Replications of Racialized, Gender and Class-Based Trauma: Intersectional Enactments Within Black Women Client–Therapist–Consultee- Consultant Relationships

Shining a Light on the Superwoman Schema and Maternal Health.

To the Front and Center of the Field:Recent Histories of Black Women, Gender, and Black Power Rhonda Y. Williams (bio) Ashley D. Farmer. Remaking Black Power: How Black Women Transformed an Era. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2017. xx + 288 pp.; ill. ISBN 978-1-4696-3437-1 (cl); 978-1-4696-5473-7 (pb); 978-1-4696-3438-8 (ebook). Tanisha C. Ford. Liberated Threads: Black Women, Style, and the Global Politics of Soul. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2017. xvi + 272 pp.; ill. ISBN 978-1-4696-2515-7 (cl); 978-1-4696-3613-9 (pb); 978-1-4696-2516-4 (ebook). Robyn C. Spencer. The Revolution Has Come: Black Power, Gender, and the Black Panther Party in Oakland. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2016. xv + 280 pp.; ill. ISBN 978-0-8223-6275-3 (cl); 978-0-8223-6286-9 (pb). Soul Sisters to the front(lines) of struggle. Black women intellectuals, artists, educators, organizers, and fashionistas at the center of political culture. Black Militant, Revolutionary, African, Pan-African, Third World, (African)Every Woman on the (battle)fields of history. These expressions and their syntactic strikeouts stylistically proclaim: For too long, the historical images and historiography conjured by the words black power have been traditionally dominated by either black men as historical actors or analyses of hegemonic patriarchal power. Appreciatively, neither the "traditional" nor "hegemonic" prevail in these deeply researched books by Tanisha C. Ford, Robyn C. Spencer, and Ashley D. Farmer. In their works, black women are not only visible as historical actors, contributors, and sometimes visionaries in struggles for black liberation. They are also navigating, wrestling, rethinking, abiding, retooling, and even changing the course of culture, ideas, organizations, and everyday social and intimate spaces. Let us begin with the book jackets. The front cover of Ford's Liberated Threads features a photo of Olive Morris with a manicured Afro and geometric-patterned skirt, her hands firmly holding a bullhorn to her lips. Morris is speaking at a rally at the central library in Brixton to protest "special" police patrols of the predominantly black neighborhood in London in 1978. Spencer's The Revolution Has Come also features a photo—six [End Page 118] Afro-coiffed Black Panther Party women at De Fremery Park in Oakland, California, in 1968. This image of the relatively known (Kathleen Cleaver), little known (Tarika Lewis), and unknown (the other four women are not identified) women bridge familiar, corrective, and still-to-be-written narratives of the Black Panther Party. The cover of Farmer's Remaking Black Power is a black-and-white illustration of various black women's faces punctuated by stars and one clenched black power fist; they anchor the title in allusive red, black, and green.1 As suggested by their covers, these books, which literally and figuratively frame hundreds of pages of research, signal the centrality of black women's stories and activist legacies. Writing different types of history—cultural, organizational, and intellectual, respectively—Ford, Spencer, and Farmer document black women's presence, voices, ideas, arduous work, influence, and, to varying degrees, the multifaceted gendered terrains of struggle in the post-World War II, civil rights-black power era. All three authors interrupt perfunctorily framed, male-inspired liberation narratives, as well as model ways to interrogate patriarchy without simplistically erasing black men or conflating black power with gender oppression. In these ways, their studies are emblematic of the newest wave of scholarship, chiefly prompted by black women historians, that complicates the historiography and enriches the history of race, women, gender, and social struggle.2 What Is Soul, Soul Sisters? Seriously investigating the common moniker soul and its power to signify "style," Liberated Threads examines how black women's "body politics" both inspired and emerged out of individual and collective black self-determination struggles. Ford argues that expressions of "soul style," steeped in black women's transgressive cultural performances, helped produce spaces of liberation, as well as physical and political danger, for black people who opposed divergent status quos structured by race, gender, class, sexuality, and the state. These black women created a language of the body. They asserted their freedom to define self...

