Experiences Of Black Women Research Articles

Black Women and State-Sanctioned Violence: A History of Victimization and Exclusion

Black women and girls continue to battle the intersecting oppressions of race, gender, and justice while living in a society that routinely derogates them and while being victimized by a criminal justice system that was never designed to protect them. This is most evident in their experiences as victims of police violence, including being beaten, raped, or shot to death. This state-sanctioned violence continues decades after the legal end of slavery, and it characterizes the sustained impact race and gender have on black women's experiences with the criminal justice system. This article examines the violence black women have historically endured as subjects of terror or objects for white men, and how this violence is perpetuated in the same way today through interactions with police. I argue that the contemporary state-sanctioned violence black women and girls experience is a manifestation of their continued victimization, dehumanization, and social exclusion, and is a function of the systemic racism that permeates the American criminal injustice system.

Intersectionality research in counseling psychology.

This article introduces the special section on intersectionality research in counseling psychology. Across the 4 manuscripts that constitute this special section, a clear theme emerges: a need to return to the roots and politics of intersectionality. Importantly, the 2 empirical articles in this special section (Jerald, Cole, Ward, & Avery, 2017; Lewis, Williams, Peppers, & Gadson, 2017) are studies of Black women's experiences: a return, so to speak, to the subject positions and social locations from which intersectionality emanates. Shin et al. (2017) explore why this focus on Black feminist thought and social justice is so important by highlighting the persistent weaknesses in how much research published in leading counseling psychology journals has tended to use intersectionality as a way to talk about multiple identities, rather than as a framework for critiquing systemic, intersecting forms of oppression and privilege. Shin and colleagues also point to the possibilities intersectionality affords us when scholars realize the transformative potential of this critical framework. Answers to this call for transformative practices are foregrounded in Moradi and Grzanka's (2017) contribution, which surveys the interdisciplinary literature on intersectionality and presents a series of guidelines for using intersectionality responsibly. We close with a discussion of issues concerning the applications of intersectionality to counseling psychology research that spans beyond the contributions of each manuscript in this special section. (PsycINFO Database Record

Lift Every Voice: Exploring the Stressors and Coping Mechanisms of Black College Women Attending Predominantly White Institutions

In the past 40 years, there has been a significant increase in Black students’ enrollment at predominantly White institutions (PWIs). Meanwhile, research shows that Black students often experience difficulty with transitioning and adjusting to PWIs. Previous research has effectively documented the challenges facing a significant number of Black students at PWIs; however, less is known about the experiences of Black women in particular. This study examined stress from racial tension experienced among 129 Black undergraduate women at PWIs in the Northeast region of the United States, as well as the potential moderating factors of the theorized Strong Black Woman concept and the Africultural coping theory. Hierarchical regression analyses indicated a significant positive association between racial tension experienced on campus and stress. Results also indicated that only Africultural coping was a significant moderator of this relationship, such that there was a weaker relationship between racial tension and stress among the participants who engaged more in Africultural coping. Policy implications for improving the campus racial climate and the academic experiences of Black college women at PWIs are discussed.

“Look at the Whole Me”: A Mixed-Methods Examination of Black Infant Mortality in the US through Women’s Lived Experiences and Community Context

In the US, the non-Hispanic Black infant mortality rate exceeds the rate among non-Hispanic Whites by more than two-fold. To explore factors underlying this persistent disparity, we employed a mixed methods approach with concurrent quantitative and qualitative data collection and analysis. Eighteen women participated in interviews about their experience of infant loss. Several common themes emerged across interviews, grouped by domain: individual experiences (trauma, grieving and counseling; criminalization); negative interactions with healthcare providers and the healthcare system; and broader contextual factors. Concurrently, we estimated the Black infant mortality rate (deaths per 1000 live births) using linked live birth-infant death records from 2010 to 2013 in every metropolitan statistical area in the US. Poisson regression examined how contextual indicators of population health, socioeconomic conditions of the Black population, and features of the communities in which they live were associated with Black infant mortality and inequity in Black–White infant mortality rates across 100 metropolitan statistical areas with the highest Black infant mortality rates. We used principal components analysis to create a Birth Equity Index in order to examine the collective impact of contextual indicators on Black infant mortality and racial inequity in mortality rates. The association between the Index and Black infant mortality was stronger than any single indicator alone: in metropolitan areas with the worst social, economic, and environmental conditions, Black infant mortality rates were on average 1.24 times higher than rates in areas where conditions were better (95% CI = 1.16, 1.32). The experiences of Black women in their homes, neighborhoods, and health care centers and the contexts in which they live may individually and collectively contribute to persistent racial inequity in infant mortality.

