise or an accidental touch.
Based on the American Psychiatric Association’s definition of PTSD, Tracy and the mothers who have joined R.O.C.K. mental health is compromised because they continue to have flashbacks, experience sadness and/or fear about the loss of their children. Additionally, their stress levels increase and are triggered every time there is a child who is murdered from gang violence or who goes missing. We witness their PTSD symptoms in their refusal to speak, their constant tears or suffering from depression.
Tracy who is a survivor of sexual abuse and who has lost her own child to a senseless shooting has established an organization called ROCK (Remembering Our Chicago Kids) that serves as a catharsis that helps the women to heal while galvanizing a better response from the community and the City of Chicago to take a profound interest in their children. Even though Tracy’s organization is fictional for the show, there is some truth to Black mothers forming their own coalitions on the South side of Chicago in attempts find closure, advocate for their children and support each other. These grassroots organizations are the Kenwood Oakwood Community Organization (KOCO), H.E.R. Chicago and Mothers Opposed to Violence Everywhere or (MOVE). In the ‘Chi’ which is about Chicago’s Southside, a group of “Black girls or women” formed a coalition and became activists to address the societal ills in their own community such as gang violence, missing children, and sexual abuse while personally supporting Black mothers whose cries for justice and reform go too often unheard by the City of Chicago. These “Black girls” advocate for justice for their children in a city that does not remember them or wants the memory of them to be erased. While it is true that the Chi is mainly centered on the Southside of Chicago, it does not mean that Black mothers on the other sides of the city do not comprehend nor support the pain of those mothers who have lost their children because children go missing or lose their lives to gun violence all over the city.
Black mothers and their children have always had a special bond dating back to the days of slavery.
Historically, when Black mothers were separated from their children by their cruel plantation masters, this did not deter their love for them or make them any less determined to be reunited with them again. “One of the major reasons female slaves were less likely to run away than male slaves, was because of her attachment to her children. She wanted to be near them at all costs and would rather endure punishment than feel as if she abandoned them. A slave mother would do anything in her power to see her children,” according to Scholar Lindsey Smith. Likewise, you can see this same type of familial bond with Tracy, her organization and the mothers on the South side of Chicago. While their children are not being sold away on a plantation, their loss of them in the city streets of Chicago because of drugs, violence and gangs is just as momentous as what the enslaved mothers had to endure. By Tracy forming her organization, i.e ROCK to help not only herself but the other grieving mothers in the South side community, she has enabled them by forcing Chicago to not only advocate for the children they have lost but their pain that comes with it. However, this should not be the case because when a child goes missing no matter what their ethnicity is, local and federal law enforcement should be fully vested with money, accountability and search parties in making sure that the child is found and returned to their parents.
To illustrate this point, On the “Foe Nem” episode, when Dre and Nina seek help from the Chicago Police Department, the officer who happens to be a Black woman comes to the house is very dismissive toward Keisha actually being “missing” and believes she is “being fast” and has run away with some decrepit man. What is even more puzzling to the audience is that the officer tells Nina and Dre that, “she will come back when she is through.” Her statement adds to their trauma as a family because they do not comprehend why a police officer can just make a statement like to them and no show no concern whatsoever for their loved one who is missing. In essence, the Black cop has victimized both Keisha and her family with her unsubstantiated judgement and refusal to help them. This same judgement happens again when Nina and Dre seek help from R.O.C.K. Dre is a social worker and has worked with Tracy in the past. Dre tells Nina that Tracy is her best bet in obtaining help from the community in finding Keisha. Initially, when Nina and Dre go to R.O.C.K for assistance, they tell their story to the other mothers that are present. After they complete their story and pass around some pictures, some of the mothers in the room immediately point out how Keisha is “fast,” and is the neighborhood girl who has multiple boyfriends. The mothers also show them her explicit Instagram account that neither Dre nor Nina are aware of at the time. Frustrated and angry, both Nina and Dre decide they do not need them and prepare to leave. In spite of this scenario, it is Tracy who serves as the voice of reason and reminds them all that no child is perfect and parents are not aware of what they do when are not in their presence. This shows how some of the mothers really feel in regards to Keisha as teen girl because psychologically she is being victimized for her alleged reputation and social media accounts instead of being uplifted as a “missing person.” These specific incidents from the episode demonstrate how people in our own community often view “missing” Black girls, instead of being empathetic towards the parents and people that love them. If we as a community do not value the lives of our Black and Brown children, then how can we expect others too?
