Bearing a Black Woman’s Burden: Autoethnography for Provoking Perspective-Taking and Action in Predominantly White Academic Spaces

The dual pandemics brought on by COVID-19 and racial violence has played a significant role in uncovering how systemic racism is deeply entrenched within white spaces in America. This article examines the experiences of Black women lawyers in elite law firms to demonstrate how white institutional spaces are racially organized with embedded colorblind racist practices that work to obscure the insidious perpetuation of white supremacy. Black women are required to perform added, unrecognized, and uncompensated labor to maintain their positions. This invisible labor manifests in the form of an inclusion tax that they must pay to be included in white spaces. This article discusses how being one of very few Black people in white spaces creates a myriad of issues that require significant invisible labor including navigating white narratives of affirmative action, negotiating how dominant white culture functions to normalize the white experience, and adherence to white normative standards.

Beyond Discontent:

In this chapter, I bring together key theories and concepts pertaining to social justice and inequality in South African higher education to critically analyse the experiences of access and inclusion for Black female students throughout the entire Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) trajectory; i.e., schooling, higher education, further studies, and employment. This chapter therefore finds itself situated at a juncture between critical theory and a decolonial paradigm, drawing on both strands of thought, specifically Nancy Fraser’s (1997a; 1997b; 1998; 2007a; 2008; 2010) participatory parity framework and aspects of the coloniality of power, knowledge, and gender. In doing so, I seek to advance both the theoretical and empirical terrains of these fields. I particularly aim to unpack issues surrounding Black women’s entry into contested, male-dominated, white spaces, such as university STEM courses in developing contexts. I argue that the lived experiences of Black women from the Majority World or Global South are particularly significant, including how they are uniquely positioned based on race, gender, geospatial location, and class background in white Eurocentric institutional spaces that primarily cater to the needs and experiences of the dominant white male (Liccardo, 2018; Liccardo et al., 2015; Liccardo &Bradbury, 2017). The terms “Majority World” and “Global South” are used interchangeably throughout this chapter to imply the geographic locations situated outside of the developed world1 (De Sousa Santos, 2012)

Dismantling racist ideologies in nursing academia to enhance the success of students identifying as Black, Indigenous and students of colour.

CLA JOURNAL 185 Anne Spencer’s“Natural”Poetics Carlyn E. Ferrari “. . . Nature merely demands that we be fresh in the Spring.” “If people were like flowers, an hour is all I’d ask of them—and you— if people were like flowers [?]” – Anne Spencer Janie’s pear tree, Maud Martha’s daffodils, and Shug Avery’s transformation of God from male authoritarian into trees, birds, and air represent a rich—yet overlooked—tradition of Black women’s natural world writings and theorizing. Embedded in the narratives of Black women’s writings is a poetics of the natural world, a poetics that enables Black women’s subjectivities to be reimagined.1 Though environmental literary criticism remains an overlooked site of inquiry in Black women’s writing, Maureen Honey addressed the significance of the natural world to New Negro women writers nearly thirty years ago in her seminal work Shadowed Dreams. Honey argues that such women writers as Anne Spencer, Zora Neale Hurston, Bessie Mayle, Ethel Lee Newsome, and Mae Cowdery identified with nature because it was something that, like Black women, had been corrupted and dominated by white male oppression; therefore, they used nature as a vehicle through which to articulate their gender and racial oppression (8). For Black women, in particular, nature can be a difficult symbol through which to mediate one’s gender and sexuality because of its fraught colonial legacies.2 Just like the land, Black women and their bodies were marked as a natural resource to be exploited. Western understandings of humans’ relationship to the environment posit that human beings are dominant over the natural world and non-human creatures. This thinking stems, in part, from the Hebrew Bible in Genesis 1:28, which reads: “And God blessed them, and God said unto them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, 1 In my use of “poetics,” I am referring to the theory and practice of studying linguistic techniques in literature. This should be distinguished from “discourse,” which I am using to signal the existence of a body of scholarship on the subject of Black women writers’ self-representation. 2 I use “colonial” to signal “colonization,” the process of appropriating a geographical region for one’s own use, which also involves domination over, removal of, and/or genocide of indigenous peoples. Within the context of this analysis, I am alluding to both the pre-history of the United States in British North America and colonization projects under 19th and 20th century European and North American colonialism that rendered Black women an always-available natural resource to be exploited in various ways. 186 CLA JOURNAL Carlyn E. Ferrari and replenish the earth, and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth’” (KJ21). This notion of dominion, however, did not extend to black individuals. As Carolyn Finney explains in Black Faces, White Spaces, ideologies about African Americans and their relationship to the environment were being developed at the same time as other racial ideologies, and black people have been systematically and institutionally denied access to the environment just as they have been excluded and alienated from other facets of American society (35). Both in American society and in the American literary imagination, the outdoors is represented as a “white space.” However, African Americans are deeply, intimately, and historically connected to the environment, and their stories have yet to be told; their environmental imaginaries have yet to be considered. This deep, intimate, spiritual connection to the natural world is clearly seen in the poetry of Anne Spencer, as it was her renowned garden at her home in Lynchburg, Virginia, that served as her muse. Both Spencer’s daily life and poetry were“interwoven with her garden”and, through her poetry, we see the significance of the natural world from the often-negated perspective of an African American individual (Frischkorn and Rainey 45). In addition to providing a voice for black environmental imaginaries, Spencer’s poetry also challenges pervasive stereotypes specific to black women and their bodies. As a black woman writing about nature in an intimate fashion and looking to nature for inspiration...