Finding a Voice in Predominantly White Institutions: A Longitudinal Study of Black Women Faculty Members’ Journeys toward Tenure

Background/Context Amidst scholarship that underscores the importance of Black women faculty in higher education, Black women are often not being retained in faculty positions at research universities. There is a gap in the research relative to how Black women experience the tenure process at predominantly White institutions, and this may have important implications for both recruitment and retention of Black women faculty. Purpose This analysis attempts to fill a gap in the literature on the recruitment and retention of faculty of color by asking: What are the experiences of Black women faculty on the tenure track at PWIs who are the only woman of color faculty member in their academic program? Drawing on data from qualitative longitudinal research with Black women faculty who were on the tenure track at PWIs, the primary purpose of this analysis was to understand four Black women's longitudinal reflections on their journey toward tenure at PWIs where they are “othered” by gender and race. Setting and Participants This project was part of a larger study of 22 women faculty who were on tenure-lines in two predominantly White research universities. This study focused on four Black women from this larger study. Research Design This study employed a qualitative longitudinal research design. Data Collection and Analysis: As part of the qualitative longitudinal research design, interviews were conducted each year for five years with each participant. Findings The findings of this analysis with Black women faculty on the tenure-line suggests that despite being the only person of color in their academic programs, they found ways to use their voice in and outside the academy. Finding and using their voices in the academy became a way to push back and resist some of the isolation and racism that the women experienced in the academy, and often the women did so in collectivist spaces with other Black women. Conclusions/Recommendations These findings of this study call into question predominantly White and male spaces in academia and ways that these spaces should be challenged to change. The Black women in this study coped by creating collectivist spaces and finding/ using their voices. Rather than focusing on how to encourage Black women to cope and survive in academia, there should be more emphasis on how to change institutional and departmental structures to make these spaces more inclusive and collectivist.

How Far Have We Really Come? Black Women Faculty and Graduate Students' Experiences in Higher Education

This paper presents a critical overview of the sociological research on Black women's experiences as graduate students and faculty in higher education, with a focus on research since 1995. In interaction with the social inequalities of race and class, how are Black women faculty and graduate student’s experiences with sexism, racism, and classism reproduced within the institution of higher education? What kinds of policies have been implemented to address these problems? What changes, if any, have there been in the experiences of black women faculty and graduate students over time? How do Black women scholars fare in relation to their white and male counterparts in higher education? What suggestions do findings provide toward more equitable work experiences for Black women faculty and graduate students in higher education?

Not Like the Other Black Girls: How Class and Family Structure Impact Young Black Women’s Experiences of Competition and Alienation

For much of the tewntieth century the dominant image of black women in the United States has been that of the low-income single mother. Over the past several years, however, there has been significant scholarly interest in the experiences of middle class black women in America and the double burden of sexism and racism they face. While some of this research has addressed their familial experiences, the complexity of racialized family structure in the black middle class and its impact on women is often overlooked. Moreover, previous studies of the black middle class have typically assumed a backdrop of monoracial family structure. This assumption overlooks biracial and transracial families, however, who also form a core constituency of the black middle class. This paper explores the experiences of college aged middle class black women as they negotiate race, class, and gender against the backdrop of varying racialized family structures. Data is drawn from 25 in depth interviews with young middle class black women between the ages of 18 and 25 who were raised in families with two black parents (monoracial), one white and one black parent (biracial), and two white parents (transracial). Findings suggest that young middle class black women experience particularly tense relationships with poorer black women leaving them feeling “different” and isolated. Transracial adoptees and young biracial women faced unique challenges, however, whereby their connections to the white community served to further isolate them from other young black women.

Black Women’s and Girls’ Persistence in the P–20 Mathematics Pipeline: Two Decades of Children, Youth, and Adult Education Research

Like other women and girls of color in the U.S. education system, Black1 women and girls negotiate and integrate multiple marginalized identities in mathematics. As such, this integrative review used critical race theory (CRT) and Black feminism as interpretive frames to explore factors that contribute to Black women’s and girls’ persistence in the mathematics pipeline and the role these factors play in shaping their academic outcomes. A synthesis of 62 research studies reveals that structural disruptions, community influences, and resilience strategies significantly influence Black women’s and girls’ persistence in mathematics, and that combined, these factors can culminate into a more robust mathematics identity for Black women and girls. A robust mathematics identity, in turn, is an aspect of self-actualization that is needed for persistence, engagement, and sustained success in the pursuit of a mathematics doctoral degree. New questions, paradigms, and ways of examining the experiences of Black women and girls in mathematics to advance further knowledge that will inform policy are identified and discussed as a future research agenda.