Reviewed by: Margaret Murray Washington: The Life and Times of a Career Clubwoman by Sheena Harris Leigh Soares Margaret Murray Washington: The Life and Times of a Career Clubwoman. By Sheena Harris. (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2021. Pp. xiv, 210. $55.00, ISBN 978-1-62190-619-3.) Building on literature that has shed new light on the lives and leadership of Black women traditionally overshadowed by the renowned "race men" of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Sheena Harris has written the first scholarly biography of Margaret Murray Washington. Born enslaved in Macon, Mississippi, Washington is known most for her marriage to Booker T. Washington as he arrived at the height of his power, but here readers see how she became a prominent educator and race leader in her own right. She developed a robust curriculum for Black girls at Tuskegee Institute, promoted Black history education in Black schools across the South, and organized Black women to lead racial uplift movements in their own communities. With this biography of Margaret Washington, Harris "not only restores her to the history of HBCU administrators and club women, but also illuminates the interconnections among movements that stood against racial and gender oppression" (p. 10). [End Page 403] Drawing on a wide range of personal correspondence, public writings, and institutional records, Harris traces the life and career of Washington from her birth in 1861 to her death in 1925. The first three chapters recount Washington's childhood, her education at Fisk University, her marriage to Booker, and her pedagogical commitments as Lady Principal of Tuskegee Institute. Harris emphasizes how Washington's early experiences in the rural, impoverished South helped shape the vision of Black education she brought with her to Tuskegee—one that emphasized respectability, the professionalization of domestic labor, and the uplift of the home. Washington's commitment to industrial education, Harris explains, "was not an accommodationist view, as many critics of her husband asserted, but rather a survivalist strategy" (p. 55). The last three chapters follow Washington's club work on three scales: local (the Tuskegee Women's Club), national (including the National Association of Colored Women and the Southern Federation of Women's Clubs), and international (the International Council of Women of the Darker Races of the World). Washington certainly benefited from her husband's fame and influence, but she carved out a respected leadership role for herself through increasingly ambitious organizing, all in service of advancing the study of Black life, uplifting Black women and children, and fighting the spread of white supremacy. Although Harris clearly admires Washington, she does not pull punches when examining the leader's emergent elitism. "While [Washington] espoused views of cohesive [cross-class] collaborations, she herself remained exclusively separate," and most of the Black women Washington sought to uplift were excluded from membership in the numerous organizations she led (p. 144). One of the benefits of biography is the way individual experiences can provide insight into the people behind movements. In several effective passages, Harris explores the physical and emotional toll on Washington as she struggled to find a balance among her work commitments, her responsibilities as a wife and mother, and her personal well-being, highlighting the unique challenges Black women faced as they pursued public leadership. Although the narrative is at times ambivalent about the relationship between her work and the so-called Tuskegee Machine, it is clearer about Washington's connection to a wide network of Black race women rooted in the South. Harris shows Washington collaborating with other understudied reformers in the region, including Josephine Bruce, Lugenia Burns Hope, and Cornelia Bowen. Readers interested in Black women's history and educational history will appreciate this recovery of the life and career of Margaret Murray Washington. Leigh Soares Mississippi State University Copyright © 2022 The Southern Historical Association

Advocacy, Social Justice, and Counselor Identity During the Black Lives Matter Movement

This is a reflective and reflexive account of the individual and shared work experiences of three Black female Senior Lecturers working in higher education. Through the process of sharing our common experiences we not only make visible the details of the race and gender oppression we face, but also the acts of resistance we engage in within the academic community. We draw on our understanding of Black feminist principles and ideas to explore and analyse our experiences as Black professional women; this exploration is central to the development of the strategies that we propose. These strategies, we believe will enable Black women and others engaged in the process of change to continually challenge and resist the oppressive power relations that characterise academic environments. Ici nous donnons un compte rendu réflexif qui s'agit des expériences non seulement collectives entre trois conférencières Noires universitaires, mais aussi des expériences plutôt privées de cettes chercheuses. Par le processus de partager de cette façon nos expériences nous faisons visible l'oppression raciste et sexiste qui se presente dans la vie quotidienne. En meme temps on essaye de souligner la résistance dans laquelle on s'engage dans la communauté scolaire. Par notre compréhension des principes et des idées féministes nous sommes capables d'explorer et d'analyser nos expériences en tant que femmes Noires professionelles. En plus, cette exploration est centrale au développement des stratégies que nous proposons. Nous croyons que par cettes stratégies les Noires (et les femmes en général qui sont engagées dans les efforts d'effectuer le changement) auront le pouvoir de lancer un défi continuel et de résister l'abus de pouvoir accablant qui existe àchaque moment dans les environnements scolaires.