As the leader of R.O.C.K, Tracy wanted to establish an organization that supported her and other Black women in the community who had or were enduring the same trauma. It is can perceived from the “Foe Nem” episode that her efforts were about making social changes for the disadvantaged groups which are the Black mothers who are being ignored by the Chicago Police department and want to be a voice for their children on the Southside. These women are seeking to improve the safety of the communities on the Southside while trying to overcome their feelings of powerlessness. Ultimately, they have no choice but to try and uplift their own community while participating in this collective think tank known as R.O.C.K. because no one else including state agencies are trying to help them in this fictional drama. These Black women are mentally blocking out the “naysayers” and the lack of assistance from the city, while organizing and exploring options that will help them, their children and community. While Tracy is attempting to help her community, she is also seeking to amass some type of authority and or funding that will provide the resources to assist people when their children go missing or are lost to violence. Consequently, this is what “Black Girl” advocacy should like in any community. R.O.C.K is a collective problem-solving organization who wants political, social and economic changes to happen on Chicago’s Southside for its residents, especially Black mothers. As a group of Black women they are working together for social changes that will benefit their children by decreasing or eliminating the gang violence, improving community resources and contribute to the overall physical and mental wellbeing of the Southside residents.
It can be assumed that this “Black Girl” advocacy that Tracy has started will continue on as the generations grow up on the Southside of Chicago. If R.O.C.K continues to make progress, then the organization will serve as an example of civic engagement that other communities of color need to model and implement in their own neighborhoods. This group’s mission is to bring attention to the issues that Chicago faces on the Southside in particular the violence and missing children. Even though as the episodes surrounding Keisha’s disappearance evolve, R.O.C. K. is often ignored by law enforcement and local policymakers in Chicago. Moreover, social and political changes are only being made incrementally on the Southside but this does not stop Tracy nor her organization from fighting for their community. Our missing Black girls or women are dehumanized by the media, ignored by society and receive minimal support from law enforcement when they go missing or are murdered. These responses are indicative about why we as a community of African American people need to be the voice for our children because we must value their existence when others do not. Regardless of that fact being a reality in our African American communities, on the episode ‘Foe Nem” Tracy developed a “community driven” effort that real Black mothers on the Southside of Chicago initiated long ago and perhaps are the inspiration for this particular episode. All these women are attempting to do is keep their children and community safe because “Black girls and women’s” lives do indeed matter to our community and to the parents who love them.” If we cannot as a people comprehend the importance of a fictional portrayal of advocacy for “Black girls and women” on the “Chi” then how can we expect anyone to take us seriously when it happens in real life?
Lena Waithe is an Emmy award winner and creator of the acclaimed show “The Chi.” The core of her show is the telling of a contemporary “coming of age” drama set on the Southside of Chicago with both genders who vary in age that experience pain, loss, and happiness with a modicum of humility. However, the residents are at times associated by coincidence but in a tangible way are seeking redemption and a sense of recognition in a city that is overcome with gang violence, decreased economic opportunities, and political corruption. Jeryl Brunner, author of “Here’s Everything We Know So Far About the Showtime Hit,” The Chi Season 3, “Series creator Lena Waithe peels back the layers on Chicago’s gritty South Side, where residents are doing all they can to survive—and desperately trying to thrive. In this tough neighborhood, danger looms everywhere. Everyday choices not only kill dreams, but they often have life or death consequences.”
