Lifting as We Climb: Messages Influencing African American Women's Postgraduate Degree Attainment

• In Event: 49.059 - Upsetting the Myths of Blackness: (Re)claiming When and Where We Enter Womanhood

Abstract

Lifting As We Climb: Messages Influencing African American Women’s Postgraduate Degree Attainment illuminated the messages, relative to the four sources of self-efficacy, forwarding and sustaining African American women’s Doctoral degree attainment. Utilizing Critical Race Theory (Ladson-Billing & Tate, 1995; Tate, 1997; Hill Collins, 2000), this paper illustrated how race, gender, and class shaped the messages attendant to and persuading African American women’s doctoral attainment. A purposive sample of 3 African American women Doctoral Degree holders were selected to participate in this study. Participant narratives revealed three central themes: (1) familial responsibility, (2) serving as role models, and (3) resilience. Participant responses indicated the significance of the Ph.D. as a means of race, gender, and class uplift with a commitment to family undergirding each. Doctoral degree attainment for the African American women in this study represented an opportunity to convey to family members: (1) inspiration to pursue an advanced education, (2) earning a doctoral degree is an attainable goal for African American women, and (3) the benefits and rewards of higher education. Emergent from these narratives was the centrality of their Doctoral Degree attainment to participant’s individual, familial, and societal uplift.

Author

• ReShanta Hazelbaker, University of Kentucky