Taught to "Be Nice" but for What? Why Advising Untenured Black Women to Be Preoccupied With Impression Management Won't Help

• In Event: 45.036 - The Impossibility of Being the Right Kind of Black Woman in the Academy: Perspectives From Black Women Assistant Professors Not Waiting to Exhale

Abstract

There is little space for untenured Black women to breathe and succeed, and much of them doing so are in the realms of "in spite of" and not "because of" the spaces they inhabit. The author problematizes the advice often given to navigate through or take up as little space as possible until they receive tenure or throughout their career. the author also illustrates how this premise does not actually help the academic enterprise, educational spaces in desperate need of transformation through Black women taking up space, and most of all the Black women themselves.

Author

• Constance Iloh, University of California - Irvine