Black Female Experience Research Articles

Beyond tokenism: activism, resistance and rebellion

PurposeThe aim of this research was to explore and gain an understanding of the lived experiences of Black females transitioning from social work practice into academia and the support and barriers they experienced.Design/methodology/approachTo achieve this an adaptation of Wengraf (2004) Biographical Narrative Interview Model (BNIM) was employed alongside Braun and Clarke (2006) thematic analysis as foundation of the methodology employed in this study. Whilst the adverse issues relating to Black female academics is not new, the paper is original in the manner in which data was gathered.FindingsThe study identified four themes: (1) significance of early life, (2) passion for learning, (3) overcoming obstacles and (4) navigating academia. The case studies highlighted the various examples of resistance, rebellion and activism the Black female academics employed within UK universities. The paper concluded that despite the positive messaging from families and communities, about pursuing education, and the need for having a strong work ethic, the progress that can be achieved by Black female academics is limited due to the pervasive nature of racism, therefore dispelling the myth of meritocracy.Research limitations/implicationsThe research sample was small and therefore not easily generalisable to the whole population. The findings of the paper will need to be considered as a contribution of knowledge to the issue of structural racism.Originality/valueWhilst the adverse issues relating to Black female academics is sadly not new, the paper is original in the manner in which data was gathered. Namely, the academics were both researchers and the participants, therefore simultaneously providing and analysing the data.

Breaking the Bound of Cocoon -- A Comparative Study on Black Female Identity in Sula and Yearning

In the influential work, Yearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural Politics, Bell Hooks scrutinizes prevailing Black feminist discourses, emphasizing the hegemony of white feminists, intersecting forms of oppression, and the consequential loss of subjectivity. Nevertheless, hooks innovative analysis encounters limitations when addressing the complexities within a literary context. This study conducts a comparative analysis of Black female identity construction, exploring the applicability of hooks theoretical framework to Sula, a novel by African American author Toni Morrison. This paper seeks to clarify alleged contradictions and evaluate hooks theory in three key aspects: the common predicament of Black female identity, the process of identity formation, and the relationship between identity and social class divisions. The analysis uncovers the necessity of acknowledging the shortcomings of hooks arguments when applied to Black feminist literature, such as its inattention to the profound inner struggle originating from cultural constraints in authentic experiences of Black females. Due to distinct writing contexts and backgrounds, Bell Hooks and Toni Morrison diverge in their perspectives on Black female identity, necessitating a closer examination to steer Black feminism towards a more radical path in the future.

“Their Time, Their Moment, Their City”: A Critique and Black Feminist Reading of Harlem

This article analyses Tracy Oliver’s comedy series Harlem (2021) through the lens of Black Feminism. Invoking combined traces of Living Single (1993-1998) and Sex and the City (1998-2004), I contend Harlem aims to fill in the representation void that has erased Black women from mainstream comedies that are reduced to the white experience as it also aims to transgress the stigmatizing image of Black women in mainstream popular culture. In this manner, Oliver’s Harlem addresses several aspects of the Black female experience and shows the gendered racism Black women endure, such as racial stereotypes, medical mistreatment, or white women’s tears, among many others, prioritizing social accuracy and racial sensibilities through comedy as it follows the lives of four Black women in the neighborhood of Harlem in the twenty-first century.

Constructing Race and Gender in Modern Rape Law: The Abandoned Category of Black Female Victims

Despite the successes of the 1960s Anti-Rape Movement, modern state rape statutes continue to prioritize white male perspectives and perceptions of race, ultimately ignoring the intersectional identity of Black women and leaving these victims without legal protection. This Note examines rape law’s history of allocating agency along gendered and racialized lines through statutory construction and other discursive techniques. Such legal constructions both uphold and cultivate the white victim/Black assailant rape dyad primarily by making the Black male the “ultimate” and most feared assailant. Rape law’s adherence to a white baseline sustains stereotypes of Black men as criminals and predators, which ultimately relegates Black women to a category of lesser and undeserving victims. Re-focusing rape reform and feminist movements on Black female experiences, as well as a rhetorical restructuring of rape laws, can improve rape law uniformity and remove white normativity standards. A departure from the current rhetorical and realized white baseline can eliminate rape law’s delineations of femininity that silence women of color.