A certain personal ambivalence defines my response to Cloud Nine, Caryl Churchill's drama in two acts featuring an audacious attempt to parallel sexual and gender oppression with colonial and racial oppression. While the attempt to enact the interrelated nature of these oppressions remains attractive, the apparent ease with which a playwright and company drawn exclusively from and implicated by racial and colonial privilege make direct comparisons and equivalencies between gender/sexual and colonialist oppressions is disturbing. These comparisons and equivalencies are made despite critical material differences in the history of gender and sexual oppression within specific cultural contexts, and the history of colonialism and the peculiar history of gender and sexual oppression within colonialism. As a consequence, certain oppressed identities, for example white women, may have been provided with the prospect of empowering representation at the cost of consigning certain other identities, specifically African women, to further subjection and invisibility.

We, African American women professionals in higher education, make visible the continued presence of race and gender oppression, and the hegemony that supports systems of oppression the academy (Dillard, 2000; Patton, 2004ab). Race and gender differences in patterns of employment, rank, and personal experiences academic units are illustrative of the interlocking nature of race and gender oppression that have multiple influences (Combs, 2003; Wright Myers, 2002), including pathways to doctorate studies, institutional hiring practices, tenure and promotion processes, organizational behavior, and professional relationships. Further, Black women are more likely to report organizational barriers to advancement and have more negative views of academic or departmental climates. They also are less likely to indicate that their scholarship is valued, that they are respected by their colleagues, and that they are viewed as legitimate scholars compared to White women, men of color, or White men (Thomas & Hollenshead, 2001).Because career advancement and greater retention rates are among the most reported benefits of mentoring, mentoring is one form of resistance to systems of oppression, organizational barriers, and other negative dynamics experienced by Black women faculty. Mentoring also reduces social isolation and helps one to manage different academic roles (Bova, 2000; Holmes, Land, & Hinton-Hudson, 2007), making it one of the most viable coping and resistance strategies. Yet, a discussion of mentoring without acknowledging the intersections of race and gender, their implications predominately White institutions, and forms of resistance would not address fully the needs of Black women in the academy, beckoning the use of a cultural-inclusive approach to working with African American women in the academy.Therefore, to frame the current discussion on mentoring, we use core themes of Black Feminist Thought (Hill Collins, 1986; 1991) to situate Black women faculty in the academy. Part of our framework includes three sites of tension and resistance: (a) the Mammy-Sapphire continuum of existence, (b) inequality without reverence to credentials, expertise, and professional experiences, and (c) White privilege that dismisses the intersecting realities of racism and sexism. We then suggest a model of peer mentoring that allows for the careful integration of the socio-political tensions, such as race and gender as critical factors when mentoring African American women faculty (Benishek, Bieschke, Park, & Slattery, 2004). Inside the current article, we offer a few biographical narratives to place a face on the issues presented.Black Feminist Thought: Articulating the Outsider WithinPatton (2004a) argues that rather than the university being a place to explore diversity and to embrace diversity, universities often become complicitous in domination and oppression (p. 190). The fracturing between the politics, language, and practices of liberal universities is the uncomfortable nexus inhabited by Black women, which positions us as the academy (Dillard, 2000; Patton, 2004ab). Patricia Hill Collins (1986), in her classic essay on learning from the outsider within, argues that African American women scholars have the potential to use insight from their experiences at the intersections of race, gender, and class to ask new research questions, and to bring a new lens that reflects a Black woman's standpoint. Consistent with the promise of diversity and inclusion, Black women in higher education have the potential to challenge, innovate, and make evident that which was unseen by conventional disciplinary lens. Hill Collins (1986), however, acknowledges the status of outsider academe is inherently problematic if there are no transformations in institutions in which are a part of, and if the meanings assigned to Black women faculty remain unchanged. Thus, African American women as outsiders within the academy is a metaphor that not only evokes transformative promise but also exclusion, isolation, and subordination where one's work and contributions are viewed as less valued, less critical, and less deserving of compensation and recognition. …