No Longer Invisible: Understanding the Psychosocial Impact of Skin Color Stratification in the Lives of African American Women

This article examines how skin color stratification, termed "colorism," affects the psychological well-being of African American women. Previous research has shown that the experience of colorism is pervasive within the black community and that black women have been culturally or personally affected by intraracial discrimination. This article describes a qualitative study that used focus groups to investigate the experiences of black women that were categorized according to their self-ascribed skin tone group. The findings indicated that women of different hues have distinctive experiences based on their skin tone, and that these experiences influence how they felt about themselves and interact with others. The article concludes with a discussion of practice, research, and policy implications.

‘Without community, there is no liberation’: on #BlackGirlMagic and the rise of Black woman-centred collectives in South Africa

abstractThere is increasing global desire by and from black women to connect with other black women for identification, promotion of wellbeing, protection and love demonstrated by the hashtag movement: #BlackGirlMagic. In South Africa this movement has manifested through the rise of black woman-centred collectives who bring newfound power and urgency to contemporary black feminisms. These collectives are crafting unapologetic spaces centred on the lives and lived experience of black women; part of this experience is encouraging radical self-love and care as a community-building exercise.Self-love and the enrichment of other black women has become an important part of the contemporary revolutionary imagination; thus this article adopts Nancy Fraser’s strategy of seeing ‘identity politics’ as a politics of recognition and justice. Seeing identity politics as a politics of recognition and justice becomes a helpful way of rethinking democratic politics in a socially unequal society. Already in the late 1960s, emerging from the Black Consciousness Movement, Steve Biko defined Black Consciousness as “an inward-looking process” that rejects whiteness and seeks to instil in the black community self-determination and pride. Using the hashtag movement #BlackGirlMagic and collectives like For Black Girls Only, the iQhiya collective and the Feminist Stokvel, this article asks how recognition and identification can promote justice and self-determination. Justice here is understood in the way Fraser unpacks social justice, as requiring both recognition and redistribution. The article also illuminates how these black woman collectives operate in conversation with Audre Lorde, whose early writings on black radical thought and black women organising work as a kind of antecedent to what these burgeoning collectives are doing. In a world that seeks to devalue the myriad contributions of black women, this article is necessary documentation and testimony of the self-affirming and revolutionary work that young black women are doing for and by themselves in their own spaces, the world over. I argue that the deliberate act of adopting ‘a politics of recognition’ – where race, class and gender intersect – is a necessary step towards justice.

