Double Dutch: A Classic for Whom?
Jump ropes spinning like egg beaters in quick succession were once a staple of the black neighborhoods of Harlem, Brooklyn and the Bronx, and in fact the pavements of black girls’ neighborhoods across America. Double dutch is a game and practice that holds a special place in the legacies and current practices of black girlhood. The oral traditions and bodily practices created a literacy and way of knowing that was and is instrumental to constructions of black girlhood, selfhood and social life. Seen through a black feminist lens, double dutch acts as a means to combat the controlling images and assert agency against a world that erases black girls’ and women’s existence.
In double dutch, the individual cannot succeed without the continued rhythmic support of the community, and the community is but individuals expressing their connections. Double dutch necessitates helps create these relationships, as it quite literally requires at least three participants — two enders to turn the ropes at either end, and a jumper — but also each girl must listen to the others’ rhythms and hear their calls, a process through which they develop a sense of self and other, safety and community, in a world which otherwise neglects their very existence.
The oral and bodily (kinetic) traditions of double dutch are part of a long lineage of the ways in which black Americans have historically and currently maintain culture and community. Through the tapping ropes, they learn the lessons and constructs of black girlhood. The practice of double dutch, fosters “unity within the diversity [of black girls],” (Scott-Simmons 25) creating a space for both community and selfhood, participation in tradition and communal memory, as well as individual flair and success.
Black girls are marginalized on a multiplicity of registers- as black folks, as women, as children, frequently as low-income or urban youths as well. Ideas about black girls and women in popular society fall into what black feminist theorist Patricia Hill Collins calls controlling images, that is, stereotypes and tropes of black women which focus on their service to others without regard to their individual humanity. Yet through double dutch, black girls claim agency and selfhood, a right to memory and to be remembered through reiterating the legacies of those who came before them and situate their own selves within that.
Yet this practice, in its gain of mainstream recognition and institutionalization, has also had this specific connection between black girlhood and double dutch erased and forgotten. The American Double Dutch League (ADDL), was founded in 1973 by NYPD detectives David Walker and Ulysses Williams, turned double dutch into a sport, creating a series of standards and systems of grading in order to occupy inner-city youth and prevent juvenile delinquency. Annual Double Dutch Summer Classics took place in Lincoln Center 1974–1984, and the Annual Double Dutch Holiday Classic (1985-present) takes place in the Apollo Theatre. ADDL officials wished to elevate double dutch from its street-history and associations with street hip-hop and urban black culture, instead emphasizing the respectability and wholesome athleticism of the voiceless standards of sports. Thus, the oral chants which challenged these notions of apolitical ahistorical, post-racial athletics such as black girls asserting agency or sexuality, were excluded from competition.
Black feminist jump rope scholar Kyra Gaunt writes that “In creating an “authentic” sport for girls, the verbal expressivity of double-dutch was arrested by the official rules and adult concerns for monitoring the free speech of young children in a public contest” (143). The black feminist orality evacuated and kinesthetic experience standardized and judged, the specific histories and memories of black girls in double dutch began to get lost in the fray of competition. And for the past 15 years the overwhelming majority of winners of the freestyle competition, once the place for black girls to express their unity in diversity, has been won by international teams. Globalization has brought recognition and participation in thus practice previously limited to black American girls to people everywhere, but in this recognition the specific co-construction of black girlhood and double dutch has been erased.
This is not to say that only black girls can play double dutch, in fact, people of all ages all around the world can and do participate. And identity is indeed socially constructed and ever-changing. Double dutch does not belong to black girls in a natural, static form of ownership, but rather, the contemporary iteration of double dutch was constructed from a practice of black girlhood self-identification and formulation. We must recognize and validate these constructions through a black feminist lens if we are to ever actually accept and cherish black women’s humanity.
Further reading/viewing:
Brown, Ruth Nicole. Black Girlhood Celebration toward a Hip-Hop Feminist Pedagogy. Peter Lang, 2009.
Collins, Patricia Hill. Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment, Routledge, 1991.
Foderaro, Lisa D. “As Double Dutch Wanes in New York, Competition Comes From Abroad.” New York Times, 2 Dec. 2016, www.nytimes.com/2016/12/02/nyregion/double-dutch-new-york-competition.html.
Gaunt, Kyra Danielle. “How the Jump Rope Got Its Rhythm,” TED Talks, March 2018.
Gaunt, Kyra Danielle. The Games Black Girls Play Learning the Ropes from Double-Dutch to Hip-Hop. New York University Press, 2006.
Kourlas, Gia. “The Art and Artistry of Double Dutch.” New York Times, 25 July 2017, www.nytimes.com/2017/07/25/arts/double-dutch-lincoln-center.html.
Blumberg, Skip, director. Pick up Your Feet: the Double Dutch Show. Channel Thirteen , 1981.
Quashie, Kevin Everod. Black Women, Identity, and Cultural Theory: (Un)Becoming the Subject. Rutgers University Press, 2004.
Scott-Simmons, Wynetta Ann. “Self, Other, and Jump Rope Community: The Triumphs of African American Women” (2007). Electronic Theses & Dissertations. 507.
Simmonds, Mikhael. “Double Dutch — Not Just Child’s Play.” Medium, 8 Dec. 2015, medium.com/harlem-focus/double-dutch-not-just-child-s-play-a3ce6af1cdd0.