In season 3 of The Chi, sister and brother, Kevin and Keisha are embracing their LGTBQ parents’ wedding in the first episode titled “Foe Nem.” When the episode starts, Kevin and Keisha’s mom Nina is marrying Dre, her longtime lover. Keisha, the track star, has decided to attend college away from home on a full scholarship and is excited at her prospects. At the end of Nina and Dre’s wedding day, while the couple honeymoons at a local inner-city hotel, Keisha goes out to pay the final catering bill and to wait for “someone” at a local bus stop. However, it is never revealed to the audience whom she is waiting for at this dark and precarious stop. The next thing the audience sees is that Keisha has vanished into thin air and all that remains of her is her cracked cell-phone. As the episode progresses, we see that Keisha, this beautiful “Black girl,” who is on the cusp of obtaining her dream is indeed missing.
Utilizing the lens of Psychological criticism and New Historicism, we can examine the trauma that Nina, Dre, and Kevin are faced with now that Keisha is missing. Their anxiety, mental anguish and stress lets the audience experience what it is like to have a child that is missing from an African American perspective. The Women’s Media Center affirms that, “The harsh reality is that an estimated 64,000-75,000 Black women and girls are currently missing in the U.S. Arguably due to pressure from activists and advocacy groups such as Black and Missing Foundation, Inc., which documents and brings awareness to missing Black people, and growing national interest in human trafficking, major news outlets such as CNN ran stories in 2019 about the alarming number of missing Black children and Black women in the United States.” By the same token, when Black girls or women go missing, they are usually not acknowledged as being innocent or that a pedophile has truly abducted them. No, because the perception of Black women or girls that are missing are riddled with negative stereotypes and harsh judgements about their home life, much like how Keisha is depicted in the Chi. Safiya Charles, a news reporter from the Montgomery Advertiser affirms, “Black girls are often classified as runaways rather than missing persons; shifting the focus from public safety to personal responsibility. According to Black and Missing, stereotypes about African Americans and crime also play a role in the disparity in media coverage. Black people are often labeled as criminal associates, involved with drugs and gangs, or assumed to live in areas where crime is a part of their daily lives.”
The audience is now a formal witness to how society perceives “Black girls” when they go missing. Usually, when they disappear into thin air, there was an ambivalence from law enforcement because local authorities to begin an immediate search for Keisha, who is a prototype of “Black girls” from the Southside of Chicago and Black communities in general. This element of truth is often displayed in the news when they have reported that “Black girls” have gone missing in major cities in comparison to their White counterparts such as Amanda Berry, 26, Gina DeJesus, 23, and Michele Knight, 32 who were all kidnapped at ages 16 and 14, where a massive search by local authorities was conducted until they were exhausted. Psychologically, this unforeseen tragedy which traumatizes Keisha and her family exemplifies that “Black boys and girls” are not valued and there is no national interest in their lives, missing or not. Historically, the mainstream media does not report “missing Black girls” the same way they do their White counterparts. But you will find magazines like Essence and Ebony that highlight missing “Black women and girls” and giving constant updates as their stories progress. Harmeet Kaur, from CNN remarked, “In fact, data shows that missing White children receive far more media coverage than missing Black and Brown children, despite higher rates of missing children among communities of color.”