Neo-S(k)in Trade: White Skin, Black Bodies in Bernardine Evaristo's Blonde Roots

Neo-S(k)in TradeWhite Skin, Black Bodies in Bernardine Evaristo's Blonde Roots Sika A. Dagbovie-Mullins (bio) How would they like us to make slaves of and hold them in cruel slavery, and murder them as they do us? —David Walker White myth making around the black female body is inextricably linked to the larger African diaspora, that space of rupture, dispersion, and displacement. The presence of white hegemony, the black female body as property, the pervasive phenomenon of sexual abuse, and the experience of trauma constitute significant motifs … that are indicative of the reality of black diasporic women's existential experiences. —George Yancy Responding to the question, "What sparked Blonde Roots?" Bernardine Evaristo explains, "I wracked my brains about how I could write about [the transatlantic slave trade] in a way that enabled people to see it afresh."1 The British novel combines current and historic realities; there are slave ships and minstrel shows but also subways ("Tube trains") and self-help books.2 The blending of old and new urges readers to consider how modern slavery exists and operates in a contemporary context, particularly the sociocultural hierarchies and economic infrastructures that support such oppressive systems. [End Page 1] Similar to the 1995 American film White Man's Burden, Blonde Roots interchanges the roles of blacks and whites in society, imagining a world where Europe (Europa) is the "Gray Continent" whose natives must work as slaves for the black oppressor in Aphrika, the UK of Great Ambossa, and the West Japanese Islands (i.e., Caribbean islands).3 In Evaristo's novel, the white female body occupies the position of the deviant, aberrant Other, a "role" historically held by blacks. Protagonist Doris Scagglethorpe (slave name Omorenomwara) and her fellow female slaves suffer at the hands of ruthless slave catchers, violent and abusive Ambossan slave masters, and cruel and constantly suspicious Ambossan mistresses. In Blonde Roots, everything is doubled; white is also black, the past is also the present, what is imagined is also real. The various doublings in the narrative, though primarily focused on the story of white Doris, serve to represent and underscore the complexities and contradictions of black invisibility, visibility, and hypervisibility, particularly as it relates to black women who "are likely the most socially invisible in societies where poverty, blackness, and women historically mark the depths of powerlessness." David Theo Goldberg writes, "Constitutive or reflective of strategic relations, visibility and invisibility each can serve contextually as weapons, as a defensive or offensive strategy, as a mode of self-determination or denial of it."4 Evaristo uses Doris's textual visibility or presence (in lieu of a black protagonist) as a narrative strategy to retell black women's "unspeakable" slave experiences. Her whiteness also reminds readers of the power of white oppression with regards to its strategic efforts to deny or refuse to see black subjectivity. Other doublings serve a similar purpose in the novel: they remind us of an ugly past while exposing and denouncing contemporary global problems such as sex trafficking and modern-day slavery—issues that remain concealed from or ignored by the public eye. My title signifies on Frantz Fanon's Black Skin, White Masks (1952) whose title speaks to Blonde Roots's racial inversions; Doris's supposed inferiority is due to her being a "Caucasoi," a race of people who suffer from "infantalism, aimlessness, laziness, cowardice, poor coordination, [and] moral degradation."5 In his pro-slavery pamphlet, The Flame: Reflections, Thoughts, Experiences & Sentiments Candid & Free on the True Nature of the Slave Trade Remarks on the Character & Customs of the Europanes & An Account (Modest & Truthful) of my Progression from Inauspicous Origins to the Highest Echelons of Civilized Society, Chief Kaga Konata Katamba I notes that "[b]eating the hide of a Caucasoi is more akin to beating the hide of a camel to make it go faster," a statement that equates "whyte" skin with animalistic traits historically assigned to black corporeality.6 Thus Doris's whyte skin barely masks her symbolic black body. Chela Sandoval writes that Fanon's metaphoric title "calls up, but also undoes," the very racial binary opposition that the metaphor also depends on in order...

REPOSITIONING RACE, GENDER, AND ROLE IDENTITY FORMATION FOR BLACK WOMEN IN ENGINEERING

Identity theory has been leveraged to explore interest in STEM fields in the K-12 space with particular focus on race or gender. This position paper recommends expanding this use of identity theory to explore identity at the intersection of race, gender, and role to better understand the experiences of Black women in engineering. This piece provides a foundational review of identity theory and how it has been operationalized in science and engineering to provide insight into career pathways, continued engagement, and success of underrepresented populations in these fields. Broadening the current use of identity theory to reexamine engineering experiences through the lens of a Black woman's perspective could yield new conclusions with implications for engineering diversity.

From Slavery to Jane Crow to Say Her Name: An Intersectional Examination of Black Women and Punishment

Abstract “From Slavery to Jane Crow to Say Her Name” examines the ongoing social movement in the United States by Black women activists and intellectuals from as early as the nineteenth century to present day contemporary movements and campaigns such as Say Her Name, which began in 2015, which explores the the lives and experiences of Black women who have been victims of State violence. This discussion has been sweeping across the nation in an effort to address the plight of Black women who continue to lack social and legal protection in the criminal legal system (specifically regarding the punishment of Black women). The article highlights both legal and extrajudicial punishment of Black women, from the nineteenth century, directly examining state executions and the lack of legal protection, as evidenced by the courts response to resistance as an act of self-defense, demonstrating how Black enslaved women were punished in a way that illustrated a lack of validation of their womanhood, while concluding with an examination of violence against Black women, with scant attention and understanding of their experiences with police brutality An examination of a collection of ideas and speeches from nineteenth century Black intellectual activists Anna Julia Cooper, Fannie Barrier Williams, and Victoria Earle Matthews explores the ways in which these women used writing and intellectual activism to galvanize social movements for the Black community and Black women in particular. At the core of this discussion is an intense look at the relationship between Black women’s activism against social and legal injustices and the disparaging treatment of Black women within the criminal legal system.

