A 2017 Article Excerpt That Provides A Different Interpretation Of Why Black Girls Roll Their Eyes

Edited by Azizi Powell

This is Part I of a two part pancocojams series about the "eye roll" gesture.

This post presents definitions of "eye roll" and an excerpt of an article written by an African American professor that interprets "eye rolling" particularly as it is done by African American females.

Click https://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2023/03/the-differences-between-traditional.html for Part II of this pancocojams series. That post showcases a brief video clip of NeNe Leakes formerly from the reality television series The Real Housewives Of Atlanta doing an eye roll. That post contrasts that eyeroll gesture with a 2020 TikTok compilation of people doing "eye rolls" gestures and a Feb. 2023 TikTok clip of a man doing a "side eye" gesture. 

Click https://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2023/03/examples-of-african-american-girls.html for Part III of this pancocojams series. That post also presents some examples of the African American girls saying "You can roll your eyes and stomp your feet"...

The content of this post is presented for socio-cultural purposes.

All copyrights remain with their owners.

Thanks to Fahima Ife and all others who are quoted in this post.

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Click http://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2012/03/puttin-on-black-side-eye-videos.html for the closely related 2012 pancocojams post entitled "Putting On The Black-Giving A Side Eye".  The portion in that post about African American females rolling their eyes at someone or something is quoted in this 2023 post. 

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DEFINITIONS ABOUT THE "EYE ROLL" GESTURE

These definitions are given in no particular order and are numbered for referencing purposes only.
Definition #1
From https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/eye-rolling#:~:text=eye%2Droll%C2%B7%E2%80%8Bing%20%CB%88%C4%AB,the%20rolling%20of%20the%20eyes
"eye-rolling

variants or less commonly eye rolling

: the action or gesture of turning the eyes upward as an expression of annoyance, exasperation, disbelief, etc. : the rolling of the eyes”….

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Definition #2
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye-rolling
"Eye-rolling is a gesture in which a person briefly turns their eyes upward, often in an arcing motion from one side to the other. In the Anglosphere, it has been identified as a passive-aggressive response to an undesirable situation or person. The gesture is used to disagree or dismiss or express contempt for the targeted person without physical contact.[1]

History

Eye-rolling has been present in literature since at least the 16th century, according to the Oxford English Dictionary.[2] William Shakespeare periodically would use the gesture in his works to portray lust or passion for another character, as used in his poem The Rape of Lucrece.[1][3] In his time, eye-rolling was used commonly as an expression of desire or flirtation, and it continued to be used in his way in literature for centuries. Up until about the 1950s this same meaning was used in music and films, but began translating to the meaning known today. The widespread use of eye-rolling in a negative connotation wasn't present until the 1980s.[4]”….

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MY EDITORIAL NOTE FROM THE 2012 POST ENTITLED "PUTTING ON THE BLACK- GIVING SOMEONE A SIDE EYE
 http://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2012/03/puttin-on-black-side-eye-videos.html 

Saturday, March 10, 2012

[Explanation of that title written March 2, 2023- "Putting On The Black" is a phrase I coined in 2012 that refers to the conscious use of Black vernacular English online. The definition I gave to that phrase is "to purposely use African American vernacular English to signal to others (including other Black people who may be present) that you are Black, and/or to show off your Blackness". The correct use of Black vernacular is one way online that people can indicate that they are Black without directly identifying themselves by the use of racial terms.

To further explain that term, "puttin on the Black" is the conscious, often prideful, and usually fun use of African American Vernacular English. Among African Americans, "puttin on the Black" means to code switch from either Standard American English or a milder form of conversational African American English to a more pronounced form of African American vernacular English. To do so is in stark contrast to purposely hiding one's identification as an African American culture by consciously refraining from using any Black slang, or Black sayings, or Black grammatical constructs, unless that African American originated vernacular has been widely accepted by the mainstream American culture.

When I coined that phrase I was referring to commenters who were actually Black. However, in the 2020s, that phrase may (also) mean something different, since it appears that a number of people online who aren't African American and are actually non-Black use African American Vernacular English for one reason or another.] 

[....]

"EYE ROLL

Growing up in New Jersey in the 1950s and having lived in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania since 1969, I'm much more familiar with the term "rolling your eyes" at someone than either "side eye" or "cut eye". Actually, I had to look up the meanings of both those two terms in order to be sure that I understood what they meant.

"Rolling your eyes at someone" isn't the same as giving someone a "side eye" or a "cut eye", but it's very similar. Here's the definition of "eye rolling" from 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_gestures :
"Eye-rolling, performed by rotating the eyes upward and back down, can indicate incredulity, contempt, boredom, frustration, or exasperation. The gesture can be unconscious or can be performed consciously. The gesture occurs in many countries of the world, and is especially common among adolescents".
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Notice that this definition doesn't specifically refer to Black females, although that gesture appears to be mostly associated with that population. 

In African American culture the concept of "eye rolling" may carry negative connotations because of the minstrel, vaudeville, and later caricatures of Black people as "coons". That's particularly the case when eye rolling is combined with the wide eyed (bug eyed) look. Examples of that side eye/bug eye look can be found in the African Americans dancing in a scene from the 1937 American movie Day At The Races http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2f9dFrvBr4 (at 5:11 and 5:35). However, that type of "eye rolling" is different from the previously discussed gesture that is usually associated was Black females.