Consciousness in Toni Morrison's Novel the Bluest Eye

Toni Morrison is the most well-known sophisticated novelist in the history of African American literature. She has been recognised as a strident voice for exploited black people as well as master craftsman of the dominant artistic form. The Bluest Eye is a tragic tale about a young, black girl Pecola and her desire for the bluest eyes, the symbol for her of what it means to be beautiful and therefore worthy in society. It clarifies the damaging impacts of white standards and the importance on the lives of black people. It represents very sad feeling in terms of tragic conditions of blacks in racist America. She investigates the devastating effects of the beauty standards of the dominant culture of the self-image of the African female adolescent. Exploring the complexity of black female experience in white America, Toni Morrison attempts to resolve the contradiction inherent in her African American identity as a black women writer. In the novel The Bluest Eye it shows the terrible consequences for black internalising the values of a white culture that both directly & indirectly rejects them. A close study of the interrelationship of race, gender, and class in the novels of Toni Morrison reveals the emergence of a revolutionary pattern. This paper attempts to find out the trial of the blacks women in search of self-identity in the novel of Toni Morrison.

Becoming and being a DJ: Black female experiences in Ireland

This article seeks to gain insights into the musical learning journeys of Black female DJs in Ireland who make up part of the African diaspora and/or Black and Irish community. The DJs’ intersectional and multiple identities are discussed with a view to uncovering how such identities are both fashioned and perceived; projected and silenced; negotiated and dictated. The article presents macro-themes of learning and identity to examine issues relating to music in the home, musical influences, learning processes, in-/non-/formal education and cross-cutting issues relating to gender and ethnicity. These issues are contextually and personally bound, yet speak to the broader complexities, cultures and politics of representation in a male-dominated field. Data are analysed from interviews, media publications and broadcasts to trace three women’s DJ trajectories. Their voices are amplified in literal and metaphorical senses to expand the limited portrayals of their experiences and practices within popular music (education) scholarship.

Transforming the Bildungsroman to Develop Consciousness About Race

Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye is unique in its position within the ​genre of the Bildungsroman. The Bildungsroman typically ​examines factors that dictate its protagonist’s psychosocial growth on their journey toward self-realization and acceptance of their place in the world. Morrison, on the contrary, demonstrates how the idealization of whiteness and the racial self-loathing it engenders makes it impossible for a young, Black, female protagonist, like Pecola, to exercise narrative authority or progress toward self-realization and social acceptance. My paper contrasts a "classic" Bildungsroman featuring a young, white, male protagonist, such as James Joyce's "Araby", with the split narrative voice and reversed narrative progression in ​The Bluest Eye. Morrison recounts Pecola's story from the perspective of her friend, Claudia, rather than as Pecola's stream of consciousness. She also challenges key plot-related elements, such as the moment of resolution. My aim is to show how Morrison does not merely substitute a young, white, male protagonist with a young, Black, female protagonist to produce a realistic account of Black female experience. Instead, she manipulates the generic conventions of the Bildungsroman to show how both the world and the narratives that tell stories about the world fail Pecola, and, by extension, Claudia. How we tell stories matters as much as whose stories we tell. The world Morrison presents through her alteration of the Bildungsroman forces the reader to question the static ideals in the world around them and reflect on the role of race in the development of agency over one’s own story.

The sisters of sport psychology: An examination of the professional black female experience

Historically, the experiences of female practitioners have been overlooked within applied sport psychology literature, and thus, the field continues to be male-dominated. Despite calls for more racially diverse literature and utilization of diverse methodologies within sport psychology, studies pertaining to the female experience draw heavily from a White/Caucasian female narrative, further perpetuating the historical invisibility of women of color within the sport context. Using feminist methodology to inform the research process, the current study explored the professional experiences of women of African descent within applied sport psychology through a Black feminist lens. The results of the study demonstrate the integral influence of race and gender on one’s professional experiences in applied sport psychology, adding greater depth to the extant literature. Emergent themes included the interplay of personal and professional identity, a sense of responsibility to others and a vigilance with White colleagues. Implications and recommendations are provided, as well as directions for future research including increased representation within the larger sport and performance psychology field, a call for greater cultural awareness and humility within practice and research, and greater recognition of service as part of professional practice.

Brown, Title IX and the impact of race and sex segregation on sports participation opportunities for Black females

AbstractAlthough neither the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas decision nor Title IX of the Education Amendments Act (1972) specifically mentions sports participation, both antidiscrimination laws have changed the landscape of high school and college sports by granting Blacks and females increased access to athletic opportunities previously reserved for Whites males. Although Brown and Title IX are popular topics among research scholars, studies rarely consider the unique experiences of Black females, who unlike Black males and White females, occupy at least two subordinate social locations due to their race and gender. This article goes beyond the usual single axis of inquiry and examines the intersection of Brown and Title IX and, thus, the intersection of race and sex for Black females who inhabit a sports world dominated by Whites and males. Using existing literature to assess the implementation and effectiveness of Brown and Title IX independently before exploring their sociohistorical linkages and integrated effect on access to sports participation opportunities, the author finds that Black women and girls have been left out of the game.

