The Discipline, Surveillance, and Regulation of Black Women in White Spaces

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session 15
  In Roundtable Session: Reclaiming Our Time: Stories of Black Women Resistance in Educational Settings

Abstract

This paper presents findings on Black women’s experiences with discipline, surveillance, and regulation in predominantly white educational spaces. To understand how discipline, surveillance, and regulation occur, we examined the intersections (race/gender) related to systemic racism that exclude Black women’s experiences from university’s discourse of normality. Race shapes a range of knowledge systems within the university, and it is important to identify how racism functions as part of a larger self-replicating system. Generally, research on Black people describes either the racism they experience, or how they resist that racism in the academy. Our study pushes against this binary and highlights that institutional actors (who are often white) weaponized typical academic practices to discipline, surveil, and regulate Black women.

Authors

• Stephanie Masta, Purdue University

• Janelle Grant, Purdue University

• Jennifer Deboer, Purdue University