Here's an example from a political blog where the meaning of "eye roll" is something like "Sure. Right." (said in sarcasm):

"Sorry guys, its a done deal- Romney picked up 9 convention delegates from Guam...its a shoo in from here on out (holy eye roll)"

-blueblooded; March 11, 2012 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/10/wyoming-caucus-results-2012_n_1336804.html

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ARTICLE EXCERPT

https://educate.bankstreet.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1133&context=occasional-paper-series
Volume 2017 Number 38 #SayHerName: Making Visible the t/Terrors Experienced by Black and Brown Girls and Women in Schools Article 4 October 2017 Bank Street Occasional Papers 

Perhaps a Black Girl Rolls Her Eyes Because It’s One Way She Attempts to Shift Calcified Pain Throughout Her Body? by Fahima I. Ife

"My spirit is unsettled each time I read my secondary English education students’ reflections about their placement sites. As is typically the case in teacher education programs, in each cohort most of my students are White women, and a few are White men; there are always fewer than five students of color. As they prepare to enter middle and high school classrooms as full-time English teachers, my students participate in required field experiences in schools throughout East Baton Rouge Parish, where they encounter mostly Black and Brown students from low socioeconomic backgrounds. For many, this is their first time being surrounded by students whose bodies and lived experiences differ greatly from their own.

I do not join my students in their field sites. I wait for them at the university, in our English methods courses, where they bring many reflective stories. Mostly, their narratives feel like greedy gossip. They relay tales of hostility witnessed as fights break out each day. They report standing on the sidelines, spying young Black bodies clawing at one another. They mumble desires for strategies to “manage” their future students. My Queer-Black-woman self has learned to wander between the spoken and unsaid.

Deeper within their reflections lies another narrative—a clear disdain toward Black girls’ expression.

My students are angered when Black girls roll their eyes, suggest they develop more backbone in their teaching, adamantly refuse another rudimentary reading of The Crucible, or loudly assert their needs and objections in the classroom.

Why do my students register Black girls’ actions as impolite, rather than seeing them as animated responses? Why must Black girls continue to enter classrooms where teachers aspire to refashion their behavior and to forcibly eradicate loud, wild, and sassy expressions of Black girlhood, rather than “celebrate” (Brown, 2013) their vibrant spirits? Perhaps a Black girl rolls her eyes because it’s one way she attempts to shift calcified pain throughout her body? Perhaps she’s disinterring historicized pain, meticulously shifting transatlantic memories of an earlier time’s forced breeding (De Veaux, 2014; Shange, 2010; Spillers, 2003), of yesterday’s slanders against her sexual nature (Morgan, 2000;

 

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Richardson, 2013), and of today’s appropriation of her genetic legacies (Bey & Sakellarides, 2016) and envisioning tomorrow’s dissolution of hardened slabs of salt flowing freely throughout her healed body? Perhaps she’s signaling her need for creative outlet, a mythical opportunity worthy of her sentience?

Perhaps a Black girl rolls her eyes to intervene against daily assaults against her humanity in hostile classes? Where being Black-and-girl incites dehumanization and despiritualization? Where being “loud Black girls” (Fordham, 1993; Koonce, 2012; E. Morris, 2007) summons state-sanctioned incarceration, underreported police fatalities (Crenshaw & Ritchie, 2015), and minimal space to address its impact (Love, 2017)? How can my future-teacher-students cultivate empathy for Black girls if they do not understand their kaleidoscopic expressions, if they cannot understand their multiply overlapping intersections of marginality, if they have never absorbed their literary imaginations, if they do not personally know or love any Black girls whose lives do more than gesticulate Whiteness?

But this isn’t entirely their fault. They are undergraduate English majors who are largely unfamiliar with the worlds curated by Black women writers, whose works are rarely included in British and American literature courses.

So, I meddle.

[…]

Because Pre-K–20 courses rarely center the experiences of Black girls and women, and because I’ve grown tired after years of my own eye-rolling, I designed and taught an undergraduate survey of African American women’s literature, “#BlackGirlMagic Across Time & Space” Thirty-three students enrolled, 24 Black women and nine allies.1

Nearly half our class openly or quietly identified as LGBTQ, and a few Black women discussed their nonmonogamous and polyamorous expressions of love. Many openly discussed their yearnings for love.

1 Three White women, three Black men, two Latina women, and one White man also enrolled in the course.

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[…]

Using novels, poetry, music, film, and scholarly pieces, we examined how Black girls, in real and imagined scenarios, cultivate sites for expressive freedom Between novels, we read scholarly critiques and blog posts by Black women and shared media “play dates” where we listened to music and crafted magical items such as wish jars, collages, and poetry.

We listened to Solange Knowles’s (2016) A Seat at the Table. We also viewed D. C. singer-songwriterfilmmaker Be Steawell’s (2014)  short film, Vow of Silence, and Beyoncé’s (2016) visual album, LEMONADE.

[…]

After listening and viewing, we ruminated on heartache and healing in student-facilitated talkbacks.

We co-curated a digital media archive holding links to interactive sites, blogs, songs, documentaries, opinion editorials, animated series’, and other electronic artifacts portraying our expansive, collective

definitions of #BlackGirlMagic. Toward the end, we discussed ownership, reflecting on Clover Hope’s inquiry, “Who Gets to Own ‘Black Girl Magic?” (Hope, 2017). We concluded with an art fair, where students showcased both individual and collaborative creative projects based on their own redefinitions of #BlackGirlMagic.

Here, in what became an incredibly q/Queer expressive course, Black girls’ eye rolling and side-eyeing were embraced as rhythmic creativity. #BlackGirlMagic was rearticulated as a spiritual antidote to

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Western conceptions of learning, discussion, and being in venues of higher education.

[…]

Perhaps a Black girl rolls her eyes because there are so few spaces where she can simply be, shifting and twirling through various emotional states? Yet, by persistently replenishing living, breathing archives, they/she/we curate magical spaces, animated by brilliance. And through steady creative motion, we heal.”

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This concludes Part I of this three part pancocojams series.

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