Black and Brown students report feeling isolated and out of place in U.S. universities, especially in predominately white institutions (PWIs), and there are a host of reasons for this. Because they are the numerical minority, Black and Brown students are highly visible others whose presence and behaviors stand out. As numerical minorities, Black and Brown students at PWIs often feel that they are made to be representatives of their race and that their behaviors may be taken as evidence to support racialized stereotypes that threaten their academic and social success. This study uses the counter‐narratives of 31 self‐identified Black and Brown students, collected during nine focus group meetings in 2014, at a white university in the Southeast United States. Findings are interpreted through the lens of Impression Management Theory, which posits that individuals make goal‐directed attempts to influence how others perceive them. Participants describe feeling forced to devise strategies to present themselves in ways that negate or avoid fulfilling racialized and intersectional stereotypes, as well as make whites more comfortable. They learn to use impression management techniques that must shift with the setting and audience. In particular, participant strategies of impression management sought to avoid cultural assumptions of academic inferiority, criminality, and hostility and aggressiveness. Taken together, the experiences of students who participated in this study reveal how microaggressions help (re)construct academic spaces as white spaces and academic belonging as an intrinsically white characteristic. Specifically, we argue that microaggressions serve as a mechanism that not only serves to protect the whiteness of PWIs and white public space, but also to help define the appropriateness of expression of racial identity within these spaces. We conclude with a discussion that explores the emotional and cognitive effects of participating in impression management, as well as the overall academic and social implications for the extra, often invisible, burdens of being Black or Brown in a white institution.

Although many Black women teachers are effective in their practices with students in predominantly White teaching spaces, they may experience troubling, unfair, unrealistic, and controlling organizational expectations that can have lasting impact on them. The author discusses 3 interrelated themes that capture challenges of Black women teachers in these mostly White spaces: (1) Black women teachers are expected to be the expert on everything Black; (2) Black women teachers are expected to engage in invisible work without recognition or compensation; and (3) Black women teachers are expected to agree with the White majority and be “team players,” even when they disagree. Drawing from a theory of disruptive movement, recommendations to disrupt Whiteness and oppression are discussed.

Black undergraduate women who attend a HPWI are impacted by racist patriarchy and Black patriarchy. To examine patriarchies across campus, I explored unmarked spaces on campus which are generic, white spaces; and racially marked spaces, such as the Black Student Center. To better understand how racist patriarchy and Black patriarchy shape Black women’s college experiences, I utilized qualitative methods and an ethnography to center their experiences of discrimination and marginalization. Using a critical race feminism framework, I interviewed 25 Black undergraduate women who attended a state-flagship university in the Mid-Southern region of the US and conducted ethnographic fieldwork on campus. The findings show that Black women experienced overt racial hostility from white males in unmarked spaces on campus, while also experiencing objectification and social subordination from Black men in marked spaces. My findings demonstrate that HPWI’s are patriarchal structures that create gendered racial violence against Black women.

