Playing With Dialectics: Black Female Friendship Groups as a Homeplace

Abstract

Female friendships are significant to many Black females because they represent a homeplace, or a safe space. This study uses Baxter and Montgomery's (1996 Baxter , L. A. , & Montgomery , B. M. ( 1996 ). Relating: Dialogues and dialectics . New York , NY : The Guilford Press . [Google Scholar], 1998 Baxter , L. A. , & Montgomery , B. M. ( 1998 ). A guide to dialectical approaches to studying interpersonal relationships . In B. M. Montgomery & L. A. Baxter (Eds.), Dialectical approaches to studying interpersonal relationships (pp. 1 – 16 ). Mahwah , NJ : Lawrence Erlbaum . [Google Scholar]) relational dialectics theory and Collins’ (2000 Collins , P. H. ( 2000 ). Black feminist thought: Knowledge, consciousness, and the politics of empowerment ( ed.) , 2nd . New York , NY : Routledge . [Google Scholar]) Black feminist thought to understand the interplay of contradictions in the stories that Black females tell in their friendship groups. The contradictions embedded in the stories were finances (spending/saving), language (“good”/“bad” English), appearance (satisfaction/dissatisfaction), and race (acceptance/rejection of otherness). The interaction of these tensions showed that the friends engaged in group segregation and integration, which ultimately enabled them to freely express their culturally based truths without fear of marginalization.