DEFINE AND EMPOWER: Black Feminist Discourse in a Caribbean Context

Reviewed by: Moving Beyond Borders: A History of Black Canadian and Caribbean Women in the Diaspora by Karen Flynn Alana Butler Karen Flynn. Moving Beyond Borders: A History of Black Canadian and Caribbean Women in the Diaspora. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2011. 301 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $27.95. sc. The title of Karen Flynn’s Moving Beyond Borders: A History of Black Canadian and Caribbean Women in the Diaspora only alludes to some of its rich content. At the time of writing, it is the only historical account of Black Canadian and Black Caribbean nurses in Canada. These Black female nurses were all trained in hospital-based nursing schools and spent their professional lives in Canada, the United Kingdom, the United States and the Caribbean. In Canada, these migrant nurses played an integral role in relieving the nursing shortage in Canada following World War II. Flynn draws on post-colonial feminist and diasporic Black studies for her theoretical analysis of the narratives of the Black female nurses. Flynn examines how Black women’s identities and subjectivities were constituted through early experiences of school, church, and family, and reconstituted post-migration through professional training and their lives as wives, mothers, single women, and community activists. Subjectivity is a term that appears multiple times throughout the book. Flynn defines subjectivity as the “conscious and unconscious thoughts and emotions of the individual, her sense of herself and her ways of understanding her relation to the world” (4). Flynn also presents a critical interrogation of dominant discourses that position Canada as a benevolent nation while obfuscating the lived experiences of Black Canadians. [End Page 159] Flynn’s research methodology is a narrative analysis of in-depth interviews conducted with 35 Black female nurses (13 Black Canadian and 22 Black Caribbean) from 1995-2001. Twenty-five of the interviews were completed as part of Flynn’s doctoral dissertation. Key to Flynn’s nuanced analysis is the intersectionality of race, gender, class, and sexuality as forms of oppression, identity, and resistance. The book is divided into two main sections that present chronological narratives organized around eight main themes. The first section focuses on the role of family, church, and school as early agents of socialization. Flynn’s account shows that early family socialization was pivotal for each of these women. The family served as a foundation of their early identity formation and also as a source of resistance against colonial oppression and inequality. The experiences of Black Caribbean women contrasted with those of Black Canadian women because of the different historical and social contexts of colonialism from the 1930s to 1950s. The Black Caribbean women experienced social class status that was mediated by skin color and race. For the Black Canadian-born women, social class was demarcated more saliently along racial lines, regardless of skin tone. Since the women would all later become professional nurses, school was critical to their cognitive and social development. Access was also mediated by class and race in both the Canadian and Caribbean contexts. Racism and classism in school were factors in both contexts as the Black women encountered low teacher expectations and a British-influenced curriculum. Outside of school, the church provided moral education and a sense of community for these Black women. The second part of the book examines the experiences of migration, professional training, and work. The second part also addresses how these experiences have shaped their identities and subjectivities in relation to post-migration family and community life. For many of the Black Caribbean women, migration to Britain was their first step in becoming professional nurses. Throughout their nursing training, the Black women’s mere presence challenged the prevailing gender construction of nursing as the embodiment of white womanhood. Flynn analyzes their experiences by addressing questions of identity, liminality, hybridity, and alienation. An examination of their professional lives as nurses throughout the diaspora illuminates the ways in which these Black women integrated their professional identities with their multiple subject positions. Lastly, Flynn’s analysis reconciles migration with notions of home and belonging in the women’s narratives. Flynn’s contribution to the scholarship in this area is significant. Most studies of Black Canadian working women...

