Black Undergraduate Women: Critical Race and Gender Perspectives

Abstract

Black women’s racial, ethnic, and indigenous histories and cultures in the United States and the diaspora are inextricably linked to historical legacies of survival and triumph. Black women’s unique place and space within the United States undergird who they are as individuals and collectively as Black women. Whether Black women acknowledge or disrupt it—the pervasiveness of Black women’s oppression does not disappear when they pursue higher education. Black women (learn to) understand how they make meaning of their identities and identity development as Black women across their lifespans and contexts. Some Black women (re)define who they are, some thrive and build community, others experience detrimental costs, and still, some experience all the above at different points in their lifetime. They navigate who they are in relation to their pre-collegiate socialization experiences (e.g., familial/communal upbringing, understanding of history, identity saliency). These pre-collegiate experiences influence how Black women engage and interact with others as they move into and through their tertiary environments. Collegiate contexts and environments vary—community college, single-sex, predominantly or historically white institutions (PWI or HWI), minority-serving institutions (MSI), public or private—and so too do the institutional agents who interact with and educate Black women (e.g., faculty, staff, and administrators). Through these interactions with others, Black women have often been rendered invisible or hyper-visible, meaning they are not considered in institutional decision making or tokenized for being “the only” or “one of few” in their academic discipline. Black women’s experiences are often conflated with white women when discussing gender or sexism, and Black men when discussing race or racism. Critical examination of Black women’s experiences requires one to name the situatedness of Black women within the context of institutionalized structures and systems. In other words, examination of Black undergraduate women must include critical and intersectional perspectives that overtly problematize practices and policies that sustain marginalization and perpetuate gendered racism against Black women.