Concentrating on Black women, this chapter examines microaggressions directed at members of this population through and because of their hair. Recognizing higher education as White space, this chapter considers the treatment, instructions, and even backlash that Black women receive as they assert their individual and cultural identities through their hairstyles. This chapter draws upon data collected from 30 Black women affiliated with higher education as students and/or professionals to illustrate how hair microaggressions affect their experiences on campus. The responses provided by these Black women illustrate how their hair attracts attention, has the potential to challenge or conform to White appearance norms, and illuminates higher education continuing to function as White space.

This article explores how existing issues of systemic racism in academia were heightened for Black women faculty during COVID-19 which coincided with high-profile killings of Black people in 2020. Several theories of cultural taxation have created space to discuss the nuanced experiences of marginalized groups in white spaces. In reflecting on academia, this article highlights “the inclusion tax” – the various labours exerted to be included in white spaces and resist and/or adhere to white social norms. While the 2020 pandemics reveal the deeply entrenched nature of systemic racism, they did not create the inequities Black women faced but worsened and exposed them. Using data from an exploratory, online open-ended survey of sixteen (n = 16) Black women faculty, we demonstrate how the inclusion tax heightened during that time. We argue that the inclusion tax negatively impacts Black women, adding significant invisible labour that further perpetuates racial and gender inequality.

The Black Feminist Coup: Black Women’s Lived Experiences in White Supremacist Feminist Academic Spaces is a collective narrative of how three Black women faculty at a large Midwestern PWI, and two of their former students and allies build alliances to collaboratively disrupt white supremacist feminist spaces. Themes of what it means to be a fugitive, to be free, and to be a feminist inform how we envision the future of Black women’s labor in the academy. More specifically, this project explores intersecting narratives of how three Black women faculty fled a racist and microaggressive Gender and Women’s Studies (GWS) department, following the start of the COVID 19 pandemic and the 2020 summer of racial unrest, and moved to an institute that houses African American and African studies. Their stories of misogynoir reflect a brutal irony that GWS departments expect Black women to further all women’s interests while impeding Black women’s ability to thrive. This work demands that institutions bear responsibility in providing Black women with an environment to thrive, and dream of new possibilities and opportunities to develop curricula and initiatives that center Black lives with priority. Bridging at the intersections of feminism, Black Studies, and higher education, this project surveys concepts of survival, trauma, pain, and healing to offer future possibilities for dismantling and challenging systems of white supremacy in the academy. The Black Feminist Coup is a groundbreaking text. Through courageous counter-stories and brilliant theoretical engagements, the authors spotlight the various intellectual traditions, institutional arrangements, power dynamics, and sociocultural practices that have made academia a persistent site of oppression and violence for Black women. Although such an offering would be more than enough for a single text, the book also provides a clear and accessible pathway toward dismantling White supremacy, nurturing radical resistance, and building safe and productive intellectual spaces for Black women within academia. —Marc Lamont Hill, Presidential Professor of Urban Education and Anthropology at CUNY Graduate Center THE BLACK FEMINIST COUP is a compelling, courageous co-authored monograph that explores the lived experiences of a group of mostly Black women in white supremacist feminist spaces at one university. Grounded in Black feminist history and theory, this pioneering text makes visible – in moving and painful ways-- the impact of racism, sexism, and misogynoir on Black feminists in the academy during various junctures of their journeys, including, perhaps surprisingly, women’s and gender studies spaces. Especially instructive is the book’s exploration of what cross-racial solidarities might mean in feminist academic spaces and what white women in particular might learn from these analyses and blueprints for transformation. —Beverly Guy-Sheftall, The Anna Julia Cooper Professor of Comparative Women’s Studies at Spelman College and co-edited WORDS OF FIRE (New Press, 1995)

