We See You: Black Men's Perceptions of the Marginalization of Black Women in STEM

• In Event: Marriott Roundtable Session 14
  In Roundtable Session: Building Solidarity Among Black Women and Black Men Scholars in Researching Black Women in STEM

Abstract

As Black women and men navigate STEM fields in academia, they face a myriad of racialized challenges such as severe underrepresentation at every level of the pipeline. Feelings of impostor syndrome, unwelcoming institutional climates, social barriers in their departments, racial/ethnic stereotyping, a lack of role models, and high rates of attrition of Black peers from STEM fields (Cole & Espinoza, 2008; Author, 2016). Additionally, both groups experience “gendered racism,” which are racist interpretations of gender roles (e.g. the welfare queen and the absent Black father stereotypes) (Essed, 1991). While Black women must deal with Misogynoir (Bailey, 2013, 2018), misogyny directed at Black women specifically, Black men must deal with anti-Black misandry, which Smith et al. (2007, p. 563) defined as an “exaggerated pathological aversion toward Black men created and reinforced in societal, institutional, and individual ideologies, practices, and behaviors.” Gendered racism provides a complex positioning of marginalization for both Black men and Black women with unique and different forms of gendered racism. To this end, we pose the research question: in what ways, if any, do Black male engineering and computing doctoral students perceive and describe the marginalization of their Black female peers. Given that Black men also endure gendered racism, we seek to understand the impact of misogynoir, if any, on their understandings of Black women’s marginalization. We leverage Critical Race Feminism (CRF) as our theoretical framework to guide this research design and analysis in order to help examine, describe, and support the racialized and gendered experiences and perceptions of Black Doctoral students in engineering and computing departments. We choose CRF because of its robust examination of the intersection of race and gender and the centering of Black Women’s experiences (Evans-Winters & Esposito, 2010). CRF in education provides an interdisciplinary consideration for analyzing and making sense of race and gender oppression that occurs within higher education (Berry, 2010). CRF is particularly useful in the engineering and computing context because, similar to American society, Engineering and Computing spaces are heavily normed to White Male patriarchal standards (Author, 2016). Additionally, there is utility in understanding Black men’s awareness and interpretation of the unique oppression of their female counterparts. Using qualitative methods consisting of twelve individual interviews and ten focus groups, this study explores 37 Black male doctoral students' perceptions of Black female doctoral students' marginalization in engineering and computing departments in the United States. The preliminary findings revealed that the Black men in our sample held these viewpoints: Gender-Blind (30%): Black men's racialized understandings did not include gendered interpretations. Gender-dysconscious (10%): Black men expressed limited and distorted views on misogynoir (King, 1991). Gender-Conscious (60%): Black men uptake CRF epistemologies and espouse complex understandings of how misogynoir impacts Black women’s Engineering and Computing experience. The men in this group described the environment as racially hostile, male-normed, and as Harold, a 4th year PhD student in chemical engineering, explains, "overtly sexist" towards Black women. The men also described how the environments were socially constructed to be exclusive of Black women's participation by non-Black students and faculty

Author

• Devin Thomas White, Vanderbilt University