In the mid 1970s Black women, and Black feminists in particular, were increasingly visible on television, as they took positions as broadcast journalists and news anchors; starred in dramas and situation comedies, such as Good Times; and appeared as experts on an array of public affairs programs, including shows developed by Black Power leaders and feminists. This essay examines this rise and the constraints on it by analyzing Black feminists’ television activism and their appearances on three programs in the 1970s: two feminist public affairs programs that both aired on PBS stations, Woman (1973–1977) and Woman Alive! (1974, 1975, 1977); and For You Black Woman (1977–1985), a syndicated talk show which was not directly linked to any political movement but was pioneering because it was the first talk show and “public service” program addressed to Black women. Feminist programs—Woman and Woman Alive!—asserted a sisterhood based on gender oppression and encouraged Black women to join it, but they did not consistently address the intersection of race and gender. On the other hand, although For You Black Woman was a more conventional talk show for women, as it focused more on parenting, beauty, and fashion, not feminist or Black Power politics, the show tailored these topics to Black women, discussed race and gender in the distinctive experiences of Black women, and created space for Black women to be experts on a variety of topics. The least explicitly politically program of this triad, For You Black Woman provided a potent political space for Black feminism.

Women playwrights before 1950 were full partners in theatre's protest against conditions for Blacks, whether in form of propaganda, folks plays or historical dramas. They also made unique perspective of Black women's reality a part of that protest. Not until mid-century, however, would their voices reach beyond their communities into highly competitive world of professional theatre.(1) Today when we think of black women playwrights names that come to mind are Ntozake Shange, Lorraine Hansberry, Alice Childress, and Adrienne Kennedy. The endeavors and inroads that these women have made and continue to make in drama could not have occurred without struggle and ground breaking works of early black women playwrights such as Angelina Weld Grimke, Alice Dunbar-Nelson, Georgia Douglas Johnson, May Miller, Mary Burill, Myrtle Smith Livingston, Ruth Gaines-Shelton, Eulalie Spence, Zora Neale Hurston, and Marita Bonner. These black women playwrights, and several others, published over sixty plays and pageants in addition to writing several unpublished texts.(2) Yet, despite these achievements, black female playwrights of first half of twentieth century have often been overlooked and pushed aside regardless of their contributions to American and black theater. Extreme racial and gender oppression best explains why black female playwright was not recognized prior to 1950. Forces of racism and sexism erected barriers so that blacks, overall, could not achieve any significant status in American drama, and for black women playwriting as a profession was considered a male vocation.(3) Women, on other hand, were encouraged to pursue more acceptable, feminine genres such as poetry or fiction.(4) Being both black and female, therefore, limited black woman's progress as a playwright. Consequently, due to racial and gender barriers, work of black female playwrights was slow to emerge. Prior to Lorraine Hansberry's production of A Raisin in Sun on Broadway in 1959, black women dramatists were slow to evolve because of their limited access to staging their works and because of stereotypes they had to combat. Like their male counterparts, early black female playwrights were writing against stereotypical portrayals of blacks on stage by white playwrights. Commonly for black men, stereotypical images were those of comic buffoon, lazy shiftless Uncle Tom, and savage brute, while for black women there were sexless domineering mammy types, loose trolops, and tragic mulattoes. White-authored productions, such as minstrel shows, helped to enforce these distorted images of black people because they were most popular form of theater in America for nearly a century.(5) Moreover, even when white playwrights attempted to celebrate Negro, their endeavors only ended in reinscribing existing stereotypes. For example, white playwrights such as Eugene O'Neill, William Vaughn Moody, Marc Connelly, and Paul Green, all, at some point, used as their subject matter in an attempt to valorize black people. However, these well-intentioned white representations of black life and black people in drama did no more than reinforce stereotypes already fixed about blacks. Whether savage brute image changed to noble savage in Eugene O'Neill's Emperor Jones or if Negro themes were expressed in Paul Green's In Abraham's Bosom, the work of many white playwrights did not address experiences of Blacks in any serious way.(6) For this reason, it became important for both black female and male playwrights to re-create or re-invent reality in their plays in order to demystify white stereotypes of blacks. It was work of black women dramatists, however, which captured lives of black people as no white or black male playwright could.(7) They created a reality that brought in dynamic of gender in addition to focus on race in their works. …