“Taking Care of Ourselves”: The Experiences of Black Women Approaching and Encouraging Male Partners to Test for HIV

Sixty percent of young adults living with HIV in the United States are unaware of their status despite recommendations to screen everyone. Effective approaches to encourage partner testing may increase status awareness. The purpose of our study was to understand young Black women's experiences when encouraging a partner to test for HIV, preferred approaches, and whether interpersonal context influenced the approach. Black women (n=26) participated in the study in Boston-area focus groups (n=6). Discussions ranged from difficult and stressful to positive and empowering. A variety of approaches (expressing caring, seeking understanding, leveraging the relationship, ultimatums, subtlety) were described in varied interpersonal contexts. Testing and sharing results fostered trust and relationship growth. If a partner was resistant, some ended relationships while others tested themselves and interpreted their results as their partners' status. Our findings could encourage HIV prevention initiatives to consider varied interpersonal contexts and enhance partner testing.

“Very simple. I just don't lie”: The role of honesty in Black lesbian K-12 teachers' experiences in the U.S. Southeast

ABSTRACTI conducted semi-structured interviews with eight self-identified Black lesbian classroom teachers. Seven participants taught in three districts in the same large metropolitan area in the U.S. Southeast; one participant taught in a smaller city in a bordering state. In response to the vague prompt to describe the intersections between their sexuality and their schooling experiences as a teacher, every participant spoke explicitly about her unwillingness to lie about her sexuality if asked. In this article, I argue that honesty is a critical component of Black women's experiences, the necessity of which can be tied to womanism.

Montré Aza Missouri, Black Magic Woman and Narrative Film: Race, Sex, and Afro-Religiosity

Reviewed by: Black Magic Woman and Narrative Film: Race, Sex, and Afro-Religiosity by Montré Aza Missouri Maria Abegunde Montré Aza Missouri, Black Magic Woman and Narrative Film: Race, Sex, and Afro-Religiosity Washington, DC: Howard University Press, 2015 Montré Aza Missouri’s Black Magic Woman and Narrative Film: Race, Sex, and Afro-Religiosity asks readers “to consider how race, sex, and religion [intersect] in constructing a cultural identity for African Diasporas in the United States” (1), with specific attention to the cinematic transformation of the Tragic Mulatto into the Black Magic Woman. Missouri traces this journey through six chapters that deconstruct Daughters of the Dust (dir. Julie Dash, 1991), Eve’s Bayou (dir. Kasi Lemmons, 1997), Sankofa (dir. Haile Gerima, 1993), I Like It Like That (dir. Darnell Martin, 1994), and The Princess and the Frog (dir. Ron Clements and John Musker, 2009), respectively, based on African-based religious images and practices that are embedded in the films and the sociopolitical and cultural issues that shape the black female characters. While each chapter presents a brief historiography of black films and the ways in which Hollywood has consistently made black women invisible, hypervisible, or grotesque, the real strength of Black Magic Woman is its Afro-religious reading of the five films: Missouri decodes the multilayered meanings of the Yoruba pantheon to demonstrate how knowledge of these codes, embedded by directors and manifested through characters, allows audiences to recognize the transformation of the Tragic Mulatto from her liminal position in history to the Black Magic Woman who is grounded in her African heritage. In addition, Missouri’s integration of a womanist theoretical framework demands that readers and viewers adopt a “womanist gaze,” that is, [End Page 247] rewatch and reevaluate films with which they are familiar from the historical, cultural, lived, and spiritual experiences of black women (48). Chapter 1 introduces Missouri’s theoretical framework and her argument that the qualities of a womanist film include a focus on “spirituality, particularly Afro-religiosity, as it informs the narrative, characterization and/or aesthetic” (29). When these qualities are present, she suggests, the womanist film makes the Black Magic Woman central to the narrative and reveals her power through the female orisas; both are “female warrior[s] battling social injustices and fostering social change” (3). The exploration of the films in chapters 2 through 6 evolve from Missouri’s chapter 2 analysis of why and how Daughters of the Dust is the “quintessential womanist film” (50): twenty-five years after its initial release, it remains one of the few films in which the power of àjé, the Yoruba collective feminine energy, is visible in all aspects of the narrative. In addition, Missouri argues that the egungun/ancestors, orisas (e.g., Osun and Yemanja), aiye/earth, and òkun/sea manifest through each character as the women resist succumbing to grief and trauma by claiming their diverse heritage and loving the “grotesque” aspects of themselves. It is this resistance that allows the female characters to be a community of Black Magic Women who, even as some embrace Christianity, are capable of healing their wounded bodies, psyches, and spirits. Although the theme of black women as spiritual healers is central to Eve’s Bayou, in chapter 3 Missouri argues that “murky mysticism” under-cuts this element and that the film utilizes stereotypes of black women, femininity, and the black middle class to progress its narrative (81). In contrast to Daughters of the Dust, whose characters use the àjé, egungun, and orisas to make their wounds visible and to confront their histories, the characters in Eve’s Bayou, according to Missouri, are “motivated by fear of loss” and use voodoo (instead of practicing Vodou) to seek revenge without imagining an alternative community (91). Similarly, in chapter 4 Missouri argues that Sankofa’s Black Nationalist approach leaves little room for a complex rendering of black women and, like Eve’s Bayou, frames its narrative through stereotypes. Furthermore, despite the film’s integration of egungun and orisas, Missouri points out that those manifestations are limited and are accompanied by the continued sacrifice and eventual death of the protagonist, Mona/Shola. True to Missouri’s objective to explore the...