Preface Foreword -- Patricia Hill Collins Part I: Introduction 1. Difference and Domination -- Maxine Baca Zinn and Bonnie Thornton Dill 2. Women of Color: A Demographic Overview -- Vilma Ortiz Part II: The Constraining of Social Location 3. Helpers, Enforcers, and Go-Betweens: Black Females in Elementary School Classrooms -- Linda Grant 4. Hiring Immigrant Women: Silicon Valley's Simple Formula -- Karen J. Hossfeld 5. Inside the Work Worlds of Chicana and Mexican Immigrant Women -- Denise A. Segura 6. Black Professional Women: Job Ceilings and Employment Sectors -- Elizabeth Higginbotham 7. Puerto Rican Families and Social Well-Being -- Ruth E. Zambrana Part III: Social Agency: Confronting the Walls 8. Fictive Kin, Paper Sons, and Compadrazgo: Women of Color and the Struggle for Family Survival -- Bonnie Thornton Dill 9. Black Women in Prison: The Price of Resistance -- Regina Arnold 10. Cultural Survival and Contemporary American Indian Women in the City -- Jennie R. Joe and Dorothy Lonewolf Miller 11. Asian American Women at Work -- Esther Ngan-Ling Chow 12. If It Wasn't for the Women...: African American Women, Community Work, and Social Change -- Cheryl Townsend Gilkes 13. Migration and Vietnamese American Women: Remaking Ethnicity -- Nazli Kibria Part IV: Rethinking Gender 14. Images, Ideology, and Women of Color -- Leith Mullings 15. Different Voices, Different Visions: Gender, Culture, and Moral Reasoning -- Carol B. Stack 16. Feminist Rethinking from Racial-Ethnic Families -- Maxine Baca Zinn About the Contributors Index

Dans le cadre de la hierarchie sociale aux Etats-Unis, prenant en compte les facteurs de classe, d'ethnicite, de race, et de sexe, etude des relations entre femmes blanches ou de couleur et homme blancs, et de l'impact de ces relations sur le mouvement feministe blanc et de couleur

We seek to unpack and complicate traditional findings of Black Americans’ ambivalent progressivism of immigrants and immigration by seriously considering gender as an analytic tool. Specifically, we aim to highlight how Black women’s political and social uniqueness contextualizes their perception of attitudes toward immigrants and immigration. We argue that Black women’s unique race and gendered experiences inform Black women’s attitudes and preferences regarding immigration and immigrants. Further, we take their heterogeneity seriously because Black women are not a monolith. Using the 2020 Collaborative Multiracial Post-election Survey (CMPS), we argue that perceptions of shared disadvantage, high levels of woman of color (WoC) linked fate and intersectional solidarity, and strong Democratic identification will positively influence African American women and Black immigrant women’s progressive attitudes toward immigrants and immigration compared to Black women who have lower levels of shared discrimination, WoC linked fate, intersectional solidarity, or have weak Democratic identification.

The health benefits of physical activity have long been well documented. However, standing at the crossroads of gender, race, and physical inactivity are Black women. Consequently, Black women tend to have higher health maladies than Black males, Caucasian women, and other Women of Color. As such, this investigation sought to examine the behavioral correlates and predictors of a case selection of Black women’s ( N = 123) physical activity, noting the impact of race. The analyses revealed that: (a) the women were moderately physically active, (b) their physical activity was positively correlated with their sport media behaviors, and (c) psychological stimulation, educational attainment, and racial identification were positive predictors of their participation in physical activity. A noteworthy contribution of this exploratory investigation was the finding of an operative and influential ‘raced/Black psyche’ and the illumination of the corresponding Afrocentric insights yielded.

Early onset of breast cancer in Black British women: how reliable are the findings?

This essay draws on the feminist and queer organization Flamboyant, the first and only nationwide Black and migrant women–run meeting place, active in the 1980s in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. After five years, the collective was forced to leave their space due to a lack of funding and burnout. The organization was named after the tropical flamboyant tree (Delonix regia), which according to the founders “has not been tamed and would prefer to die instead of shrinking in the Dutch living room.” I argue that this metaphorical mission statement is an articulation of wildness that rejects Dutch colonial expectations of integration and order. Flamboyant’s refusal to be tamed eventually led to the demise of the only archive run by Black women and women of color. This essay firmly situates Flamboyant within a Black and women of color (WOC) European scholarly and activist experience. Drawing on archival materials and geographical reflections of place, I demonstrate how the loss of Dutch feminist and queer of color spaces and archives are embedded within transnational feminist genealogies of mourning.