Black women are disproportionately impacted by chronic illness and are significantly more likely to experience severe morbidity and mortality as a consequence of pregnancy and childbirth.1, 2 As seen in a myriad of stories on maternal death and "near misses", Black women often experience maltreatment in clinical settings.3-5 With rising national media and scientific attention to the depth of racial inequities, Black maternal health has emerged as a priority for government and private funders.6-9 Providing financial support for maternal health research and programming is necessary, but insufficient, in eliminating disparate outcomes. There must be intentional, sustainable investments in the people best able to understand: Black women. Absent from the current landscape is a robust, well-supported cadre of Black maternal health scholar-activists who combine scientific and policy knowledge with the socio-cultural expertise that accompanies lived experience. Federal research institutes and private sector funders in the United States have acknowledged preventable inequities and have dedicated resources to identify causes, mechanisms of influence, and solutions for reducing disparate outcomes.7, 8 However, the conceptualization, design, and conduct of these studies (as well as funding decisions to support them) occur primarily among White researchers, which plausibly limits reductions in inequities.10 Specific investments in the educational trajectory of Black women are urgent and necessary to further enhance the quality, diversity, and impact of the maternal child health (MCH) field. The Public Health and MCH workforce needs to be further diversified with Black women scholar-activists because they are also culturally representative of the very populations at the greatest risk to experience maternal and infant health disparities. For example, Black women are 3.2 times more likely to die from pregnancy-related deaths compared to their White counterparts, and these disparities increase with age to 4–5 times more likely.11 Simultaneously, research demonstrates that when Black newborns are cared for by Black physicians, their mortality rate as compared to White infants is cut in half.12 By increasing the MCH workforce to include Black women scholar-activists and health care providers, the likelihood for improvement in health inequities increases. The goal of this commentary is to provide: (1) a brief overview of challenges Black women encounter on the path to and within science careers, (2) examples of successful approaches used to overcome these challenges, and (3) an urgent call to action for the field to commit to the training and development of Black women scholars in public and maternal health with the goal of eliminating maternal health inequities. In a similar manner to how structural racism and sexism produce adverse outcomes in labor and delivery,13-15 these same mechanisms also produce unfavorable outcomes for Black women in academia. At every level of the professional path to a career in scientific research, Black women consistently face bias: unwarranted and seemingly unavoidable experiences that make it more challenging for them to enroll in and graduate from school. For example, Black women describe experiencing isolation, invisibility, exclusion, pressure to continuously prove themselves worthy, a lack of mentorship, and a lack of sponsorship throughout scholarship.16 In addition, after graduation, they are often met with structural, interpersonal, and intrapersonal challenges in obtaining, managing, and remaining in research-focused academic and other scientific positions.17 Obstacles include exclusion from collaborative opportunities, questioning of credentials and expertise by students and colleagues, criticism of their chosen outlets for publication, extra service requests and additional mentoring burden.18 Hindering the progression of Black women into high level leadership positions also presents barriers to the mentorship of burgeoning Black female scholars, thus continuing this pernicious cycle. Many training programs have been used to improve graduation and retention rates among Black students in higher education. These programs are of particular importance due to the evidence that Black students' experiences on college campuses have a significant impact on their academic longevity.19 For Black college students, factors such as the level of faculty support, availability of research-based programming, and feelings of institutional connectedness and belonging have dramatic effects on their personal and academic development and matriculation.19 The Meyerhoff Scholars Program at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County is an example of a training program that has successfully increased the numbers of Black undergraduate college students who succeed in science, mathematics, and engineering.20 Meyerhoff students were more than 10 times as likely than the historical African American sample to attend graduate school in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields, and almost two times as likely to attend medical school.20 Raising Achievement in Mathematics and Science scholar and similar programs at historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) are used to improve retention and graduation rates among minority students specifically in