Black women have gone from creating safe spaces at Bible study and beauty salons to cultivating online community in Twitter Circle and Instagram Favorites

• Black women used to gather in beauty salons, but the pandemic made meeting in person difficult.
• So many women have turned to curating online spaces instead.

At the end of June, a few days after the US Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, writer Gabrielle LaRochelle, 24, decided she needed to curate her own safe space online. She chose Twitter Circle, which let her determine who would see her posts, and immediately tweeted links on how to give and get money for abortions.

"I didn't necessarily feel safe publicly [expressing] my support or sympathies during the overturning of Roe v Wade," LaRochelle said, so creating a Twitter Circle seemed a good alternative.

Mainly because the pandemic made it impossible to meet in person in typical gathering spaces — beauty salons and Bible study groups —young Black women have taken to gathering on social media platforms to interact and talk with each other. The recent addition of tools like Twitter Circle (people you've allowed to see specific posts) and Instagram Favorites (people you've given priority in your feed) have helped Black women build community despite not seeing each other in person.

Creating a beauty salon vibe in a post-pandemic online space

For Black women, the beauty salon has long been a safe space for women to vent and connect. Kimberly Stampley, 53, owner of Stamp'lays Executive Salon Boutique in Chicago, says that early on, she styled clients in her mother's home. It was a haven for her and her customers, and her mother would cook afterward, creating an overall welcoming environment that she imitated in her salon.

"This is like a one-stop shop; you can get your hair done, buy clothes [and] if you have problems, we can talk about it," Stampley said. "I'm [also] a minister, so I counsel…the whole nine yards."

For many Black women, the hair salon was among few spaces where they felt safe to share their struggles and vulnerable moments.

But during the pandemic, going to the salon wasn't an option. Black women grew community through social media instead, and some found that they preferred online spaces to in-person locales.

Asia Alexander, 19, a student at Howard University, told Insider she finds it easier to build relationships with other Black women online.

"I think you meet new people every day because you're constantly, like, scrolling on your phone trying to find what's new [and] trending," Alexander said. "If you like something [most] of the time, you're gonna find other people who like the same thing, and you build a community that way."

"I think it's easier for me [to build a community online] because you can pick and choose who you connect with," DeAmbrea "Dede" West, 23, a PR specialist who lives in Nashville, Tennessee, told Insider. "[I] can connect with somebody because we both just watched 'Stranger Things,' so now I have a new friend because we can talk about it."

West says creating a safe space includes being able to filter out content that she finds offensive or hateful. "I hate that we have to filter it to ourselves, but I feel like that's where our safe spaces are [and] I feel like I'm able to find what I'm needing [and] find the most solidarity," she said.

Black women are disproportionately targeted by online trolls

Black women are especially attuned to creating safe spaces online because they experience so much abuse on social media platforms.

According to Amnesty International's Amnesty Decoders, a volunteer group that works to uncover digital human rights violations, Black women experience a disproportionate amount of online abuse. In its research on internet trolls, the group found that overall, women of color were 34% more likely to be mentioned in "abusive or problematic tweets" than white women. And Black women were 84% more likely than white women to be mentioned in abusive or problematic tweets.

That may be why some Black women are turning to Twitter Circle. The tool launched in July and allows users to control who can engage and interact with their content on the platform. Before posting a tweet, users can decide whether to share it with their circle or full followers list. Users can add up to 150 people to a circle, and the list can be adjusted. People under the circle will see a green badge and are not able to share or retweet posts to people outside the circle.

"What we are learning with the Twitter Circle experiment is that people want flexibility around how and to whom they Tweet and the ability to tailor their content to the different audiences they interact with on our service," said Paul Lee, senior product manager at Twitter.

Twitter Circle isn't available platform-wide, though, just yet (users that have access to it will see a circle icon when they compose a new tweet.)

So some Black women are looking to other platforms.

Tigidankay "TK" Saccoh runs an Instagram account called Darkest Hue, which she calls "a Safe Space for *Dark-Skinned* Black Girls, Women, and femmes."

On her page, dark-skinned Black women are given space to vent about the struggles of colorism, misogyny, and fatphobia online. The 22-year-old launched the page during the summer of 2020, following the death of George Floyd and the ensuing racial reckoning.

"I created the Darkest Hue because I felt like there was such a need for space that centered on Black women [and] girls' experiences where we could be brutally honest about our experiences," Saccoh told Insider.

For Saccoh, creating a safe space means taking an active role in monitoring how users interact with her content.

"When I call the Darkest Hue a safe space, I'm not just saying that [and] I'm conscious of how I regulate the comments. The block button is my friend. When I see a comment that's damaging or undermines the experiences of the people I'm trying to center on my page, I delete it."