"If You Work Hard Enough": White Surveillance of Black Female Bodies in Higher Education Administration

• In Event: AERA Graduate Student Research in Progress Roundtable Session One
  In Roundtable Session: Understanding the Complexities of Race in Higher Education (Table 17)

Abstract

While various scholars have researched how Black women suffer occupational stereotyping in the workplace and how it hinders hiring and promotions, few look at social surveillance as one of the pieces that exist that allows this problem to continue (Hamilton-Mason, Everett, & Hall, 2009; Hughes & Dodge, 1997; U.S. Census Bureau, 2019). This study focuses on two forms of sight: Sankofa (hindsight) and Surveillance (close observation or monitoring--usually in the present). It is the hope that these two ways of seeing can provide a different perspective on Black women's career experiences in historically white institutions. I focus on how constant white surveillance in European intellectual systems Black women are sorted through constant watchfulness (Lyon, 2003; McKittrick, 2006). This watchfulness may hinder their professional progress and their sense of professional belonging. For my research, I focus on how two of Durant & Knottnerus's (1999) eight structural components of the plantation still exist today and work in tandem to maintain the same goal: a strict system to control black bodies with the goal of maintaining the labor ladder that keeps whites (and white ideals) at the top of the ladder and black (and any black advancement) underneath (Durant and Knottnerus, 1999; Squire, 2021, p. 42).

Author

• Michelle D. Taylor, Wayne State University
  Presenting Author