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...

The experience of southern women in the 20th century is distinct from that of American women in general, just as the history of the segregated South is from that of the rest of the nation. The doctrine of white supremacy, which permeated southern society, politics, and culture from the end of Reconstruction to the 1960s, rested not only on racism but also on a rigid patriarchal order, in which white women were to play a key role as guardians of the white race, while black women were relegated to the lowest level of society. The culture of segregation thus drove a wedge between black and white women, the latter belonging to the group responsible for the former’s oppression, and the two being submitted in different ways to the power and authority of white men. These conditions account for the fact that the women who became engaged in the struggle for racial equality in the region did so separately at first, and then joined their efforts in the civil rights movement. Moreover, owing to the combination of race and gender oppression inherent in segregationist culture, the women who challenged racism were bound to undermine the gender norms that had been imposed on them by segregation in the process. However, if the participation of black and white women in the civil rights movement proved as empowering to both groups, it did not foster a strong sense of solidarity among them. Indeed, the experience of southern women remained fraught with contradictions and marked by a fundamental paradox: due to their respective statuses in southern society, the struggle for racial justice drew black and white women together while estranging them at the same time.

The black women's critique of history has not only involved us in coming to terms with 'absences'; we have also been outraged by the ways in which it has made us visible, when it has chosen to see us. History has constructed our sexuality and our femininity as deviating from those qualities with which white women, as the prize objects of the Western world, have been endowed. We have also been defined in less than human terms.2 Our continuing struggle with history began with its 'discovery' of us. However, this chapter will be concerned with herstory rather than history. We wish to address questions to the feminist theories which have been developed during the last decade; a decade in which black women have been fighting, in the streets, in the schools, through the courts, inside and outside the wage relation. The significance of these struggles ought to inform the writing of the herstory of women in Britain. It is fundamental to the development of a feminist theory and practice that is meaningful for black women. We cannot hope to reconstitute ourselves in all our absences, or to rectify the ill-conceived presences that invade herstory from history, but we do wish to bear witness to our own herstories. The connections between these and the herstories of white women will be made and remade in struggle. Black women have come from Africa, Asia and the Caribbean and we cannot do justice to all their herstories in a single chapter. Neither can we represent the voices of all black women in Britain, our herstories are too numerous and too varied. What we will do is to offer ways in which the 'triple' oppression of gender, race and class can be understood, in their specificity, and also as they determine the lives of black women.

