“I have a certain standard:” HBCU women's heterosexual aspirations and identity negotiation

Abstract

AbstractObjectiveThe present study expands scholarship on collegiate relationship formation by exploring heterosexual Black HBCU women's romantic aspirations for identity formation.BackgroundCollegiate environments structure sex and dating. However, extant research has not adequately considered how racialization matters for gendered relationship formation in these contexts and has yet to establish how racial, gender, and class identity formation and performance converge to structure Black college women's relational desires and opportunities.MethodThe study uses 30 in‐depth interviews with cisgender, heterosexual Black women at an HBCU to investigate their romantic and sexual experiences and expectations.ResultsHBCU women's romantic aspirations were organized by their race, gender, and aspirant class locations. They identified committed, monogamous, equitable relationships with similarly situated Black men as a relational ideal. Nonetheless, women expressed barriers to obtaining this relationship structure within their campus landscape and sought to otherwise negotiate romantic opportunities in accordance with respectable middle‐class Black feminine identities.ConclusionHBCU women's characterizations of ideal partnerships revealed the ways existing race, class, and gender structures are simultaneously accepted, reified, and problematized in Black women's identity negotiation through collegiate romance. Though HBCUs seem ideal for satisfactory sexual and romantic connections for Black middle‐class aspirant women, inequities on and off‐campus and rigid standards for respectability leave women with limited opportunities to obtain all they desire.