‘I like the way you move’: Theorizing fat, black and sexy

Moving past conceptualizations of ‘mammy,’ this article discusses fat black female sexuality through experiences of black women in the plus size fashion world. I posit that these women, their clothing, and their bodies’ movement underneath their clothing, subvert previous notions of fatness, blackness and sexuality. By mapping a black feminist lens onto sexual script theory, I analyze in-depth interviews with plus size models, bloggers and designers to show that fat black women and their utilization of clothing both embody and reject mammy, regard sexuality as public and private enterprises of self-reclamation, and subscribe to and complicate cultural norms of fat black (a)sexuality.

Feminisms from the Perspective of Afro-Brazilian Women

Abstract This article was written on the basis of interviews with 22 Afro-Brazilian activist women. It uses research on their trajectories to show how, as political subjects, they have used inequalities based on class, race, gender, and sexuality as instruments for the construction of an identity as activists in Black women's movements and for building the movement as a place for protagonism and for experiences that successfully challenge the powers that be. Furthermore, the article explores Brazilian feminist discourse, as it is recreated through the specific demands of Black women. The concept of feminism was first appropriated on Brazilian soil by educated white middle-class women who, in the process, built a particular history in which poor and Black women found little room to express their needs. Black women have been developing a critique of this appropriation since the initial debates on this issue began in the 1970s and 1980s. They have pointed to the inadequacy of a certain feminism that is based on European and U.S. theories and which starts from the experiences of white women to interpret those of Black women, thereby neglecting the determinants of class and race. On the other hand, the elements that are mobilized to provide a basis for the critique of white feminism make it hard for Black women activists to work more closely with white feminists in a unified movement. Nonetheless, the premises of a conception that promotes the emancipation of women are shared, appropriated, and reworked in order to understand Black women's reality. Thus, Brazilian Black women have built their political autonomy—that is, their ability to read and interpret reality—coming up with their own version of feminist thought based on the concrete and historical experiences of Black women, as they run counter to the established order and are nourished by a Black African cosmovision or point of view, constitutive of Afro-Brazilian civilizational values. The latter elements form the basis for their thought, supplying thematic content and an epistemological perspective that promote a politics for decolonizing knowledge. This signifies methodological detachment from dominant perspectives, enabling them to examine history from the point of view of Afro-Brazilian women, who have historically been excluded from what has been referred to as “hegemonic knowledge.”

Mechanized Margin to Digitized Center: Black Feminism's Contributions to Combatting Erasure within the Digital Humanities

Computational analysis and digital humanities are far from neutral processes and sites unimpeded by the political, social and economic context in which they emerged and are utilized. As an interdisciplinary field, the digital humanities have transformed the relationship of humans to computers broadly conceived. At the same time, the methods, theories, perspectives and the concomitant digital tools developed are being criticized for reproducing the social divisions that exist in society. The effort to recover Black women's subjectivities from the digital minefield is not without its challenges, reflected in our study which searched approximately 800,000 books, newspapers, and articles in the HathiTrust and JSTOR Digital Libraries. The goal was to identify perceptions and lived experiences of Black women that emerged and the resulting knowledge that developed. The project team discovered multiple challenges related to the rescue and recovery of Black women's standpoints or group knowledge. This essay explores how even as computational analysis has embedded biases, it can be utilized to recover the experiences of Black women from within the digitized record. Thus, computational analysis and all that it encompasses not only makes visible Black women's experiences, but also expands the scope of the digital humanities.

The Divided Mind of the Black Church: Theology, Piety, and Public Witness. By Raphael G.Warnock. New York: NYU Press, 276 pages

The Divided Mind of the Black Church: Theology, Piety, and Public Witness. By Raphael G.Warnock. New York: NYU Press, 276 pages