Women of Color (WoC) engineering faculty in higher education differ in their approaches to coping with inequities and salary disparities. This study draws upon McGee's Stereotype Management [McGee, E. O. 2016. “Devalued Black and Latino Racial Identities: A By-Product of College STEM Culture?” American Educational Research Journal 53 (6): 1626–1662; McGee, E. O. 2020a. Black, Brown, Bruised: How Racialized STEM Education Stifles Innovation. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press. https://www.hepg.org/hep-home/books/black,-brown,-bruised#] and Identity Taxation [Hirshfield, L. E., and T. D. Joseph. 2012. “‘We Need a Woman, We Need a Black Woman': Gender, Race, and Identity Taxation in the Academy.” Gender and Education 24 (2): 213–227] to understand how WoC in Engineering respond to race and gender-based salary disparity in engineering higher education. Results reveal that WoC contend with identity taxation that forces them to navigate gendered negotiation systems to achieve salary parity. The racial backgrounds of WoC appeared to influence how they managed the impacts of pay inequity. Stereotype management emerges as a form of identity taxation that WoC use to navigate their academic environments. Our research suggests that, rather than confronting their structural racism, institutions of higher education place the onus on scholars of colour to use strategies to protect themselves from the reality of race/gendered wage disparity.

Adverse birth outcomes among children born to women of color (WOC) have been associated with discrimination during pregnancy; however, little research has explored stressed caused by discrimination as well as pregnancy-specific stress. The purpose of this study was to examine differences in stress and racial discrimination (lifetime and during pregnancy) between U.S. women of different racial/ethnic groups. Women between 18 and 45 years (n = 198; 101 non-Hispanic White, 58 Black, and 39 other WOC [i.e., Hispanic, Asian/Pacific Islander, American Indian, Mixed Race]) completed an online, cross-sectional survey between December 2019 and March 2020. Participants reported pregnancy-specific stress using the pregnancy distress questionnaire (PDQ) and pregnancy life events scale (PLE) and discrimination via the general ethnic discrimination scale (GED). ANOVAs explored differences between racial/ethnic groups' stress and discrimination. We found non-Hispanic White (p < 0.05) and other WOC (p < 0.01) reported higher distress during pregnancy than Black women, and other WOC (p < 0.05) reported more stressful prenatal life events (p < 0.05) than non-Hispanic Whites. However, Black (p < 0.001) and other WOC (p < 0.001) both experienced more ethnic discrimination throughout their lifetime and during their pregnancy than non-Hispanic Whites. Also, Black women experienced five times the stress from these encounters than White women (p < 0.001). Previously developed pregnancy distress questionnaires may be better suited for non-Hispanic White populations and may miss important experiences unique to marginalized populations such as racial/ethnic discrimination. Adaptations to pregnancy-related stress scales are warranted given the toxicity of discrimination during pregnancy.

The authors draw upon their lived experiences as Black women in the academy to conceptualize a framework for Black women’s peer mentorship, or ‘sister scholarship,’ within academia. Through auto-ethnographic ‘sister talks,’ the sister scholar relationship is conceptualized as a sanctum from gendered and racialized trauma, an impetus for the co-generation of knowledge, an approbation of intersectionality, and a gathering of the whole self. This work is grounded in Black feminist understandings of resiliency, resistance, and grace within academia. In discussion, the authors call for the abolition of oppressive policies and systems that aim to marginalize and disenfranchise Black women and other Women of Color in the academy.

This article seeks to understand the public opinion formation among women of color in America. How do identity-based factors, such as linked fate with women of color (WoC), shape political evaluations? Expanding on social identity theory and intersectionality frameworks, we investigate the political influences of WoC identification and WoC intersectional linked fate. We argue that intersectional linked fate represents a deeper sense of shared experiences and interconnected outcomes across race and gender, making this both a conceptually distinct construct and a politically consequential extension of WoC identity. Further, we theorize that women of color’s perceptions of intersectional linked fate drive their cross-racial support for real-world WoC in politics. We analyze data from the 2020 Collaborative Multiracial Post-Election Survey to test how intersectional linked fate correlates with evaluations of prominent WoC political figures such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ayanna Pressley, and Michelle Obama among Black, Latina, and Asian American women. Our findings reveal that intersectional linked fate has a stronger and more consistent influence on these political evaluations than either WoC identity or racial linked fate, fostering solidarity and support for WoC politicians across racial boundaries. The results highlight the critical role of intersectional linked fate in shaping public opinion with important implications for understanding future elections, especially as candidates, politics, and the electorate continue to diversify in the United States.