Blacked Out and Whited Out: The Double Bind of Gifted Black Females who are Often a Footnote in Educational Discourse

Black females are often placed in a difficult position of facing barriers in educational, vocational, and social settings that relegate them to second-class status when compared to issues facing Black males and those facing White females. Sharing race with one and gender with the other, the lived experiences of Black females is understudied and perhaps even discounted in the increasing racial injustices facing Black males and sexism facing White females. In this article, the authors address these neglects in the context of gifted education and Advanced Placement. We attend to what has been written about gifted and/ or high-achieving Black females regarding areas that have been neglected and needs more attention to ensure that this student group is more than a footnote in educational and social justice work.

Pessimistic futurism: Survival and reproduction in Octavia Butler’s Dawn

This article examines the critical work of Octavia Butler’s speculative fiction novel Dawn, which follows Lilith Ayapo, a black American woman who is rescued by an alien species after a nuclear war destroys nearly all life on Earth. Lilith awakens 250 years later and learns that the aliens have tasked her with reviving other humans and repopulating the planet. In reframing Reagan-era debates about security and survival, Butler captured the spirit of ‘pessimistic futurism’, a unique way of thinking and writing black female sexuality, reproduction and survival. Suturing concepts central to both Afro-pessimism and Afrofuturism, pessimistic futurism carefully considers how black female subjectivity and labour create the coming world. By linking human survival to Lilith’s own ability to adapt to the new and dangerous world, Butler offers scholars of black studies a vital interpretive framework for thinking about the points of contact between pessimism and futurism. Specifically, Butler presents a form of futurism brought back to Earth, grounded in the sensibility of the black female experience.

Medical Students Rate Black Female Peers as Less Socially Connected

BackgroundSocial and cultural outcomes are critically important in medical education. A large medical school located in the United States implemented a learning community model intended to promote social and cultural growth among its medical students. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the degree to which medical students from the same peer cohort were socially connected across racial and sex groups. MethodsBecause most assessments involving social and cultural outcomes involve self-reported data of a personal nature, the possibility of social desirability bias is increased. To mitigate this threat, this study utilized a novel method for measuring medical students social connectedness by having peers in one's advisory college provide social connectedness ratings about one another. ResultsWhile surface level results did not reveal any significant differences, a closer inspection of data revealed Black females were less socially connected with medical student peers from their cohort than other peer groups. DiscussionPossible explanations for this are discussed. Future research should continue to investigate the experiences of Black females in medical schools so as to better understand the needs of this important and valuable subpopulation of students.

Fabulachia: urban, black female experiences and higher education in Appalachia

This article draws on focus group conversations with black female college students attending a small, liberal arts institution in Kentucky. Based primarily on group interviews and discussions, as well as observations and analysis – a theoretical domain (referred to throughout the article as ‘Fabulachia’) emerged as a site-specific outcome of events and ideas regarding race, gender and identity experienced by the research participants. Specifically, ‘Fabulachia’ functions as a theoretical hybrid space in which urban (e.g. ‘ghetto fabulous’) black college student-voices find a sense of empowerment as they construct their own narratives of leaving ‘the hood’ to attend college in rural Appalachia. This project revises and updates previous research on race and rural identity/ies in order to situate the urban black female experience into an Appalachian context. Drawing on hip hop feminism and urban education based theoretical paradigms, the Fabulachia study seeks to give voice to black females in contemporary Appalachia, with attention to their self-proclaimed ‘ghetto fabulous’ identities honed in and through their urban upbringings. The unique experiences of (Fabulachian) black females are an important and largely absent part of larger conversations of the growing body of Urban education research that seeks to situate the black student/black youth and schooling experience in the US. In the Fabulachia study, a group of black female students shared personal narratives (part-oral history and part direct response) to prompts and queries about the role of hip hop culture, race and gender identity in their lives. They also discussed and debated what it means to be a black female in contemporary (often racist) Appalachia, and about how their families and urban surroundings influenced their processes of being and becoming in the context of higher educational achievement.

