How Black Women Navigate Higher Education and Community-Engaged Scholarship in a Blacdemic

• In Event: We're Breathing! Black Female CritTeacher Educators in Historical Pandemic Moments

Abstract

Objectives/Purposes

The purpose of this paper is to explore the challenges Black women scholars face in the academy who also do community-engaged scholarly work during the time of the Blacdemic--the murders of Mr. George Floyd, Ms. Breonna Taylor, Mr. Ahmad Aubery, and others, COVID-19, global economic upheaval, and community-needed care.

Framework

Critical Pedagogy of the Body explains that human beings, living and feeling organisms, participate in the thinking and doing of the world through a critical or “scrutinizing” (Darder, 2010) lens. Conscious bodies think about the world and participate in the world with awareness. The opposite, unconscious bodies, allows the world to enact upon them. Black women’s bodies can undergo this negative change without warning. Darder (2010) describes it “as our consciousness becomes more and more abstracted, we become more and more detached from our bodies….This function [detachment] is absolutely necessary for social control…”(xix). Black Feminist Thought (Collins, 2002; Author, 2015) combats this “unconscious” notion and helps posture the importance that we, Black women, are not inferior to anyone, and our “bodies” are critically important and vibrant. When a Black woman can “reconnect with her conscious body”, “feel the life” and “touch her heart” in the process, she then feels empowered--a critical connection to our bodies.
Through Critical Autoethnography (Jones, Taylor, Coward, 2013) and Black Feminist -Womanist Storytelling (Haddix, 2015; Bell, 2017), the researchers explored their lives--three Black scholars during the 2020 year, the Blacdemic. Storytelling that explores the living conditions and everyday life that also looks critically at the roles provides insight into the everyday living of Black female scholars.

Data Sources

The research focused on the work of three Black women scholars at a PWI who labored in the Deep South as they worked to improve educational opportunities for high school and college freshman. Data collected through journals, “kitchen-talk” dialogue, and notes from work sessions will be shared. Their storytelling and critical autoethnography explored the life of Black women as they intersected work and community in the time of COVID-19 - and further characterized as the Blacdemic.

Discussion/Findings

During the pandemic, the scholars met to discuss three major areas that emerged (Davis and Afifi, 2019):
1) Black women and strength regulation. “Adultification” is imposed on Black girls at a young age, which extends into the “strongblackwoman” expectations (Nzinga-Johnson, 2013) for Black womanhood. This is an exploration of Black women scholars as mothers and “othering” responsibilities that occur as scholars.
2) Black women and hostile outsiders. Microaggressions occur in the work place and in response to the work in communities. Navigation of these spaces is important.
3) Black women and safehouse from outsiders. Finding a space to be accepted and share about challenges and celebrating successes. Self-care (Lorde, 1988) is preservation.

Scholarly Significance

This work will inform the current research about Black women, their workload, their workspace, and their navigation of their scholarly spaces and community-engaged practices in the middle of a Blacdemic.

Author

• Tonya B. Perry, The University of Alabama - Birmingham