Conversely, we witness the strength of Black mothers despite their internal pain, when viewing the “Chi” in their own community who not only empower one another but refuse to wait on the City of Chicago police to take Keisha’s disappearance seriously. These Black women in the “Foe Nem” episode have experienced the trauma of their children being murdered or missing and relive it every time they hear the sound of bullets on the Southside of the city. The sound of bullets or another child that goes missing triggers their emotional response to empower themselves to protect their own because the city of Chicago nor the local government will not. Moreover, for the natives of the Chicago, when you see a pair of “sneakers” hanging off a telephone wire it is an informal memorial which usually means that another life was lost in the community. Even with the women suffering internal anguish, Tracy has sought to establish a refuge for Southside mothers that advocate for their lost or murdered children. For that reason, when watching the “Foe Nem” episode, it can be deduced that the mothers are suffering from PTSD or Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome. The American Psychiatric Association explains that PTSD is:
Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a psychiatric disorder that may occur in people who have experienced or witnessed a traumatic event such as a natural disaster, a serious accident, a terrorist act, war/combat, or rape or who have been threatened with death, sexual violence or serious injury. PTSD can occur in all people, of any ethnicity, nationality or culture, and at any age. PTSD affects approximately 3.5 percent of U.S. adults every year, and an estimated one in 11 people will be diagnosed with PTSD in their lifetime. Women are twice as likely as men to have PTSD. Three ethnic groups – U.S. Latinos, African Americans, and American Indians – are disproportionately affected and have higher rates of PTSD than non-Latino whites. People with PTSD have intense, disturbing thoughts and feelings related to their experience that last long after the traumatic event has ended. They may relive the event through flashbacks or nightmares; they may feel sadness, fear or anger; and they may feel detached or estranged from other people. People with PTSD may avoid situations or people that remind them of the traumatic event, and they may have strong negative reactions to something as ordinary as a loud noise or an accidental touch.
Based on the American Psychiatric Association’s definition of PTSD, Tracy and the mothers who have joined R.O.C.K. mental health is compromised because they continue to have flashbacks, experience sadness and/or fear about the loss of their children. Additionally, their stress levels increase and are triggered every time there is a child who is murdered from gang violence or who goes missing. We witness their PTSD symptoms in their refusal to speak, their constant tears or suffering from depression.
Tracy who is a survivor of sexual abuse and who has lost her own child to a senseless shooting has established an organization called ROCK (Remembering Our Chicago Kids) that serves as a catharsis that helps the women to heal while galvanizing a better response from the community and the City of Chicago to take a profound interest in their children. Even though Tracy’s organization is fictional for the show, there is some truth to Black mothers forming their own coalitions on the South side of Chicago in attempts find closure, advocate for their children and support each other. These grassroots organizations are the Kenwood Oakwood Community Organization (KOCO), H.E.R. Chicago and Mothers Opposed to Violence Everywhere or (MOVE). In the ‘Chi’ which is about Chicago’s Southside, a group of “Black girls or women” formed a coalition and became activists to address the societal ills in their own community such as gang violence, missing children, and sexual abuse while personally supporting Black mothers whose cries for justice and reform go too often unheard by the City of Chicago. These “Black girls” advocate for justice for their children in a city that does not remember them or wants the memory of them to be erased. While it is true that the Chi is mainly centered on the Southside of Chicago, it does not mean that Black mothers on the other sides of the city do not comprehend nor support the pain of those mothers who have lost their children because children go missing or lose their lives to gun violence all over the city.
Black mothers and their children have always had a special bond dating back to the days of slavery.
Historically, when Black mothers were separated from their children by their cruel plantation masters, this did not deter their love for them or make them any less determined to be reunited with them again. “One of the major reasons female slaves were less likely to run away than male slaves, was because of her attachment to her children. She wanted to be near them at all costs and would rather endure punishment than feel as if she abandoned them. A slave mother would do anything in her power to see her children,” according to Scholar Lindsey Smith. Likewise, you can see this same type of familial bond with Tracy, her organization and the mothers on the South side of Chicago. While their children are not being sold away on a plantation, their loss of them in the city streets of Chicago because of drugs, violence and gangs is just as momentous as what the enslaved mothers had to endure. By Tracy forming her organization, i.e ROCK to help not only herself but the other grieving mothers in the South side community, she has enabled them by forcing Chicago to not only advocate for the children they have lost but their pain that comes with it. However, this should not be the case because when a child goes missing no matter what their ethnicity is, local and federal law enforcement should be fully vested with money, accountability and search parties in making sure that the child is found and returned to their parents.