Oshun Daughters: The Search for Womanhood in the Americas by Vanessa K. Valdés (review)

Reviewed by: Oshun Daughters: The Search for Womanhood in the Americas by Vanessa K. Valdés Dawn Duke Valdés, Vanessa K. Oshun Daughters: The Search for Womanhood in the Americas. Albany: SUNY P, 2014. Pp. 209. ISBN 978-1-43845-043-8. Oshun’s Daughters by Vanessa Valdés argues that African-based religious manifestations that feature contemporary forms of womanhood, when incorporated into literature from Brazil, Cuba, and the United States, have allowed for the development of differential configurations of the female figure. This is not a new line of thought and there is already considerable published research on the topic of African-based spirituality in literary imagery, especially in Afro-Latin American writings. As Valdés’s bibliography indicates, DeCosta Willis, Feracho, Ferreira-Pinto, Oliveira, Duke, Chancy, Marting, among others, have studies on the employment of Yoruba deities as a literary device. Valdés’s contribution is to unite major works by a diverse group of women writers in English, Portuguese, and Spanish, that clearly develop this pattern in relation to their configuration of the female experience. What is also worthy is that these are not only Afro-Latin American writers, rather, reflective of the major literary genres associated with women’s writings in the Americas today: African American, Afro-Hispanic, Latino, Cuban, Afro-Brazilian, and so on. The writers are Audre Lorde, Sandra María Esteves, Ntozake Shange, Cristina García, Loida Maritza Pérez, Nancy Morejón, Daína Chaviano, Helena Parente Cunha, Sônia Fátima da Conceição, and Conceição Evaristo. This study is broadening the scope and reach of a literary phenomenon previously associated with black literature. Valdés proposes that the literary engagement of African-originated belief allows for a shifting away from the classic Western models of virgin, asexual wife or mother, and whore, replacing them with less rigid depictions such as a caring mother who is not self-sacrificing, or a less categorical warrior woman. Paradigms of her argumentation include Yoruba spiritual traditions, gender in Africa and the Americas, identity studies in the diaspora, and comparative ideas on the Yoruba and the Catholic belief structures. The Yoruba deity, Oshun, has multiple designs and joins or replaces Eve, the Virgin Mary, and Mary Magdalene in a discussion that focuses on the complex literary configurations of the female characters. Latino, Afro-Latin American, Latin American, and North American works of both poetry and prose appear together, a somewhat ambitious project, perhaps problematic given the structural differentiations of these two genres. Is the intention to propose that they share a common project of literary transformation? Chapter 1 presents Puerto Rican American writer Sandra María Esteves, West Indian American writer Ntozake Shange, and African American Audre Lorde and argues that Oshun as a literary presence extends beyond the black female experience in the United States. Writers employ a broad and expansive approach that starts in Africa as place of origin and then moves into the Americas as place of incorporation. Spiritual entities function as devices that unify the major identity markers of race, gender, and sexuality. In Lorde’s poetry, deity and spirituality are weapons against violence, racism, sexism, homophobia, and patriarchalism. Yemanja, Oshun, Oya, and Eshu imagery mirror black womanhood, motherhood, and the Afro-Caribbean and African-American experience. They help to transcend difficulty and design a black female discourse, a deliberate intention underlying Lorde’s writing as a black Lesbian warrior poet. Esteves’s [End Page 838] poetry fits into the genre of Nuyorican writing and originates in the Puerto Rican trauma of being dwellers in an in-between space, as colonial islanders and marginalized mainland immigrants. Esteves constructs a spirit of survival, envisions this diasporic experience optimistically, for evolution and improvement are inevitable. In her anthology Yerba buena (1980), the Yoruba deity is a marker of origins, ancestrality, nature, and traditions that appear through the female body as healing or magic. Shange’s Sassafrass, Cypress and Indigo (1982) presents characters who take part in rituals and who view these as valuable because they originate in Africa and are both ancestral and potentially magical. Such rituals provide access to the spiritual world, allow relatives to pay homage to the...

The “Black Girl Turn” in Research on Gender, Race, and Science Education: Toward Exploring and Understanding the Early Experiences of Black Females in Science, a Literature Review

For the past 40 years, research studies have largely focused on sex equity issues. However, within the last few years, gender equity issues have become a hotly debated area of research. One may contend that sex is biologically determined maleness and femaleness; whereas, gender is influenced by cultural, social, and historical factors. Although, there has been much emphasis on the unfair treatment or exclusion of girls from science, the focus was mainly on White, middle class girls with little focus placed on Black girls. Thus, this has fueled the debate for the promotion of the “Black Girl Turn” in research on gender, race, and science education, as over the centuries Blacks and girls have been denied their turn in science due to cultural and historical–biological reasons. This literature review concludes with a call for more student-based inquiry approaches that can explore and seek to understand Black females’ experiences in science.

