#SquadGoals: The Intersectional Impact of Mentorship on Women of Color in the Academy

• In Event: No Limit (CRT) Soldiers: Scholar Activists Breaking Through Raced Academic Boundaries Using Critical Race Theory

Abstract

Objectives and Purpose

This paper offers a view of understanding Intersectionality. We premised our examination of intersectionality as being both a foundational tenet of Critical Race Theory (CRT) and a way that sociologists have examined the complex issues that often impact and shape the lives and experiences of women of color. Through our counternarratives, we highlight the ways that power manifests in impacting our separate experiences in the academy. Moreover, we share a common theme of mentorship that helped us leverage our intersectional identities during those “intersectional moments” (Crenshaw, 2006) that have made the academy hostile and oppressive for women of color.


Perspective and Theoretical Framework

Critical Race Theory scholar, Kimberlé Crenshaw coined the term, “intersectionality” in her article, “Demarginalizing The Intersection Of Race And Sex: A Black Feminist Critique Of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory And Antiracist Politics.” Crenshaw argued that Black women faced discrimination along multiple axes, in particular, gender and race. Crenshaw intended to both broaden and narrow analyses of discrimination beyond single axis arguments that looked at either class, or race, or gender. She argued that Black women (and later other women of color), faced employment discrimination based on the confluence, or “intersection” of oppressions like racism, classism and sexism that acted in concert. The impact of intersectionality on women of color is often misunderstood and unrecognized in higher education.

Methods and Data Collection

In this paper, our sister-circle will forego traditional academic conventions and use counternarratives to inform what we describe as the praxis of Intersectionality. You will see in this chapter our own lived experiences of how intersectionality has manifested in our professional and personal lives, interspersed with the broader literature on race, class, gender, sexuality, and other axes of oppression (Crenshaw, 1989).

Results & Significance

Counternarratives highlight the ways that power manifests in impacting our separate experiences in the academy. Moreover, we share a common theme of mentorship that helped us leverage our intersectional identities during those “intersectional moments” (Crenshaw, 2006) that have made the academy hostile and oppressive for women of color. We conclude this paper by providing guidance for women of color in the academy toward intentionality in the cultivation of their sisterships.

Authors

• Cecilia Elizabeth Suarez, University of Florida

• Devean R. Owens, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

• Jamila Hunter, JustaLilBit, LLC

• Adrienne D. Dixson, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

• Crystal Menzies, Learning Research & Development Center