the STEM fields.21 A study at Winston-Salem State University found that prior to the implementation of these training programs, graduation rates for full-time students were 17.8% in 2008 and for STEM majors it was 9.3%.21 With the programs in place, graduation rates increased dramatically. The Raising Achievement in Mathematics and Science scholar program participants had a 98.8% graduation rate over 4 years and 100% of the 2009 scholar cohort graduated in STEM and were enrolled in either MS/PhD graduate programs or professional schools.21 Spelman College also employs several programs to orient and support Black women students in STEM careers. Spelman has the Research Initiative for Scientific Enhancement training program, which supports the career pursuits of women and underrepresented minorities interested in biomedical research.22 In addition, between 2015 and 2019, Spelman College was ranked by the National Science Foundation as the number 1 institution of origin for Black PhDs in STEM disciplines.23 These types of programs and the contributions of Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU's) to the Black female scientific workforce emphasizes their importance and necessity in contributing toward the development and advancement of Black women in research and advocacy. The W. Montague Cobb/National Medical Association Health Institute (also known as The Cobb Institute) is an organization that focuses on improving health inequities and addressing structural racism through research, education, and mentorship.24 The Cobb Scholars Program was launched in 2016 for senior residents, fellows, postdoctoral scientists, or early-stage investigators that come from underrepresented groups and are interested in biomedical and behavioral research.24 The scholars receive mentorship in leadership and research from interdisciplinary senior fellows which provides for collaboration and coaching across sectors to enrich their experience. Predominately White institutions can also help advance this goal. For example, the Pathways for Students into Health Professions program, housed within the University of California, Los Angeles campus, focuses on supporting underrepresented minority undergraduate students in MCH professions through the provisions of faculty mentorship, paid internships, and learning opportunities through various seminars.25 Although the program is not specifically built for Black students, it does prioritize students coming from non-dominant racial and ethnic groups, and research has found that students who completed the program were significantly more likely to report an interest in MCH topics and careers when compared to pre-enrollment.25 Many mentorship and training programs are open to those coming from other non-dominant racial and ethnic groups, as well as multiple gender identities.26 However, Black women often face different and distinct challenges as compared to their Black male counterparts or women of other racial backgrounds.27 Thus, there is a critical need to focus on the unique training and mentorship needs of Black women in academia. To bolster impacts within the MCH field, it would be useful to develop and implement programs to support Black women in their matriculation in public health, social sciences, and health care graduate programs with a focus on MCH research. There are a few graduate programs designed to support Black women in health care and health sciences that can be adapted for scholar-activists. For example, the Association of Black Women Physicians offers the Sister-to-Sister Mentoring Program that provides mentorship to Black women physicians, residents, and medical students.28 The program, Black Girl White Coat, is a social media mentorship initiative that hopes to provide further representation for groups that have been historically marginalized and oppressed.29 In addition, the ADVANCE Institutional Transformation Project of Jackson State University is a STEM mentorship program designed to support and empower Black women scholar-activists as well as provide a mentorship pipeline for early career scientists.30 Each of these programs aim to cultivate community and camaraderie among women who frequently, by nature of their racial and gender identity, are isolated in academic and professional settings. By adapting these mentorship programs to accommodate the needs of aspiring Black maternal health scholars, we can expand the support of early career professionals beyond undergraduate trainings. The profound impact of intentional investment in the form of mentorship, academic skill building, and providing opportunities for advocacy in the next generation of leaders cannot be overstated. This common thread among the following programs remain at the crux of the case for increased financial and programming support dedicated to the academic and career development of Black maternal health scholars. HBCU's must be central in the creation of a pipeline of leaders and scholars from historically underrepresented communities trained to work toward health equity in maternal health. For the past few years, Health Resources Services Administration through the Maternal and Child Health Bureau has formed an Alliance with 10 HBCU's to enhance the resources and expertise of faculty and students in HBCU's to address health inequities in MCH populations.31 The