To illustrate this point, On the “Foe Nem” episode, when Dre and Nina seek help from the Chicago Police Department, the officer who happens to be a Black woman comes to the house is very dismissive toward Keisha actually being “missing” and believes she is “being fast” and has run away with some decrepit man. What is even more puzzling to the audience is that the officer tells Nina and Dre that, “she will come back when she is through.” Her statement adds to their trauma as a family because they do not comprehend why a police officer can just make a statement like to them and no show no concern whatsoever for their loved one who is missing. In essence, the Black cop has victimized both Keisha and her family with her unsubstantiated judgement and refusal to help them. This same judgement happens again when Nina and Dre seek help from R.O.C.K. Dre is a social worker and has worked with Tracy in the past. Dre tells Nina that Tracy is her best bet in obtaining help from the community in finding Keisha. Initially, when Nina and Dre go to R.O.C.K for assistance, they tell their story to the other mothers that are present. After they complete their story and pass around some pictures, some of the mothers in the room immediately point out how Keisha is “fast,” and is the neighborhood girl who has multiple boyfriends. The mothers also show them her explicit Instagram account that neither Dre nor Nina are aware of at the time. Frustrated and angry, both Nina and Dre decide they do not need them and prepare to leave. In spite of this scenario, it is Tracy who serves as the voice of reason and reminds them all that no child is perfect and parents are not aware of what they do when are not in their presence. This shows how some of the mothers really feel in regards to Keisha as teen girl because psychologically she is being victimized for her alleged reputation and social media accounts instead of being uplifted as a “missing person.” These specific incidents from the episode demonstrate how people in our own community often view “missing” Black girls, instead of being empathetic towards the parents and people that love them. If we as a community do not value the lives of our Black and Brown children, then how can we expect others too?
As the leader of R.O.C.K, Tracy wanted to establish an organization that supported her and other Black women in the community who had or were enduring the same trauma. It is can perceived from the “Foe Nem” episode that her efforts were about making social changes for the disadvantaged groups which are the Black mothers who are being ignored by the Chicago Police department and want to be a voice for their children on the Southside. These women are seeking to improve the safety of the communities on the Southside while trying to overcome their feelings of powerlessness. Ultimately, they have no choice but to try and uplift their own community while participating in this collective think tank known as R.O.C.K. because no one else including state agencies are trying to help them in this fictional drama. These Black women are mentally blocking out the “naysayers” and the lack of assistance from the city, while organizing and exploring options that will help them, their children and community. While Tracy is attempting to help her community, she is also seeking to amass some type of authority and or funding that will provide the resources to assist people when their children go missing or are lost to violence. Consequently, this is what “Black Girl” advocacy should like in any community. R.O.C.K is a collective problem-solving organization who wants political, social and economic changes to happen on Chicago’s Southside for its residents, especially Black mothers. As a group of Black women they are working together for social changes that will benefit their children by decreasing or eliminating the gang violence, improving community resources and contribute to the overall physical and mental wellbeing of the Southside residents.
It can be assumed that this “Black Girl” advocacy that Tracy has started will continue on as the generations grow up on the Southside of Chicago. If R.O.C.K continues to make progress, then the organization will serve as an example of civic engagement that other communities of color need to model and implement in their own neighborhoods. This group’s mission is to bring attention to the issues that Chicago faces on the Southside in particular the violence and missing children. Even though as the episodes surrounding Keisha’s disappearance evolve, R.O.C. K. is often ignored by law enforcement and local policymakers in Chicago. Moreover, social and political changes are only being made incrementally on the Southside but this does not stop Tracy nor her organization from fighting for their community. Our missing Black girls or women are dehumanized by the media, ignored by society and receive minimal support from law enforcement when they go missing or are murdered. These responses are indicative about why we as a community of African American people need to be the voice for our children because we must value their existence when others do not. Regardless of that fact being a reality in our African American communities, on the episode ‘Foe Nem” Tracy developed a “community driven” effort that real Black mothers on the Southside of Chicago initiated long ago and perhaps are the inspiration for this particular episode. All these women are attempting to do is keep their children and community safe because “Black girls and women’s” lives do indeed matter to our community and to the parents who love them.” If we cannot as a people comprehend the importance of a fictional portrayal of advocacy for “Black girls and women” on the “Chi” then how can we expect anyone to take us seriously when it happens in real life?
