Hear Our Voices: Black Feminist Articulations of Systemic Oppression and Organizational Failure at HWIs

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

Black women (BW) staff and administrators are essential in higher education, yet they are underrepresented and undervalued in campus leadership while being forced to manage physical and emotional distress on campus. Since many HWIs proposed increased diversity and inclusion efforts concurrent to the Great Resignation and COVID-19 pandemic, it is imperative to illuminate the persisting pain and trauma BW staff and administrators negotiate(d) in these workplaces and to understand the current landscape and possible solutions to sustained change. Using Black feminist frameworks, BW scholars will underscore barriers and possibilities of BW’s associative workplace experiences with moral trauma and injury, human resource failings, institutional betrayal, and discrepancies in espoused versus enacted campus policies in this coordinated paper session.

Sub Unit

• Division J - Postsecondary Education / Division J - Section 3: Organization, Management, and Leadership

Chair

• Chenelle S Boatswain, CSB Consulting Services

Papers

• “I Felt Like a Mammie": Black Women Administrators Navigating Institutional Betrayal - Brittany M. Williams, University of Vermont

• Leading Unprotected: A Phenomenological Exploration of Black Women Higher Education Administrators’ Precarity in Their Practice - Chenelle S Boatswain, CSB Consulting Services

• Hidden Messages: The Covert Practices at Historically White Institutions That Undermine Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion for Black Women Staff and Administrators - Brittany Robertson, Rice University

• “It’s Wellness Week for Everyone but Me”: Black Women Knowledge Workers’ Attrition as Self-Care - M. Yvonne Taylor, Northwest Education Access

Discussant

• Tiffany J Davis, University of Houston