Alliance meets monthly to discuss strategies to strengthen research, outreach, advocacy, and services and has recently presented recommendations to the Maternal and Child Health Bureau. The Charles Drew University's Black Maternal Health Center of Excellence is one of the promising new programs underway that has been designed to address the persisting birthing disparities that disproportionately impact Black birthing people in Los Angeles County and the local Charles Drew community.32 The initiative names racism as a root cause to the disproportionately higher rates of infant and maternal death for Black birthing people countywide.33 In response to growing maternal morbidity and mortality rates in the state of Georgia, The Morehouse School of Medicine launched the Center for Maternal Health Equity in 2019.34 Their approach to tackling maternal health inequities is multifaceted; the Center utilizes research, workforce training, community engagement, and policy advocacy to improve reproductive justice.34 There is a paucity of evaluated programs tailored to meet the needs of Black women scholar-activists. However, many of the programs that currently exist offer foundations and frameworks that can be augmented to fit the needs of Black women and students within the MCH fields. The Diversity Scholars Leadership Program at the Boston University School of Public Health Center of Excellence in MCH is designed for students from underrepresented minority communities during their public health graduate studies in MCH.35 The National Birth Equity Collaborative is a Black-led organization that serves as a hands-on training program for promising scholars in the field.36 The Collaborative recruits interns from across multiple public health disciplines with experience in research, policy, training, advocacy, and community-centered work, with a commitment to reproductive justice and advancing birth equity.37 Founded in July 2020 during the dual pandemics of racism and COVID-19, The Maternal Outcomes for Translational Health Equity Research (MOTHER) Lab at Tufts University School of Medicine was created with two main goals: (1) to train, mentor, and engage bright scholars of color and White allies; and (2) to provide a research and training space to ensure scholars are supported as they prepare to go into their respective fields to dismantle systemic racism.38 Through a keen focus on the development of research skills, advocacy, and leadership among its students, the MOTHER Lab provides a framework for the development of maternal health scholars that can serve as model for other research labs housed in schools of public health or medicine. The MOTHER Lab is a unit within the newly formed Center for Black Maternal Health and Reproductive Justice that houses faculty, staff, and students with a dedicated interest in addressing maternal health inequities. This center would contribute to immense progress in filling current gaps for mentorship, research, and sustainable change in this field.39 Research has shown that mentorship for students of color in White spaces are especially beneficial and can become a positive predictor component to their academic and professional futures; this center would provide training, research, and mentorship opportunities for scholars and providers in the field of Black maternal health equity.40, 41 Additionally, the Center for Black Maternal Health and Reproductive Justice and the MOTHER Lab scholarly program for maternal health students are founded and run by Black female scholars with lived experience, thus representing a unique opportunity to engage and train the next generation of leaders. Finally, policy agendas such as the Black Maternal Health Momnibus Act of 2021 (suite of 12 bills proposed in Congress), provide new and exciting ways to support the development of scholar-activists at the local, national, and state level that are dedicated to eliminating maternal mortality and morbidity in Black women.42 These 12 bills address current Black maternal health disparities through numerous distinct methods, but prominently include expanded funding for research on the topic and diversifying the MCH workforce as important methods. One of these bills (Protecting Moms Who Served Act of 2021) has been signed into law, while parts of several others have been partially incorporated in the proposed Build Back Better Act (Data to Save Moms Act, Kira Johnson Act, Maternal Health Pandemic Response Act of 2020, Perinatal Workforce Act, Protecting Moms and Babies Against Climate Change Act, and the Tech to Save Moms Act).43 Unique obstacles encountered from secondary school and throughout graduate education contribute to a lack of adequate representation of Black women in public health. This ultimately leads to a lack of lived experience and scholarship of scholars from communities most affected by the Black maternal health crisis. Modeling the success of other heavily invested pipeline mentorship and training programs, increased support of burgeoning Black maternal health scholar-activists may help mitigate this issue. Furthermore, existing policies and proposed legislation to diversify the public health workforce create the platform needed to build out the investment in Black women scholars who can lead the movement for maternal health equity. The authors have no funding to report.