Tracing the history of black feminism, it becomes evident that the social construction of racism, sexism and classism was the driving force behind the widespread violence and discrimination against black women. They are found searching and struggling to attain their identity in this patriarchal world. Black feminist thought leads to certain ideas that clarify a standpoint of and for black women. Black feminist perspectives focus on the social domination on the basis of gender, race and class oppression. These oppressions are densely interwoven into social structures and work collectively to define the history of the lives of Black women in America and other coloured women worldwide. It takes us back to the era of United States slavery during which period, a societal hierarchy was established, according to which White men were supposed to be at the top, White women next, followed by Black men and finally, at the bottom were placed Black women. Black feminists were critical of the view that suggests that black women must identify as either black or women. The present paper looks at Lorraine Hansberry’s play A Raisin in the Sun from a black feminist viewpoint. It discusses position of a woman in male dominated society and her struggle for identity. It unfolds the saga of suffering and silencing of a black woman, which pervades the black women writings. It is depicted that black women have to face the unique challenging task of fighting for black liberation and gender equality simultaneously. The play effectively unthreads the history of African American women’s lives and their quest for identity in African American society. Issues of masculinity and femininity are deeply woven in this play. Women in this play present a microcosm of society; they are treated as second class citizens in society. Hansberry has depicted through her play the superiority that men pose over women. The glimpse of patriarchal dominance is visible throughout the play through different male characters. It further focuses on the value of the individual women’s identity and women’s right and freedom to construct their own separate identities rather than having them imposed against their wishes. It delineates how African American Women try to speak out against oppression and create a sense of individual identity in the face of silence and absence.

Gendered racial microaggressions refer to subtle, yet psychologically injurious, interpersonal experiences rooted in racial and gender oppression. As a manifestation of gendered racism, Black women commonly report such experiences, yet this research primarily focuses on younger (e.g., college-attending) adults. Whether gendered racial microaggressions are most salient at specific life course stages (i.e., emerging versus older adulthood) remains unclear. Drawing from intersectionality, social stress, and life course perspectives, this study investigated whether life course stage (e.g., emerging [18–29 years], established [30–45 years], midlife [46–64 years], and older [65+ years] adulthood) differentiated (1) exposure to gendered racial microaggressions and (2) the association between gendered racial microaggressions and mental health (i.e., anxiety and depression symptoms). Data were from a national sample of Black women (N = 415), and linear regression analyses were conducted. To assess moderation by life course stage, we performed statistical interactions. Our findings revealed that gendered racial microaggressions are most salient among relatively younger Black women (18–29 years). However, middle age (i.e., 46–64 years old) Black women are most psychologically affected by specific kinds of gendered racial microaggressions (i.e., Strong Black Woman Stereotype, Assumptions of Beauty and Sexual Objectification). Compared to their younger counterparts, older Black women (i.e., 65 years and older) report less frequent experiences with gendered racial microaggressions and are less psychologically vulnerable to them. We emphasize the need for measurement development to elucidate gendered racism experiences among older Black women.

The Strong Black Woman (SBW) schema is described as a statue of unrelenting strength, resilience, and self-sufficiency, serving as a shield of protection and cultural adaptation to suppress and control manifestations of racial and gender oppression. Stemming from superwoman syndrome, a conceptual model exploring the multifactorial roles women hold and their impact, the SBW extends beyond gender roles to the sociopolitical context of the Black woman's lived experience. Endorsement of the SBW posits risk for health disparities including stress, anxiety, depression, and obesity. This review was conducted to explore the SBW schema and experiences of Black women who endorse it, to delineate how Black women describe themselves in relation to the SBW persona, and to inform further inquiry, nursing practice, and clinical approaches to improving health outcomes of this population. A systematic review of qualitative studies was conducted with a literature search from CINAHL, APA PsycINFO, MEDLINE, PubMed, and SocINDEX databases yielding seven relevant papers for this analysis. Studies using the superwoman schema and the SBW schema with participants who identified as Black women were included in the review. Consistent with the SBW phenomenon, many participants described examples and consequences of being an SBW. While most women identified with SBW, not all endorsed the persona entirely, challenging its ideal and reinforcing positive self-care. Themes include (a) Strength by nature, not choice, (b) Suppressed emotion, (c) Success over everything, and (d) Prioritizing others over self. Additional emerging themes are also included. Black women increasingly recognize the negative impacts of the SBW schema, pinpointing how their internal feelings manifest in their external world. The conceptual framework itself is an anomaly, incongruently impacting both the mental and physical health of Black women, further contributing to the long-term health and sociopolitical disparities that Black women experience. Simply acknowledging and understanding these experiences by healthcare practitioners are not enough to prevent or eliminate the risks involved with the endorsement of the SBW schema but rather intentionally addressing these as a contributing social determinant of health that predisposes them to long-term chronic conditions.