What can intersectionality and QuantCrit approaches with Black women in higher education teach us about the health and well-being paradox within research?

• In Event: Journeying From Home to Everywhere: Centering Black Girls and Women Across Learning Environments

Abstract

Objective:
The well-being paradox is the tendency for Black Americans to report higher levels of mental health and well-being despite facing persistent discrimination (Ford, 2021; Keyes, 2009). However, Black women college graduates are least likely to thrive in financial, purpose, physical, community, or social well-being (Gallup. 2015), which indicates that due to their race and gender, Black women have unique educational experiences (Blackmon & Coyle, 2016). The objective of this paper is to argue the conceptual and methodological benefits of centering Black women’s perspectives on their health and well-being through combining intersectionality and quantitative critical race theory (QuantCrit). Using data from a mixed methods project as a case study example, this paper answers the following question: 1) What can intersectionality and QuantCrit approaches with Black women in higher education teach us about the health and well-being paradox within research?

Theoretical Framework:
Quantitative critical race theory (QuantCrit) is a growing field of study that offers an alternative approach to quantitative research by expanding upon critical race theory tenets. QuantCrit research highlights the centrality of racism, and acknowledges that numbers are not neutral and categories are not natural, and that data cannot speak for itself (Garcia et al., 2017; Tabron & Thomas, 2023). Intersectionality was originally conceptualized within the US legal system to study overlapping and compounding oppression for Black Women within the U.S. society.

Data and Methodology:
The case study data uses social network analysis, which is a broad term to capture theories, concepts, and techniques for collecting and analyzing relational data (Crossley et al., 2015). I conducted one interview with each of the 12 participants to map and visualize their personal well-being networks. I conducted a visual analysis of each network then calculated network statistics. For the qualitative data, I completed multiple rounds of coding, moving back and forth between the network profiles and the network narratives until emergent findings aligned.

Results/Substantiated Conclusions:
From the analysis of 12 Black women’s well-being networks, I argue that disaggregation by race and gender is critical to understanding nuances within well-being networks. Additionally, centering Black women to contribute to the conceptualization of well-being provides greater insight. For example, instead of fully adopting traditional conceptions of well-being, I allowed Black women to define what well-being means to them, and in this way, they offered much more beautifully complex understandings of well-being and mental health that go beyond happiness or the absence of mental illness, but offers a broader understanding that includes collective and communal understandings of well-being, including notions of reciprocity. In the end, Black women’s well-being is not paradoxical, but a cultivated relational community that maintains Black women though the violence experienced in higher education.

Scholarly Significance:
To quote Audre Lorde “There is no such thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives” (1982, p. 130). This study demonstrates how intersectionality and QuantCrit approaches work well to show how Black women are skillfully and strategically cultivating complex relational experiences while engaging in their academic pursuits.

Author

• Paris D. Wicker, University at Buffalo - SUNY