Work Cited
Brunner, Jeryl. “Here's Everything We Know So Far About
the Showtime Hit The Chi Season 3.”
https://parade.com/1050532/jerylbrunner/the-chi- season-3/
August 23, 2020. Accessed 17 September 2021.
https://parade.com/1050532/jerylbrunner/the-chi- season-3/
August 23, 2020. Accessed 17 September 2021.
Charles, Safiya.“Missing black women's cases are often
unsolved, underreported.
Here are 7 from Montgomery.” November 15, 2019. https://www.montgomeryadvertiser.com/story/news/2019/11/15/unsolved-missing-black-girls-women-cases-underreported-montgomery-county/4165154002/
Accessed 17 September 2021.
Kaur, Harmeet. “Black kids go missing at a higher rate
than white kids. Here's why we don't hear about them.”
Sun November 3, 2019.
https://www.cnn.com/2019/11/03/us/missing-
children-of-color-trnd/index.html.
Accessed 12 September 2021.
Lindsey, Treva. “The urgent crisis of missing Black
women and girls.”
https://www.womensmediacenter.com/
February 20, 2020.
Accessed 17 September 2021.
Smith, Lindsey. How African American Slaves Created
a Culture that Defied Their Oppressors.
University of North Georgia. 25-March-2016.
https://digitalcommons.northgeorgia.edu/ngresearchconf/2016
History_Anthropology_Philosophy/4.
Accessed 17 September 2021.
What is PTSD?
https://www.psychiatry.org/patients- families/ptsd/what-is-ptsd
Accessed 15 September 2021.
The Chi. “Foe ‘Nem.” Episode aired 21 June, 2020.
Directed by Jett Wilkinson.
Accessed 12 September 2021.
Brunner, Jeryl. “Here's Everything We Know So Far About
the Showtime Hit The Chi Season 3.”
https://parade.com/1050532/jerylbrunner/the-chi- season-3/
August 23, 2020. Accessed 17 September 2021.
https://parade.com/1050532/jerylbrunner/the-chi- season-3/
August 23, 2020. Accessed 17 September 2021.
Charles, Safiya.“Missing black women's cases are often
unsolved, underreported.
Here are 7 from Montgomery.” November 15, 2019. https://www.montgomeryadvertiser.com/story/news/2019/11/15/unsolved-missing-black-girls-women-cases-underreported-montgomery-county/4165154002/
Accessed 17 September 2021.
Kaur, Harmeet. “Black kids go missing at a higher rate
than white kids. Here's why we don't hear about them.”
Sun November 3, 2019.
https://www.cnn.com/2019/11/03/us/missing-
children-of-color-trnd/index.html.
Accessed 12 September 2021.
Lindsey, Treva. “The urgent crisis of missing Black
women and girls.”
https://www.womensmediacenter.com/
February 20, 2020.
Accessed 17 September 2021.
Smith, Lindsey. How African American Slaves Created
a Culture that Defied Their Oppressors.
University of North Georgia. 25-March-2016.
https://digitalcommons.northgeorgia.edu/ngresearchconf/2016
History_Anthropology_Philosophy/4.
Accessed 17 September 2021.
What is PTSD?
https://www.psychiatry.org/patients- families/ptsd/what-is-ptsd
Accessed 15 September 2021.
The Chi. “Foe ‘Nem.” Episode aired 21 June, 2020.
Directed by Jett Wilkinson.
Accessed 12 September 2021.
|
|