This chapter examines the unprecedented growth in activity and the coalescence of women's local and regional clubs in the early 1890s, a period that also saw Fannie Barrier Williams increase her reform activities in the black community and with the black women who had come to her aid. It begins with a discussion of Barrier Williams' involvement in the women's equality movement, citing in particular her membership in the Colored Women's League in Chicago that ushered in what she later referred to as the beginnings of “a reformatory movement” created entirely by women. It then considers how the push for political equality linked club women in Chicago to black club women across the country, along with Barrier Williams' belief in the ballot as a means of maintaining and improving black women's constitutional rights as well as her belief in black women's role in guiding the progress of the race in the new century. The chapter shows how Barrier Williams emerged as a leading representative and promoter of reforms and women's activism in the West/Midwest.

Reducing Implicit Bias in Maternity Care: A Framework for Action

Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Surgical Outcomes after Postmastectomy Breast Reconstruction.

Chairing as Self-Care:Strategies for Combatting the Cultural Identity Taxation Trap for Black Women Chairs Donna J. Nicol (bio) Introduction Leaving a tenured position in Women and Gender Studies to become chair of Africana Studies at a sister campus within the same university system was part of my self-care praxis. When I say this to my colleagues and friends in academia, I often get curious looks and questions as it is hard for many to believe that becoming a chair of the department at a different campus would be anything but more stressful and challenging. This has indeed been my experience as I have just completed my first year in this position and with this essay, I would like to offer some insights about how I have been successful in this role thus far while making progress on my professional goals and maintaining a solid self-care practice. I entered into the professoriate after having spent three years in secondary education and seven years in university administration. Since I didn't follow the traditional route to faculty, I entered academia with a type of fearlessness that allowed me to be my authentic self at all times because I knew if things did not work out as a professor, I would land on my feet and go back to either K-12 teaching or student affairs administration. While other faculty, who came directly from graduate school, felt it prudent to not speak up about departmental workload issues or racial micro-aggressions for fear of retaliation, I never felt the need to hide how I felt about an issue that was affecting my work performance or my health. In fact, when my health took a turn in 2013 [End Page 179] and I had to take medical leave right before the start of the spring term, I became even more adamant about speaking up for myself. I explain in my essay, "Reclaiming Our Time: Women of Color and Radical Self-Care in the Academy" (co-authored with Jennifer Yee): "When my health was compromised and the toxic work environment became intolerable, I made changes. Moving into this new position [as chair of Africana Studies at a new campus] was one of those changes."1 The Cultural Identity Taxation Trap The unacknowledged realities of racism and sexism within academia create a "revolving door" for Black women faculty that follows an all-too-familiar pattern. Black women enter the academy as tokenized hires by white leadership (Black women initially feel welcomed, needed, and happy). Then, the reality of racism rears its head in the form of racial micro-aggression and repeated injury when Black women try to work within the established university structure to effect change. Next comes the denial of racism where a Black woman faculty member is ignored or tasked with fixing the problem by herself often with little support from other men and women of color. Finally, Black women experience retaliation by being labeled as "problems" who "don't fit," or the issue is treated as a "miscommunication" instead of as a substantive race and/or gender problem within the university. It is usually after retaliation that Black women exit the university and either try again at a different institution or leave the profession altogether.2 In my situation, I left after I made several requests to transfer to African American Studies where I felt I would be better situated professionally. My former department went into receivership. The dean's office appointed an outside chair and the department faculty lost the ability to develop their own schedule or review personnel files because of the inability to get along well enough to function in the best interests of students. I eventually became ill because of high levels of stress brought on by this toxic work environment. The irony of all of this was that as the lone woman of color in the department and the first woman of color to be tenured and promoted in Women and Gender Studies at this institution, I pretty much got along with everyone. What was intolerable to me was the fact that since I was the lone woman...