Black Women and Bodies Out of Place in the Academy

• In Event: Exclusive Inclusion of White Space: Systemic Racism Experiences of Students of Color in Higher Education

Abstract

Purpose. Despite claims of civil rights advancements, institutions that have been historically exclusive—only allowing full participation to particular groups of people—continue to oppress and marginalize those whose exclusion was once legally sanctioned. In this paper, we share the narratives of three Black women during our time at a historically white institution (HWI) situated in the conservative U.S. South. We document the prior experiences of doctoral students (who worked alongside an assistant professor) across diverse disciplines. In part, we became acquainted with one another due to our respective experiences with racism, isolation, and struggles to maintain a healthy sense of self and career and academic success amidst a persistently toxic social, academic, and work environment. We frame our experiences within the bodies out of place (Puwar, 2004) literature that purports that bodies like ours—Black and woman—are seen as out of place in historically white contexts that once legally excluded Black people and women, and still, these institutions struggle to integrate multiply minoritized groups into their student body, faculty, and staff. The purpose of this paper is to share counterstories of our experiences as Black women at a HWI and to develop a framework to identify the kinds of oppression we experienced within the academy.

Frameworks. Framed by Puwar’s (2004) bodies out of place, which states that the historical legacy of exclusion has led to individuals with certain physical traits signifying bodies out of place (BOP). Puwar further asserts that positions of privilege have been reserved for certain bodies and those who constitute different kinds of bodies are subject to hyper-surveillance and scrutiny of their every gesture, movement, and utterance. Due to the perceived inappropriateness of bodies out of place, individuals like Black women are often subject to regular gendered racial microaggressions and various forms of institutional oppression (Author, 2023; Joseph-Salisbury, 2019). We also draw on Dotson’s (2014) epistemic oppression framework and utilized Solorzano and Yosso’s (2002) critical race methodology of counter-storytelling as the analytical framework for this paper.

Methods & Findings. Our findings highlight the irreducible oppressions we experienced as Black women in the academy. It is our goal to contextualize our gendered racial experiences as Black women and describe how they manifested in this specific academic context. Additionally, the experiences of Black women graduate students, though in the context of different departments, appeared to be precursors to the types of experiences that Black women faculty face once employed in academia. Our findings include: Undermining Initiatives and Programs, Race Trumps Status and Expertise, Epistemological Colonization, Testimonial Quieting, Targets of Disciplinary Sanctions, Negative Teaching Evaluations, Impunity, Disparities in Pay & Support, Workload and Performance Expectations, Scapegoating, and Disempowerment. We have relied on our narrative reflections to help create typologies for the kinds of oppression Black women face in the academy as representatives of BOP. We hope our findings can serve as a reference tool for evaluating the behaviors of white faculty, staff, and students and possibly lead to healthier means of problem solving.

Authors

• Gloshanda Lawyer, COCOA Language, Advocacy, and Consulting LLC

• Chonika Coleman-King, University of Florida