(Re)Imagining Belonging: Black Women Want More Than Survival in Predominantly White Institutions Christa J. Porter (bio) Feeling connected to a place or community is a basic human need (Maslow, 1954). Higher education researchers have defined this need as a sense of belonging or a student’s ability to connect to campus through support systems, positive interactions, and mattering (Hurtado & Carter, 1997; Strayhorn, 2012). A student belonging to or within an institution has been associated with achieving educational outcomes and success (e.g., social acceptance, faculty relationships, and engagement in extracurricular activities; Vaccaro & Newman, 2016). These definitions, however, often center the experiences of White students. Tachine et al. (2017) asserted Native American students’ need to create a “home away from home” because of cultural invalidation on campus. Similarly, Dortch and Patel (2017) emphasized Black women students experienced belonging uncertainty and were perpetually reminded they do not matter within predominantly White institutions (PWIs). Despite Black women’s persistence and ability to excel within PWIs (Patton & Croom, 2017; Porter & Byrd, 2021), institutional actions (or lack thereof) have not supported Black women’s mattering. Black women students endure covert sentiments of marginalization and overt actions of violence. From being rendered invisible in classroom spaces and student organizations (Hannon et al., 2016) to being escorted out of classrooms by campus police (Patton & Njoku, 2019), Black women must navigate the very institutional spaces that celebrate their graduation statistics, yet simultaneously perpetuate their erasure. Campus leaders highlight Black women’s experiences to market institutional metrics but fail to structurally create an environment wherein Black women’s experiences are embedded within institutional practices and policies (Patton & Haynes, 2018). The purpose of this article is to trouble whether Black women can truly and fully belong in these institutional spaces and among individuals who preserve historical legacies of their exclusion. My positionality as a Black woman who has navigated PWIs as a student, administrator, and faculty member grounded my approach to this study. CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK Drawing from Schlossberg (1989), Davis et al. (2020) defined mattering as “being noticed, cared for, needed, appreciated, and not overlooked” (p. 24). Belonging is not the same as mattering in or to a place. Belonging can highlight a singular connection to someone or something, whereas mattering necessitates action and assigns institutional responsibility. Because institutions have failed to act or respond with and on behalf of Black women, Black women have created space for themselves, written themselves into existence, and disrupted systems and people who silenced them (Collins, 1986; Commodore et al., 2018). Despite achieving progress and educational success, Black women continue to experience pervasive institutional control. [End Page 106] Collins (1986) emphasized Black women’s social location within White spaces as an outsider-within status. For example, Black women domestic workers were outside due to their identities as Black women but within White households as caretakers. Outsider-within status articulates how Black women experience exploitation due to their socio-historical positioning. In We Want to Do More Than Survive, Love (2019) explained how Black (dark) people navigate educational systems and institutions that often dispose of and erase their experiences. What I am describing is a life of exhaustion, a life of doubt, a life of state-sanctioned violence, and a life consumed with the objective of surviving. Survival is existing and being educated in an antidark world, which is not living or learning at all. . . . This existence is not truly living nor is it a life of mattering. (p. 39) I coupled Love’s (2019) survival framing with Collins’s (1986) outsider-within status to reimagine what it means to belong for Black women who have survived higher education contexts wherein they have not mattered. Black women’s experiences are hyper-visible (within) when convenient for the institution (e.g., graduation statistics), yet they are likely to be invisible (outside) when colleges and universities create practices and policies that positively enhance or support student experiences (e.g., gender-based initiatives that fail to center race). Black women students must survive institutional environments, constantly negotiating whether, where, and with whom their narratives and experiences are valid, let alone matter (Love, 2019). BELONGING AND BLACK WOMEN AT A SMALL PRIVATE INSTITUTION In a larger, IRB-approved...

This chapter explores how two Black women working as diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) independent consultants teamed up to create the Training in Diversity, Inclusion, and Equitable Mindfulness (TDIEM) workshop series. TDIEM workshops are interactive educational sessions that teach DEI concepts through the lens of Equitable Mindfulness. Equitable Mindfulness utilizes the application of mindfulness (present moment experience) for everyone– removing personal and systematic barriers that work against inclusivity and transformative change within themselves and within the communities they work within (Cash et al., 2021). Here the authors discuss Black women's positions as DEI workers as well as the history of mindfulness, outline the TDIEM workshop series, present challenges to collaborating and facilitating this curriculum in White spaces, and offer recommendations for practice for other Black women DEI practitioners to use for future work in White spaces.

Paradoxes of white moral experience