"You Need to Be More Social": Addressing Controlling Images of Black Women in the Tenure Dossier

• In Event: Narratives of Resistance and Resilience: The Experiences of Women-of-Color Scholars in Predominantly White Colleges/Schools of Education

Abstract

The tenure dossier is a detailed document that includes evidence of a faculty member’s teaching, research/scholarship, and service (Burnham, Hooper, & Wright, 2010). Colleges and universities use the dossier to make decisions about promotion and tenure for junior faculty. According to Burnham, Hooper, & Wright (2010) many untenured faculty find this process to be overwhelming and ambiguous due to “the lack of precise directions about the preparation and documentation process.” Evidence of teaching effectiveness includes items such as a philosophy statement, syllabi, and student evaluations. Studies show a professor’s race/ethnicity impacts student evaluations (Littlefield, Ong, Tseng, Milliken, & Humy, 2010). In one study, female African American professors were rated the lowest on competency, legitimacy, and interpersonal skills among all groups. Stereotyping influenced these ratings (Bavishi, Hebl, & Madera, 2010). Addressing poor ratings in tenure dossiers is critical. During the tenure process this conundrum is part of the hidden curriculum. In this study, I explore controlling images of Black women in my student and peer evaluations and describe my response in my tenure dossier.

Hill Collins (2000) argues there are four socially constructed controlling images of Black women used to justify our subordination. I will focus on three for this study: mammy, matriarch, and welfare mother. In the case of the mammy, Black women who are “loving, nurturing, and caring for her white children and “family” better than her own, symbolizes the dominant group’s perception of the ideal Black female relationship to elite white male power (p. 266).” A Black female professor who is deemed uncaring or nurturing toward students may receive lower ratings in evaluations. The matriarch is described as aggressive, domineering, and unfeminine. In this case, students may describe Black women professors as the “angry Black woman,” authoritarian, or unapproachable. The welfare mother is described as lazy. Black women faculty who are seen as less available to their students as White faculty or unwilling to answer email messages immediately may be see comments labeling them idle.

I am a Black female tenured Associate Professor at a Jesuit institution. I used an autoethnographic approach to describe and analyze my personal experiences with stereotyping and responding to it in my tenure dossier (Ellis, Adams, & Bochner, 2011). Autoethnography allows me to “retroactively and selectively write about past experiences (Ellis, Adams, & Bochner, 2011).”  Students’ evaluations (2009-2014), peer review evaluations (2009-2014) and my tenure dossier (Fall 2014) were data sources. I used the constant comparative method of analysis to test the fit of the framework to my lived experiences (Fram, 2013).

The findings show that most negative responses reflect the matriarch image (opposite of the mammy) of Black women. For example, comments in evaluations described me as intimidating, having strong opinions, too emotional/uptight/sensitive, and unapproachable. I used my teaching philosophy and quantitative data to address these statements directly in my dossier.

This study is significant because understanding our experiences at historically white institutions can reduce racial battle fatigue (Smith, Yosso, & Solórzano, 2006) and promote the retention of diverse faculty (Pittman, 2010).

Author

• Stephanie Burrell Storms, Fairfield University