Commentary: A Collective Appetite: Reception and the White Gaze from Shange to Sapphire

While the film Precious , the Hollywood adaptation of Sapphire’s novel Push, has garnered awards and praise by the predominantly white mainstream press and award-granting organizations, it has also received much criticism for its treatment of black life, particularly its representation of black men. Much of this criticism seems to echo the reception of Ntozake Shange’s choreopoem, for colored girls who have considered suicide when the rainbow is enuf, which was produced as a successful Broadway play in 1975, drawing a predominantly white middle-class audience and a resounding critical backlash from black male critics. Examining the reception of these two works written by black women, works separated by over three decades, two seemingly opposing questions arise: Do these works demonstrate how cultural gatekeepers, including the media, embrace and manipulate certain representations of race, reinforcing stereotypes and working to alleviate contemporary white guilt through the act of laying blame elsewhere, specifically on black men? Or are the works vital expressions of black female experience, voicing the lives and concerns of black women and girls, voices that have been left out of both dominant white culture and African American culture? A special 1979 issue of The Black Scholar focused on these polarized perspectives in response to the reception of Shange’s work, and the largely gendered opposition found there seems to be at play once again in response to Precious. However, to examine the reception of these works solely in terms of issues of gender is shortsighted. Both Sapphire’s novel and Shange’s choreopoem were adapted and produced in venues through which they reached broader (read whiter) audiences. Their works are partly judged in the context of a lack of representation of writers of color. Thus, these texts-turned-performance are experienced as representative texts

Living the Literature

This article examines how gender construction and the literacy experiences of Black adolescent females can be shaped and motivated by their interaction with specific multicultural texts. This discussion further explores how current theories of race, identity and gender construction, and literacy learning in English language arts classrooms inform and provide additional clarity to the results of a content analysis study of four multicultural contemporary adolescent novels. As such, this discussion offers plausible insight for how a broader view of literacy learning theory may apply when discussing the literacy experiences of Black female adolescents and other marginalized readers.

Urban Bush Women: Finding Shelter in the Utopian Ensemble

Urban Bush Women are an African-American women's dance ensemble that have repeatedly sought the utopian ensemble — a collective that forms alliances through community rather than through the notion of the hero — in their performance of African diaspora experiences. The Urban Bush Women collectively create an idealized space, realized in their dances by physical contact between the performers' bodies. The company, founded by lawole Willa Jo Zollar, began presenting work in 1984 and has continued to develop an extensive and evocative dance repertory. At times overtly political, the dances embody the black female experience in a way that "invites critical interpretive readings largely because of the way in which aesthetic and political agendas are intertwined". While recent articles about the Urban Bush Women discuss the political nuances of their work, the repeated use of the collective ensemble is a unique feature of the company's dance style that merits further discussion.

Re-thinking a black feminist standpoint

Black feminists in Britain and the USA have long argued that there exists a black feminist standpoint based on theoretical understanding of black women's everyday experiences. This article draws connections between black feminist standpoint theory and the widening availability of black women's writings within literature and popular culture to investigate the issue of what experiences get taken up and come to define the black female experience. Through doing so, questions are raised about the 'triumph of experience' and the underlying assumptions of authenticity and authority that are so central to academic accounts and popular narratives of the black female experience. In the analysis, tension and discontinuity emerge between academic definitions of experience and the way that black women define experience within their everyday social worlds. The essay draws on and uses empirical research within specific localized communities to critically explore these issues.

Gender-blind racism in the experience of schooling and identity formation

Much of the research dealing with education and race has concentrated on the experiences of black males. Research now needs to address the issue of how schools affect the production of black femininities. The aim is to explore how both black males and females adapt to schooling, and school exclusion in particular. Previous theoretical models often situate black women within the stereotype of the ‘superwoman’ and negate the experiences of black females in families that are not female-headed. Previous research also suggests that much of the black male pupil response to schooling is based on the way in which teachers equate disaffection with black masculinity. The study draws on research in schools with pupils aged from 13 to 15 years when observed and interviewed. Many pupils responded to schooling in a way that cut across race and gender. Pupils often attempted to subvert the traditional relationship of teacher as powerful and pupil as powerless, reacting to this relationship through their own racial and gendered backgrounds. It is argued that teachers often speak of black pupils in homogeneous ways when in fact gendered differences exist. The issue of how schools construct blackness is addressed and it is argued that too often this is simply to equate race with masculinity.