Race (and Gender) Battle Fatigue in Higher Education: A Social Justice Analysis

• In Event: 324 - Section on Race, Gender, and Class Roundtable Session (one-hour).
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 11. RGC and Critical Analyses across Contexts

Abstract

As an African American critical race feminist and scholar-activist, I look at issues of race and gender with a focus on justice and transformation. I examine systems and structures; people and policies; and ideas and ideologies through a transdisciplinary lens. The issue of Racial (and Gender) Battle Fatigue affecting women of color in higher education administration is a social problems that requires creative, innovative, and transdisciplinary approaches.
Heeding the call for Black Women’s Studies to move from theory to praxis, the Transdisciplinary Applied Social Justice (TASJ©) model is a tool that facilitates a critical examination of the lived experiences of women of color, in particular, with a focus on praxis. The model is used to analyze the multidimensional challenges that women of color administrators in the academy experience based on their intersecting race and gender status. It suggests that understanding the operation of the domains of power: -- hegemonic, structural, disciplinary, and interpersonal, can play an important role in assisting women of color administrators in successfully navigating complex political realities in higher education, including Racial (and Gender) Battle Fatigue. The model is a flexible theoretical-grounded; methodological-informed; and praxis-oriented tool: the theoretical foundation is rooted in Collins’ (2009) Black feminist power domains; the methodological component is grounded in discourse analysis; and concepts from social movement theory and collective action frames inform the model’s component on praxis.

Author

• Menah Pratt-Clarke, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign