Abstract
Through analyzing critical life stories with Black alumnae from predominantly White institutions, this article offers a narrative, in-depth approach to explore the ways in which alumnae managed and resisted expectations and stereotypes that were placed upon them by peers, faculty, and staff during college. Findings suggested that participants grappled with assumptions of who they should be as Black college women. As they resisted stereotypes and expectations, they crafted unique pathways toward asserting their authentic selves. The findings emphasize heterogeneity among Black women and the need for varied support structures in educational institutions.
In an era of I, Too, Am Harvard (Butler, 2014) and nationwide campus protests for an end to racial discrimination and underrepresentation of Black students at predominantly White institutions (PWIs) (Jaschick, 2015), campus administrators are faced with how to increase the success of Black students in higher education. For Black students, college student attrition, particularly at PWIs, is often a result of racial isolation (Zamani-Gallagher & Polite, 2013) and a lack of social support. A growing body of scholarship contends that institutionalized strategies that foster camaraderie among Black students will aid in facilitating the success (e.g., graduation) of these students (Patton, 2010). Is this the case for all Black students? What about their intersecting identities, varied backgrounds, and interests? How could a one-size-fits-all approach meet the needs of all Black students?
In higher education research, Black students are often presented as a homogenous group, assuming that they all share similar social, cultural, and economic backgrounds (Smith & Moore, 2000) and therefore need similar types of support. Programs and practices that focus on the homogeneity of Black students do not take their unique, intersectional identities (e.g., race, gender, class, among others) into consideration (Patton & Croom, 2017). Failure to acknowledge and address Black women’s intersecting identities reinforces the marginalization of both their race as well as their gender (Crenshaw, 1991; Kelly, Segoshi, Adams, & Raines, 2017). A holistic and comprehensive approach to examining Black women’s college journeys and identities is needed (Everett & Croom, 2017; Porter, 2017; Winkle-Wagner, 2009a) and would likely facilitate practitioners’ ability to offer better support that meets students where they are (Chambers & Sharpe, 2012; Luedke, 2017).
Identity politics, the coming together of individuals around a common identity, may highlight the way in which inequalities that were once seen as isolated are both social and systemic (Crenshaw, 1991). Although identity politics can bring individuals who share common identities together, they can also exacerbate the thought that Black students are all alike. For instance, within identity politics, Black women are often left out of the conversation (Crenshaw, 1991). The omission of Black women in identity politics can lead to Black women’s negative and narrow representation in the media (Donahoo, 2017; Porter, 2017), and to their underrepresentation in scholarly literature (Everett & Croom, 2017; Winkle-Wagner, 2015).
A one-dimensional picture of Black students in higher education is outdated (Winkle-Wagner, 2009a) as can be evidenced by demographic changes such as the growth of the Black middle class (Smith & Moore, 2000) and trends in neighborhood and school racial integration (Posey-Maddox, 2014). Common support systems are necessary (e.g., Black cultural centers) but may not be sufficient to increase Black women’s feelings of satisfaction with their college journeys at PWIs, nor may they be significant enough to increase graduation rates (Chambers & Sharpe, 2012). Interventions and resources that are developed and institutionalized for all Black college students may offer limited support for Black women because of the ways intersecting identities (race, class, and gender) may converge (Everett & Croom, 2017; Patton & Croom, 2017; Porter, 2017).
Scholars have noted within-group differences among Black students in higher education (Fries-Britt, 2002; Fries-Britt & Griffin, 2007; Fries-Britt & Turner, 2002; Harper & Quaye, 2007; Stewart, 2008; Zamani-Gallagher & Polite, 2013). Exploring within-group differences of Black students, and Black women in particular, is one window into understanding what support structures they may need as they negotiate the intersection of two marginalized identities, race and gender (Chambers & Sharpe, 2012; Winkle-Wagner, 2009a). Black women often face extremely high expectations about who they are and how they should represent themselves in college (Porter, 2017; Winkle-Wagner, Luedke, & McCallum, 2017). These expectations, alongside the racial hostility and gender discrimination that many Black women face on college campuses, can have deleterious effects on Black women’s health and well-being (West, Donovan, & Roemer, 2009). If research on Black women’s diverse college journeys is not conducted, it will be difficult to move beyond the 6-year graduation rate for Black women at 4-year institutions, which has been stagnant at 43% for over a decade (U.S. Department of Education, 2014).
In this study, we aimed to understand how Black women described the way that they managed expectations and assumptions that were placed upon them in college. By presenting narratives of four Black women who grappled with various expectations of what it meant to be a Black woman on a PWI campus, we are able to tease out the expectations the participants believed were imposed on them during college, and how they negotiated those expectations in ways that allowed them to find and assert their own sense of self. The findings have implications for research about Black college women and perhaps other groups of Women of Color 1 in college. The women needed time, space, and support to identify how they would manage, exceed, or disrupt the expectations that were placed on them by peers (both White students and Students of Color), faculty, administrators, or larger social norms (e.g., the media).
Literature Review
Political intersectionality asserts that Black women are positioned in a larger context of systemic oppression that leads to stereotypes and also to raced and gendered expectations for Black women (Crenshaw, 1991; McGee, 2016). Black women are framed as highly “successful” in education by many authors, almost as if they do not face challenges or need support (Griffin, Mwangi, & Patterson, 2017; Patton & Croom, 2017; Winkle-Wagner, 2015). In other cases, they are represented as overcoming challenges, which may lead institutions and practitioners to believe they do not need to provide Black women necessary support systems (Everett & Croom, 2017).
At PWIs, at all levels from students to professors, Black women are often expected to bend to the norms of race and gender in ways that sometimes encourage them to deny their voices, exhibit passiveness, or to choose between their race and gender (Croom & Patton, 2011; Everett & Croom, 2017; Fries-Britt & Kelly, 2005; Rockquemore, 2002; Winkle-Wagner, 2009a). At the highest ranks and levels, there are often significant obstacles aimed to keep Black women from progressing (Croom & Patton, 2011; O’Connor, 2002). Beyond their college experiences, Black women are often framed in stereotypical ways, in literature both on primary and secondary schooling (Gibson, 2016) and in larger society (Porter, 2017; Thomas, Witherspoon, & Speight, 2004). For example, Black women are often framed as “superwomen” in scholarship and in the media (Beauboeuf-Lafontant, 2005; Donahoo, 2017; Porter, 2017; Winkle-Wagner, 2009a; Woods-Giscombé, 2010). The superwoman myth generates an expectation that Black women must exhibit strength and selflessness, often to their own peril (West, Donovan, & Daniel, 2016). Research on the effect of the superwoman expectation on Black women suggests that it can lead to depression, negative coping strategies, and a lack of general self-care (West et al., 2016; Woods-Giscombé, 2010).
Beyond the superwoman myth for Black women, they often identify other expectations that are placed on them by peers, professors, media, and society. These expectations primarily relate to their Blackness and do not necessarily account for their womanhood. White people, as well as People of Color (including their Black peers), place stereotypical expectations on Black women (Willie, 2003; Winkle-Wagner, 2009a). Stereotypes of Black students are overwhelmingly negative (Fries-Britt & Griffin, 2007; Fries-Britt & Turner, 2001; McGee, 2016; McGee & Martin, 2011; Thomas et al., 2004). Fries-Britt and Griffin (2007) found that high-achieving Black students (both men and women) actively worked to dispel stereotypes about Black people to their peers and faculty, which created pressure for Black students to act in particular ways (also see McCoy, Luedke, & Winkle-Wagner, 2017; McCoy, Winkle-Wagner, & Luedke, 2015; McGee, 2016). The focus on dispelling stereotypes can confine how Black women define themselves. McGee and Martin’s (2011) interviews with academically successful Black engineering and mathematics students suggested that students had to constantly manage negative stereotypes about their intellectual capabilities in order to be successful in their disciplines. Black women may face particularly high pressures/expectations about who they are supposed to be on college campuses and often experience these pressures as having to live in multiple “worlds” (Hannon, Woodside, Pollard, & Roman, 2016). Black women have reported the need to signal different messages to their peers who are Black men or women, their professors, and their families (Patton & Croom, 2017; Winkle-Wagner, 2009a, 2009b).
The time Students of Color invest in disproving stereotypes could distract them from their academic pursuits (Steele, 1997), or in some cases cause them to distance themselves from their racial or ethnic identity (McGee, 2016). Scholarship argued that consistent and constant questioning of Black students’ academic abilities eroded their self-confidence over time, causing them to internalize feelings of self-doubt (Fries-Britt & Griffin, 2007; Fries-Britt & Turner, 2001, 2002). Racial stereotypes for Black women may also have a gender component to them (e.g., stereotypes of what it might mean to be a “good” woman may or may not connect with stereotypes for race; Kelly et al., 2017).
A gap remains in the literature relative to how Black women college students navigate stereotypes and how they define their identities in their own ways. There is a compelling body of research that suggests Black women are subjected to inordinately high expectations as compared with other groups and that they are influenced by identity politics, stereotypes, and the superwoman ideal (Everett & Croom, 2017; Winkle-Wagner, 2015; Woods-Giscombé, 2010). Yet there remains a need for a better understanding of the ways that Black women have identified positive notions of self. Until recently, few studies have emphasized how Black women moved beyond expectations in order to initiate positive, self-defined ways of being (but see Dortch, 2016; Gibson, 2016; Griffin et al., 2017; Haynes, Stewart, & Allen, 2016; Kelly et al., 2017; McGuire, Casanova, & Davis, 2016). Moreover, Porter (2016, 2017) presented a revised model of identity development in Black undergraduate women, centering Black women’s holistic identity development. Despite a few examples to the contrary, much of the research on Black women’s college experiences “narrows down” their journeys in ways that can be stereotypical, deficiency based and detrimental to both the scholarship on Black women and to Black women’s general educational outcomes (Winkle-Wagner, 2015).
Theoretical Framework
In order to examine Black women’s experiences at PWIs, we blended a theoretical concept, the Unchosen Me, that considers how identities can be imposed by others (peers, family, faculty, administrators) and not chosen by individuals (Winkle-Wagner, 2009a) and the theory of intersectionality (Collins, 2002; Crenshaw, 1991; Warner, 2008). The Unchosen Me theoretical concept is a way to uncover some aspects of identities that are ascribed, imposed or assumed by peers, staff, faculty, administrators, or institutions. The Unchosen Me specifies how privilege and opportunity relate to identity such that some people may perceive pressures to change their identities in particular settings while others do not necessarily identify the same type of pressure. In a book that introduced the Unchosen Me, the Black women participants named numerous instances where they altered their behavior, their choices, and their preferences in music, art, or food, and their language in PWIs (Winkle-Wagner, 2009a). In most of these narratives, the women did not believe that they had the chance to choose to make these changes to themselves. They felt intense pressure that if they did not make these changes, they would either not fit into the campus socially and/or they would not be academically or personally successful during college (e.g., making friends, fitting in on campus, finding community).
The Unchosen Me theoretical concept is useful to emphasize identity pressures and the limits of choice in defining one’s self. Individuals do have some choices to assert their identities, but there are also social structures in place that prescribe, stereotype, and constrict the range of options that are really viable. For instance, while an individual could resist identity pressures, this may come with a risk in educational settings (e.g., not doing well in classes, not being supported by faculty or peers). Although the Unchosen Me offers a way to understand impositions on identities and how identities change in social contexts like PWIs, it does not provide an emphasis on how individuals come to an authentic sense of their identities.
Complementing the identity pressures, Unchosen Me framework, intersectional approaches assert that there is overlap between various aspects of one’s identities such as race, class, gender, or sexual orientation (Crenshaw, 1991; Shields, 2008; Warner, 2008). Intersectional approaches are very closely connected to Black feminist thought (Collins, 2002) where there is an emphasis on positive and varied notions of Black womanhood. Additionally, Black feminist thinkers regularly reveal ways that existing social structures and institutions are creating inequitable opportunities and chances for Black women (Bowleg, 2002; Guy-Sheftall, 1995; Shields, 2008). The way that we apply intersectionality is with a close connection to Black feminist writers who have long described intersecting identities and oppressions (Guy-Sheftall, 1995). Because of the overlap in social structures and institutions, Black women may not be able to (or desire to) disentangle their gender and race within these institutions or interactions (see Kelly & Winkle-Wagner, 2017; Willie, 2003; Winkle-Wagner, 2009a, 2009b). Intersectional approaches help researchers view overlapping identities as a process that is shaped by social contexts rather than as an endpoint (e.g., where one is self-actualized; Warner, 2008). Intersectionality allows for a nuanced analysis of identities and ways that identities are embedded in existing social structures and categories.
The Unchosen Me facilitated ways to understand how Black women grappled with assumptions or expectations of who they should be on campus. We also used intersectionality as a way to think about how the Black women discussed ways that they dealt with overlaps in their identities and how they crafted an authentic sense of self. The blended theoretical framework provided a way to examine how existing social structures and inequalities (e.g., racial disparities in education, stereotypes) might influence Black women’s identities.
Methodology
Data for this project stem from a larger, critical life story project about the reflections of Black women college alumnae who graduated from 1955 to 2014 and who were living in five metropolitan areas. In this analysis, we examined data from 26 Black college alumnae who were living in Chicago before choosing to emphasize in-depth narratives of four of these women. The question for this analysis was: How did Black alumnae experience raced and/or gendered expectations of how they should behave or think during college?
The methodology blended critical (Carspecken, 1996) and life story (Atkinson, 1998) approaches. As such, the epistemological (way of knowing, how one knows) stance of this study is closest to subjectivism where scholars question social structures and oppressive forces (Crotty, 1998). Subjectivism can be connected to critical theoretical approaches. Our critical approach links research inquiry to critical social theory (Carspecken, 1996; Pasque, Carducci, Kuntz, & Gildersleeve, 2012). In our theoretical framework, we used intersectionality and the Unchosen Me theoretical concept, both of which are rooted in critical social theories. Our critical inquiry shaped how we thought about the research questions, our relationships with participants, and the data analysis process (Carspecken, 1996).
The critical approach to our inquiry meant that we were interested in historical and current inequities and the participants were from an underrepresented group (Pasque et al., 2012). Our critical approach was important for a few reasons. First, a critical approach assumes that attempts at value neutrality can be oppressive to participants in a study because the default position will focus on the values of those who are in power (Carspecken, 1996). Second, critical approaches attempt to equalize power between participants and the researchers (Pasque et al., 2012). We aimed to become learners of the college lives of participants meaning that the participant’s comfort, ideas, and views were paramount to the study. Finally, through the analysis process (Carspecken, 1996), this approach allows for data at the micro level (e.g., data with people’s experiences in their lives) to be considered relative to larger social structural inequalities. The life story approach influenced how we conducted unstructured interviews where women could provide their history in the chronological order that they desired (Atkinson, 1998). Blending a life story approach with a critical approach meant that our interview protocol was open-ended and unstructured (Atkinson, 1998), allowing for participants to choose both the chronology and often the topic of discussion within the interview process. From that question, we asked follow-up questions for more details as a way to allow the participants to determine the order, chronology, and tone of their experiences.
Participants and Data Collection
We recruited participants in a purposeful manner (Carspecken, 1996) to understand individual experiences of Black women in college. We began with gatekeepers; people who had a large network of Black alumnae connections in Chicago, who helped us recruit other participants. Some of these gatekeepers were also on the research team. All participants (a) identified as African American or Black women, (b) earned at least a bachelor’s degree between 1955 and 2014, and (c) lived in the Chicago, Illinois, metropolitan area. The women graduated from both PWIs (15 of the 26 women) and historically Black colleges and universities (11 of the 26 women). We focused on the Chicago participants because they represented multiple examples of Black womanhood. In this analysis, we compare between women who graduated in the 2000s and a woman who graduated in the 1960s to demonstrate intergenerational differences and similarities in the way that Black women have encountered and resisted stereotypes (see also O’Connor, 2002). Additionally, this comparison allowed for some considerations of similarities and differences between contemporary times (2000s) and historical time periods (1960s).
We collected data through individual, face-to-face, life story interviews. Each woman completed one interview that lasted between 60 and 180 minutes. The interview protocol was open-ended, posing a guiding question: If your college experience was a book where important moments were chapters, how might your book begin? After this initial question, participants were encouraged to follow their own chronology to tell the story of their time in college and what important moments meant to them and their lives. Participants were asked follow-up questions, such as the role of their peers, families, professors, and administrators during college. They were also asked about their involvement in cocurricular activities and the community.
Data Analysis, Limitations, and Validation Techniques
We coded all data in the project using an in vivo coding technique where we created two-to-five-word codes to represent small chunks of data (one-to-four sentences in length). These codes were used as a heuristic to explain the text and were in the participants’ words. Then, we separated the in vivo codes into bigger categories to highlight larger, broad categories within the data (e.g., friends, family, institutional type, academics, student organizations, community involvement). For this article, we then coded the data from the Chicago participants for broader categories within the data (e.g., academics, identity). Each of the four people on the research team individually reviewed the data and wrote a short memo of major themes. Then, we coded the data using a low-level coding process (putting a descriptive phrase next to the data). We each separately coded the data related to participants’ identification of expectations, and we categorized the codes into larger themes. We relied on our theoretical framework (intersectionality and the Unchosen Me concept) to reduce data to code where participants discussed raced and/or gendered expectations (Neumann, 2009). For example, when a participant talked about acting a particular way because it was expected of her, we added codes for the Unchosen Me. Consistent with critical life story methodology, we present the findings in a narrative format to demonstrate the depth of the participants’ reflections.
As with all research, there are limitations to this approach. Using a critical approach to analyze participants’ perspectives differs slightly from other forms of empirical research (Carspecken, 1996; Pasque et al., 2012). While the purpose of this study was to delve deeply into individual Black women’s experiences, we do not presume that these findings would generalize to all Black women. Rather, the claim we make in this study is counter to generalization; our findings maintain the importance of considering Black women’s individuality and ways that Black women have identity authenticity that may or may not be similar to other Black women. Possibilities exist to conceptually consider ways that the findings may transfer to other settings.
We employed validation techniques to ensure trustworthiness of the findings (Carspecken, 1996), where we (a) triangulated the data by including data from multiple generations of women who graduated from various institutions and by analyzing data in multiple ways; (b) conducted peer debriefing, where all four of us individually analyzed the data, compared our analysis, and then reached consensus on the findings; (c) completed member checks where participants were offered the chance to review their transcript and to offer changes (which we made); and (d) conducted negative case analysis, searching for disconfirming evidence and reanalyzing the data.
Our positionalities as researchers were important to our data collection and analysis processes. Rachelle Winkle-Wagner is a White cisgender woman. Her research is focused on Students of Color in higher education. Bridget Turner Kelly is a Black cisgender woman. Her research is on women and People of Color at PWIs. Courtney L. Luedke identifies as a mixed-race Latina cisgender woman. Her research examines critical socialization and support for Students of Color in higher education. Tangela Blakely Reavis is a Black cisgender woman. Her research focuses on the influence of social inequality on college student access and success. In the interviews, we identified our racial/ethnic backgrounds in our conversations with participants so that the participants would not have to guess about our identities. We also had conversations with participants about any differences between our backgrounds and those of the participants. Sometimes the participants would ask questions about us, or our intentions, before we began the interview process. It seemed in our analysis that participants often spent more time explaining and defining racial issues with the White researcher (e.g., defining a Black sorority or racial history) than they did with the Black researchers or the mixed-race researcher.
Findings
The participants in this analysis maintained the necessity of examining raced and/or gendered expectations placed on them from peers, faculty, and administrators on campus. We present narratives from four participants whose stories most clearly offered a critical examination and disruption of expectations they encountered. For this article, we focus on excerpts of each of the four narratives that represent different models of Blackness and ways that the women defied expectations of who they should be as Black women. At the end of each narrative, we offer analysis that authenticates nuanced ideas of Blackness alongside our intersectionality theoretical framework.
Faygen: Defying Expectations and Finding Safe Space in Her Academic Major
Faygen, a 2012 arts and humanities alumnae from a predominantly White, Midwestern, metropolitan university, described how she defied expectations placed on her by staff and found her authentic self within her academic major. She grew up in a White, middle-class, suburban area and found the university to be very segregated. The only opportunity for her to connect with other Black students appeared to be through social organizations. Faygen desired to connect with Black peers and faculty; yet in her academic major she mostly connected with White faculty and peers. She summarized her academic cohort: [We] started off with twenty-four people. And we ended up graduating with twelve. And of those twelve, four of us were female. It was mostly males. . . . Most of them were White. Design isn’t a very diverse career choice yet, which I’m hoping to change. I mean they had backgrounds like me. I grew up in the suburbs, lower middle-class-to-middle-class family, public school . . . they were mostly people I knew before I got to school.
According to Faygen, most of those who persisted in the major were White men. Yet, because of her socioeconomic background, Faygen suggested that the other students in her program had similar backgrounds. Although Faygen shared some class similarities with her peers, she noticed the lack of racial diversity in her program. She asserted: [My major] itself is a very White career path . . . the influences from design are very Eurocentric, [particularly] Swiss. And that Eurocentric-ness is a lot different than growing up with being inspired by African art or things like that, because that is seen as sort of crazy. A lot of the professors are European. And it leads to sort of one-way of thinking. It’s a very middle-class career. You don’t get exposed to it at all unless you already know someone who goes into it. Or if you’re in a different sort of education bubble to realize it’s a possibility.
Faygen related in part to the middle-class, Eurocentric, masculine values embedded in her major and she enjoyed her academic discipline. She highlighted the disconnect that she felt from the type of art that inspired her during childhood and the art that was centered in her program.
Faygen was in a scholarship program designed to support Students of Color. The program administrator used a structured cohort model in order to provide social support for students in the program. The administrators of the diversity scholarship had an expectation that she would surround herself with other Students of Color, but Faygen had a different experience. She did not believe that she met the expectations of the targeted students for the program. She noted: The conflict between my diversity scholarship and being a designer, I think [it] defined my college experience. I had this scholarship that was for diversity, run by this older African American man who my sister had problems with too when we were there. He’s not a big fan of Black students that don’t hang out with a lot of other Black students. I didn’t have time to attend all their events. Because not only am I in studio from 9:00 to 5:00 when you throw events, I have to go home and do another eight hours of work just to make sure to keep up my grades. [A prospective student] was asking us if we hang out with other Students of Color and if there are a lot. I was like, “Typically in my program, no.” He [the program administrator] was like, “If you want to be involved with other Black students, you can join organizations or you can choose to shun it, like the two of them did.” And he said that in front of her [the prospective student] and her parents. Making it seem like the two of us chose the path to not hang out with People of Color deliberately. After that happened, I stopped going to that organization . . . because they were not sensitive to what my experience was.
Faygen remembered that it was difficult for her to participate in the diversity scholarship program activities because she was in a very time-demanding major. Due to the demographics in her major where there were few Students of Color, Faygen rarely saw Black peers or other Students of Color. Due to her tight schedule, Faygen experienced a conflict between her degree program and the cocurricular activities required by her scholarship program. Ultimately, the conflict of expectations and time led Faygen to resist the program. As Faygen resisted the diversity scholarship program, she also missed the opportunity to connect with Students of Color in that program.
Faygen continued to explain how it felt to grapple with the unrealistic expectations that were put on her by her diversity scholarship program: They provided full tuition. And unlike a lot of the other scholarships on campus, they treated you like because they’re paying your tuition and giving you a stipend, they own you. Even though technically it’s not them, it’s the organization. But they were treating it like their own personal club. I would get kicked out [of the diversity scholarship cohort] like every year because I didn’t attend enough events, because I was focusing on school. They thought I was just shunning other Students of Color, when it wasn’t really true. I came to keep my grades up. If I don’t keep my grades up, you’re gonna kick me out. And now you’re telling me you’re gonna possibly kick me out because I don’t do enough social events. You can’t be both. It ended up, my last year, people finally bringing it to the attention of the board at the school. Somebody brought it up and it made it to the president of the university and then they got reprimanded, and the scholarship got changed.
While the scholarship program did eventually change, Faygen had to cope with the exclusion of not meeting the scholarship program expectations: It felt hopeless. I couldn’t do anything about it. I finally brought it up to my advisor. Retelling that story and telling her about this entire time I felt like there was nothing I could do right because he didn’t think that I cared about other diversity students or anything like that. She was shocked but she also sort of defended him. She was like, “Well, not that I’m defending him but, you know, he is older and times were different. And sometimes he just doesn’t realize how things are.” It didn’t help to dwell on it because it’d distract me from other things. I’d call my mom about it. But I didn’t know anyone I could go to. They were their own office. How could I even report it? Being Black and growing up in the suburbs, I felt like maybe he was just targeting us.
When asked where she did find a time or place that felt safe in college, Faygen contemplated: I think it was my studio. I spent so much time there and I felt comfortable talking to any other professors about any problem I had. It’s this weird microcosm. So when you’re in the design school, that’s basically where you live. And that’s what it is, your safe space. When things get to be too much out in the world, you can go into the studio and see these other people and everything just feels okay or you don’t feel so crazy.
Faygen ultimately found her “safe space” in college within her academic major where she was able to resist expectations of who she was supposed to be as a Black woman. While there was an expectation that her safe space be within her diversity scholarship program, this was not what ultimately worked well for Faygen, mostly because of the intense pressure about who she was supposed to be as a Black woman. Faygen’s middle-class, suburban background was likely one reason she may have felt comfortable around people in her major. To be true to herself and her interests, Faygen found her own safe haven in her studio. This does not negate Faygen’s pride or acceptance of her Blackness. Faygen found her own way of being a Black woman in her major.
Intersectional Analysis of Faygen’s Experiences
The lack of racial diversity in Faygen’s design major is an example of identity pressures (the Unchosen Me) put on Faygen (to fit in with peers across racial, gender, and class categories). It also illustrates the intersections of her identities and the intersecting structural issues with which she had to contend. Faygen recognized that she was in a major that seemed to only embrace Eurocentric and “middle class” ways of knowing, which is another example of identity pressures or Unchosen Me identities. It seemed that Faygen did not agree on what was “aesthetically pleasing,” or that her preferences were not always valued in her program. This could lead to Faygen denying her voice, being more passive within discussions, or more hesitant in creating her own designs (Rockquemore, 2002; Winkle-Wagner, 2009a). In addition to feeling as if her racial/ethnic background was not embraced in her major, Faygen was also well aware of the lack of women in her program. She pointed out that there were only a handful of women who graduated with the degree, which again highlighted intersecting disparities and structural issues within her major (e.g., the program may not have been welcoming to Students of Color or to women, since historically the program was created by and for White people, primarily White men).
Black peers and staff in the diversity fellowship program surrounded Faygen, but Faygen did not feel welcomed there. She believed she needed to focus her time on her academic major. Faygen may have been actively dispelling stereotypes of Black women not being intellectually capable in her major and in the diversity program (Fries-Britt & Griffin, 2007). Faygen did not feel supported by the diversity office on campus in her efforts to dispel stereotypes. In some ways, this institutional conflict played out as an intersecting identity conflict, putting her in a liminal or in-between position, forcing Faygen to choose between her degree program and her diversity scholarship. This conflict demonstrated structural intersectionality issues where various programs on campus were not in communication or agreement relative to supporting Students of Color. Faygen did not choose the expectation to be “Black enough,” which was imposed on her by the administrators of her diversity fellowship (Winkle-Wagner, 2009a). Yet she consistently had to contend with these identity pressures. Faygen’s narrative adds to what is known about how Black women deal with stereotypes, particularly across their multiple identities (Hannon et al., 2016; Patton & Croom, 2017).
To cope, Faygen retreated to her studio and maintained her high grades to keep her scholarship. When asked to name a safe space, Faygen referenced her studio. She felt like she belonged there and found support for the stressors she identified. Safe spaces are critical for identity development as they provide affirmation, supportive people, and reflection time. The lack of Students of Color within the academic studio meant there was no place on campus where Faygen’s intersecting middle-class, Black, woman, and design major identities could be embraced. Perhaps Faygen could not even envision such an oasis existing on campus. Faygen’s example provides a lesson for universities. Places where students can explore the intersecting privileged and marginalized identities are needed to help students feel whole, supported, and ultimately satisfied with their college experience (Kelly et al., 2017). Porter (2017) highlighted the need for “spaces of affirmation” (p. 98), where Black women can engage in discussions where they give and receive affirmation. Women’s centers and Black cultural centers could collaborate to create these locations and social networks for Black women. Black cultural centers are often evidenced as safe spaces for Black students on PWIs (Patton, 2010) but could be more inclusive of Black women’s intersecting identities (including class, gender) being affirmed. For example, in Faygen’s case, the timing of programs in her diversity fellowship often conflicted with her required activities in her academic program.
Dawn: Defying Assumptions to Choose Race or Religion and Intersecting Identities
While Faygen struggled to defy expectations related to her intersecting identities and interests, Dawn wrestled with assumptions about her race and religion during college. Dawn, a middle-class social science major and 2003 alumna from the suburbs, attended a rural, Midwestern PWI. Dawn’s faith and race are her two most salient identities and this was evident in her college journey and how she resisted stereotypes about what it meant to be a Black woman. She prayed and fasted about which college to attend and went where she believed God led her. She did not want to go to the PWI “in the middle of nowhere,” but she remembered thinking, “I’m just gonna be obedient and go and I don’t really expect anything to be great about it, but I’m gonna go.”
One of the first stereotypes Dawn encountered was that all of the Black students needed to form community only with each other to be successful at the PWI. The assumption that Black students must connect with only other Black students was not true for her. As she noted, “I don’t need to see a sea of Black faces in order to be comfortable. I just need to know the five that I’m running into are my friends.” She remembered: There were maybe three to four percent Black [students at PWI]. So even though it was a big school, there weren’t a lot of us. They had a minority student orientation before classes began and before freshman orientation. So, freshman minority students could have a chance to identify each other and get to know each other before everybody else came on campus. You got to meet other people in your major who were Black. And you also got paired with a mentor and a study group. All of that helped us form a community before anything even started. And I think that was like, okay, this is gonna be okay.
Following the orientation program, the university paired Students of Color with juniors and seniors to serve as mentors to first-year students. Dawn recalled that her mentor told her how to act when she saw other Students of Color, “You should speak to each other when you see each other, smile. That may be the only nice face you see that day.” Perhaps smiling and speaking to one another were ways that Dawn had internalized particular ways of acting in order to connect with Black students. But Dawn also noted a pressure that Students of Color should stick together and might be the only friendly people to her on campus. Dawn often discussed conflicts among the intersectionality of her identities: race, gender, class, and religion.
Dawn had three White roommates her first year but found that she gravitated away from them by her second year and she moved in with Black women roommates. She said, “And then I had my friends, my Black friends that were in my major. And there was a Black journalism society.” Dawn was settled with her group of friends, who were mostly Black. Yet she did not feel like her authentic self with them. Dawn grew up in a predominantly White neighborhood and K–12 school, and having almost all Black friends was new to her. She ultimately had a falling out with her roommates over her faith. Dawn’s roommates were not Christian. She noted: So, I was living with one of the girls, and her cousin was also a friend of ours. We were just talking and I told my roommate, “If the cousin died, she would go to hell because she’s not a Christian.” And I know now that was really tactless and there are other ways to talk about your faith with people.
Dawn and her roommates had a falling out after that, and it spurred her to reflect on whether she was really being the kind of person she wanted to be when she hung out with them. Dawn shared: Who I’d been with them and to them and around them and what I’m saying, don’t line up. I would go to church but I wasn’t really serious about my faith. I didn’t have questions about my faith when I got to college. I’d grown up in church. I knew what was true. I knew who I was. So that was kind of a back-burner thing to me because it just didn’t feel like it was something I was exploring. But I was new to having Black friends and being able to go out and just have that social life. I would still come in at like 2:00 a.m. and wash the smoke out of my hair and press it. And get up and go to church in the morning. But I was the only one doing that.
As Dawn propelled away from these friends during her second year in college, she explored her faith identity. At this point, she did not see a model of how she could be what she thought it stereotypically meant to be “Black” and still be true to her Christian identity. Dawn felt like she wanted to fit the two identities together. But she remarked on the difficulty of that task: I can’t really do that effectively or well. And it doesn’t really make sense. So, I actually got involved in Campus Crusade for Christ my sophomore year. I always felt uncomfortable having to pick between race and religion.
In the context of Campus Crusade for Christ, Dawn found it difficult to associate with Students of Color because the group was composed of mostly White students. As she stated, in Campus Crusade, “There weren’t a lot of Black people.” Also, in the remote, mostly White populated town, there were not many predominantly Black church options. She reflected: The one Black church was led by a professor and she was weird. And the people that went there were weird and that’s not home. Some people would drive to [city] but that’s like an hour and a half to go to a decent Black church.
Dawn tried to connect her Black and Christian identities by seeking out the few Black people that were involved in Campus Crusade for Christ. Instead of believing the stereotype that only White people attended that organization, she found a way to make the organization work for her: I got involved in Crusade. And started to get to know the Black people who were there. And even all the girls that I had met, starting that sophomore year, one of the few Black women or Black people in our school system coming to [university]. We kind of all had these similar backgrounds. We were all Christians. We just had this crazy overlap and similar identity and experience. And so we just became friends.
Dawn found Black friends to connect with in her religious organization. She took on a leadership role and began to blend her intersecting identities of being Christian and Black. She remembered: In a way, it was a second freshman year because I was starting over socially. I moved to a different part of campus. I was in different activities. I stayed in the Black journalism society but I was also involved in Crusade. Crusade has an offshoot called Impact, which is targeting African Americans. So, we started an Impact chapter on our campus.
Dawn eventually rejected the expectation of Impact being just for African Americans. In her junior year in college, she remembered, “We actually ended up having a White girl join Impact. She became my roommate.” Dawn’s involvement in Impact helped her examine her own stereotypes of what it meant to be a Black woman and a Christian. She recollected: Am I Black first? Am I woman first? Am I Christian first? And I think my freshman year, I would’ve said I’m Black first. And after that, I’m Christian first. But still kind of didn’t let go of what that meant to me and what that experience was.
When Dawn entered college at a PWI, she did so reluctantly because of the remote location and small percentage of Black students. However, after connecting with Black friends with whom she shared a racial connection but not much else, she resisted the expectation of being fulfilled by only Black friends. When she began bringing her full self into view and found a way to intersect her identities of Black and Christian, she felt as if she started college all over again, got more involved in activities, and took on a leadership role. In Dawn’s case, emotional fulfillment meant breaking from expectations of the type of people with whom she was supposed to associate in order to be successful.
Intersectional Analysis of Dawn’s Experience
Dawn grappled with fitting in with her Black peers on campus, given her particular religious beliefs. She often felt as if she were in a liminal or in-between-space between her racial and religious identities. Dawn clearly perceived a need to exhibit aspects of her identity that were not necessarily chosen by her when she was going out socially. She suggested a lack of congruency between some of her actions and her religious beliefs. Dawn appeared to feel the need to choose between her Blackness and her Christianity, and she often felt caught in between the two identities. Dawn’s struggle to defy the stereotypes and to choose the most salient among her intersecting identities is seen in the literature (Rockquemore, 2002; Winkle-Wagner, 2009a). Feeling made to choose among overlapping identities is not helpful for students’ quests to be their authentic selves (Winkle-Wagner, 2009a), and it underscores the overlap in oppressive social systems. The idea that one could not be Black and Christian suggests an oppressive expectation whereby certain manifestations of religion are possessed by particular racial groups and not by others (McGuire et al., 2016). Dawn felt compelled to rank-order her identities as Black, a woman, and Christian based on expectations placed on her from her family and friends. Because of the way that the organizations were structured on campus, Dawn had a difficult time finding a group to which she could belong and fully represent all of her identities at one time. Dawn’s racial identity was completely connected with her religious identity (see also Watt, 2003). She eventually opted to elevate her Christian identity, which meant that she initially disassociated with Black peers and turned to her religion as a transformative and uplifting refuge (Patton & McClure, 2009; Watt, 2003).
Similar to Faygen, Dawn’s initial disassociation from spending social time with Black peers pitted her against a stereotype that all Black students will feel most connected to other Black peers on campus. There is limited research on how Black women deal with identity politics during their college experiences because they often feel compelled to choose between their race or gender (or class, sexuality, or other identities), and the pressures to conform to others’ images of Black women on campus (Donahoo, 2017; Porter, 2017). Dawn’s narrative adds to the literature by showing that Black women may deal with pressures to conform by taking on leadership roles and engaging in campus in their own unique ways. The identity pressures that Black women encounter are missed when only the research on Black men is highlighted (Harper & Quaye, 2007). Dawn eventually found her own pathway where she could embrace her intersectional identities. By the end of college, she founded a Black alliance of Campus Crusade as a way to integrate and intersect two of her most salient identities: Christian and Black.
Vivian: Defying Stereotypes of a Black Woman Affirmative Action Admit
Different from Dawn who sought to integrate her religious and racial identities, Vivian, a biology major and 2009 graduate of a PWI in the Northwest, reflected on stereotypes that she faced regarding her race, gender, and class during college. Vivian grew up in a working-class family in Tacoma, Washington. From a young age, she knew she would go to college. Both of her parents attended college later in life while working full-time and raising Vivian and her siblings. Vivian entered college as an Act Six Scholar, the recipient of a competitive leadership scholarship for academically high-achieving students. She noted: The organization tried really hard to portray it as an urban leadership scholarship. It was of course perceived as a diversity scholarship. I found myself and my peers really having to explain what our scholarship was and how we got there. ’Cause people thought, oh, you’re just Black or you’re just from Tacoma and that’s why you’re here.
Her identity as an Act Six Scholar had a very strong influence on her college life, as both a source of support during college and also as a symbol that many others on campus perceived negatively as an affirmative action initiative. As a member of Act Six, and a biology major, Vivian regularly encountered stereotypes of who others expected she should be as a Black woman in college. Early in her interview, Vivian shared the isolation she felt as the only Black student in several places across campus, from the residence halls to the classroom: I was the only Black person in my hall and the only Black person in most of my classes, ’cause I was a biology major. College in general is hard, but being a science major feels especially hard. And then I was the only Black person there. I didn’t want to be a disappointment to the Act Six community, to Black people in general, because I felt like I had to represent where I was coming from. I had to defend why I received this full ride scholarship to school. So, it always felt like, I got this, I need to show that I earned it and I deserve it. So that was really challenging.
Vivian constantly felt as though she needed to prove her academic capabilities and her position on campus as one of the only Black students in several White spaces.
One stereotype that Vivian confronted was being a Black woman biology major, an area of study that was typically filled with White men. She encountered stereotypes where she was not expected to perform well academically because of her gender and racial identity. Vivian went on to elaborate on the challenges that she faced in her major as one of the only Black students. She searched for study groups but did not get the academic support she needed until her senior year of college. She remembered: It wasn’t until later in my college career that I realized that I wasn’t studying properly for my science classes. I went to some of their study groups my senior year. Too late. But those were the study groups that were most effective and efficient. Those were the best students in our classes, women I ended up living with my senior year. I would study with my friends. But I don’t think any of us knew how to study the way they did. Their parents were doctors. Their parents had gone to college. Their parents had been biology or physicists or chemistry majors. I feel like they had a better method for studying. I didn’t know about it. I guess what bothered me was I wasn’t invited to those study groups.
Similar to Faygen, Vivian was one of very few Black women in her major. But unlike Faygen, Vivian had a difficult time finding inclusion in her major. In the full interview, Vivian noted that only two students in her scholarship cohort were Black students majoring in biology. Neither of them had been invited to these study groups. Vivian wondered if the reason it took so long to be invited was because of her race, gender, and class backgrounds. She emphasized that her peers established study groups with other students who came from different socioeconomic and racial backgrounds than her— upper class and White. It was not until her senior year of college that Vivian received an invitation to study groups.
Vivian shared another instance on campus where she faced stereotypes from campus staff about Students’ of Color career aspirations and abilities. One staff member explicitly told her to consider other career choices because she would not “make it” in the sciences: I wanted to be a medic in one of the dorms. I applied. I got really far in the process. I didn’t get it. They invited me in just to do a follow-up, give me feedback. The nurse on campus, she kind of went over my resume and she was like, “Why don’t you tell me about your experience?” And I was telling her stuff. She was like, “Oh you should’ve put that on your resume. Oh, that should’ve been there, that would’ve been really helpful.” [We] talked through my scenario and how I should’ve done it a little bit differently. And she was like, “I don’t know what it is with you Act Six students. You all want to be doctors. But, you know, maybe you should just think about doing something else. It’s just not, you’re just not gonna make it.” I’m paraphrasing, and this is partly just how I felt she was telling me this. But it was to the effect of, “You people are not doing well in these science classes. Why do you keep doing it?”
The individual who interviewed Vivian held negative stereotypes about what Black students on campus could achieve academically and in their careers. Vivian recalled being asked to consider another major and career, suggesting that Black women may not excel in the field of medicine.
Additionally, Vivian felt conflicted about the stereotype of Black students socializing together. She noted how the campus challenged the camaraderie that Black students found with one another, but also highlighted how important these relationships were to her: We needed to be conscious of being exclusive. ’Cause we all want to sit together. Like, the book. Why Are All The Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? Are you kidding me? All of you are sitting together. We just need to debrief and take a break. And then also when we were together, of course, we’re loud. So being conscious of what kind of perception are we portraying. Are we perpetuating stereotypes? Are we just being ourselves? Is this okay that we’re doing it, or should we be thinking about something else? So, I think my freshman year was really just trying to find my place and Act Six and our cadre’s place on campus.
Vivian questioned whether she or her peers perpetuated stereotypes, referencing Tatum’s (1997), Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria: And Other Conversations About Race. Vivian remembered conflict about how to be herself. She was concerned about what others thought about her and her Black peers. She emphasized the need to spend time with her Black peers on campus, noting she needed to “debrief and take a break” from the larger campus.
Vivian shared her rejection of stereotypes in other cocurricular activities on campus. She remembered the process of becoming a cheerleader in college and how participating in this sport was one way she dispelled stereotypes of who others thought she should be: I had wanted to be [a] cheerleader my whole life. My parents wouldn’t let me, specifically my dad, he didn’t want me to be defined by other people. So, I tried out. And I remember feeling kind of self-conscious and not really wanting to tell anyone that I was trying out ’cause I was nervous. I felt embarrassed, like, am I representing myself well? Am I going against what it means to be Black because I’m trying out for this squad?
Vivian second-guessed whether it was appropriate for her, as a Black woman, to try out for the cheerleading squad because of the expectation that Black women would not be cheerleaders. She recalled how she joined the squad the following year: I was the first Black person [to become a cheerleader]. The next year, my two best friends tried out. So there was the three of us, three Black women. I wore my hair natural and that was allowed. And [I] wore braids. And [I] had to talk about what kind of makeup is appropriate. And I had to get makeup to match my skin tone and all of that. We had some people that were a little bit more heavyset and some people that were really thin. It was a really diverse and eclectic group of people, which felt good. And I felt like I was really excited because although those people [from Act Six] were kind of making fun of the process of trying out, whenever we had a game, I felt like we had a section of people in my Act Six family that were there just watching me, just to cheer me on. They would laugh because we were doing White girl dances and they didn’t play hip-hop music.
When Vivian joined cheerleading, she dealt with a few racial tensions between her Black and White peers. She described confronting the expectations of what a cheerleader might look like as she explained the need to educate her White peers on what type of makeup might work for her skin tone. She rejected stereotypes of how cheerleaders are expected to wear their hair. She wore her hair naturally, in braids. Vivian explained that the squad did mostly “White girl dances,” suggesting that she felt as if these dances were not typical for Black women. Vivian recalled that the squad did not dance to hip-hop music, assuming that hip-hop music might be preferred by her Black friends. She perceived mixed support from Black peers who poked fun at her involvement in cheerleading but still supported her and often came to watch her perform. The tension between Vivian’s Black and White peers was clear. Her White peers had expectations relative to Vivian’s appearance as a cheerleader, and her Black peers had expectations for the squad’s musical selection (which did not include hip-hop). Yet it was not necessarily clear what Vivian’s actual preferences were. For example, she did not say whether she preferred the music of her squad to hip-hop music. Vivian performed the dances to be part of the team regardless of what her preferences might have been.
Vivian highlighted racial tensions on campus and the ways she felt targeted as a Black student on a PWI and made to feel as if she did not belong. These instances, and encouragement from her Act Six peers, fueled her desire to become a leader on campus: At one point in college, there was this really big racial clash. An editorial in the university newspaper said Black students didn’t earn their keep or they didn’t deserve to be there. I felt like part of my role [was] to address that. It started with our cadre one. They had been on campus and kind of been the rebels, and really changing things and really talking to faculty, staff, administration saying, “Why don’t we have Faculty of Color? Who are we supposed to go to if we’re having questions or we’re doubting? You need to do more and do better.” It was probably their second or third year and they were tired. They went through the whole dorm and tore down things that they thought were racially insensitive. So, it sparked a lot of controversy on campus. From that, a number of other conversations started happening about who are these Act Six students. “Who are these Black students? You don’t deserve to be here, you’re only here on scholarship.” And I remember I called a number of people in my cadre. I was just sitting in my room crying. ’Cause I was like, “Why do I have to keep proving? What do I have to [do to] keep proving myself?” No one else is proving themselves. No one else walks into a room—it felt like whenever I walked into a room, people thought that I didn’t deserve to be there.
A consistent theme throughout Vivian’s interview was the need to demonstrate her worth to others. Vivian wanted to prove that she and other Black students belonged in college. She constantly had others tell her who they thought she was, or who she should be (or should not be) during college. She believed that she had to keep her guard up, that she was held to a different standard than many of her White peers in college, because she was a Black student. She suggested the desire of wanting her peers to want to get to know her for who she is, “I didn’t want to tell people that I was an Act Six scholar anymore ’cause I wanted them to know me.”
Vivian hoped that peers on campus would get to know her authentically, including the multifaceted identity that she carried with her throughout college. She hoped that her peers could know her without relying on negative stereotypes of Black students. She went on to consider the support system that she built on campus through her cadre, and the support they provided her: So, I was really almost thankful to have my cadre with me because there were people for me to talk to and bounce ideas off of. And say, “How do we address this, where do we go from here?” So, I was oddly enough selected to be a representative for our BSU [Black Student Union] and kind of on behalf of, maybe Act Six, maybe [the] Black community, I don’t know. But to come into our student government and say, “This is how we’re feeling, this is where we’re at. And it’s not fair, it’s not appropriate. This is what we should be doing next. This is what you as a student government should be doing to support us.” I was selected by my peers as someone that could lead this movement and the change for Students of Color on campus. It was this middle ground for making change. But it also set me up to be part of the president’s cabinet on campus to talk about what administration should be doing differently.
As Vivian developed a strong sense of her own identity, she blossomed as a leader. She spent a significant portion of her college career advocating for Students of Color on campus. Vivian was rejecting stereotypes and identity politics of Black women as loud, or angry. It appeared that the larger campus community was more willing to listen when Vivian and her peers advocated for themselves in a way that was deemed palatable for administration.
Vivian’s time in college was strongly influenced by the views of others. College for her was a lot about proving other people wrong and asserting who she was. Vivian’s leadership on campus ignited change that highlighted the need and benefits of racial diversity. One new Black faculty member created a campus context where Vivian and others could talk about their racialized impositions in college. Vivian designated this as a supportive place where she could share her experiences and have them validated, a space she found late in her college career, but yearned for since she set foot on campus.
Intersectional Analysis of Vivian’s Model of Black Womanhood
Vivian felt as if those on her college campus believed that Black students were only admitted to college through diversity scholarships or affirmative action rather than on their own academic merit, a finding that corresponds to other research (Fries-Britt & Turner, 2001; McGee & Martin, 2011). Peers seemed to activate the stereotype that all Black students needed a scholarship in order to be able to attend college (see also Fries-Britt & Griffin, 2007). Vivian constantly had to reject stereotypes about her academic abilities as a Black student (see also McGee, 2016; McGee & Martin, 2011). She changed her behavior at her PWI, a sign of identity pressures (Winkle-Wagner, 2009a), trying to prove that she was beyond people’s stereotypes and expectations of her. Vivian’s narrative is one of conflicting pressures she felt during college. She consistently referenced the identity pressures she negotiated to counter negative stereotypes of Black students. Vivian recalled being conscious of what others thought of her actions. She eventually intersected her identities in ways that empowered her to be a woman, Black, smart, and a cheerleader where she resisted the stereotype that being a part of the squad was a White-only activity. Over time she became actively involved in leadership roles with her Black peers, eventually serving on her campus’ presidential cabinet as an advocate for improving campus culture. Ultimately, Vivian overlapped her identities and challenged oppressive social structures that disallowed her from being her full self.
Tweedy: Defying Stereotypes of Race, Gender, and Sexism Through Community Organizing in the 1960s
While it may seem from the narratives about Faygen, Dawn, and Vivian that the need to resist stereotypes is a contemporary issue that Black women face on college campuses, this is something that generations of Black women have encountered. Tweedy, a social science major and 1969 alumna from a Midwestern PWI, spent a significant amount of her energy in college rejecting stereotypes about what it meant to be a Black woman. Tweedy’s experience, which occurred decades before Dawn, Faygen, and Vivian lived their own identity pressures on campus, offers insight into the long history of how Black women resisted identity pressures and stereotypes about them. Tweedy began her college journey by reflecting on student enrollment at her PWI. Tweedy asserted that her campus lacked both racial and gender diversity: [In college] there were no other Black women. There were a lot of [Black] guys because they always recruited the guys for the basketball and football teams. But they never had but one or two Black women at the time. [The] majority of the Black students, until I came, were pretty much male.
For Tweedy, the lack of racial diversity on campus contributed to an uncomfortable campus climate, which contrasted her time in high school. She explained: I would say the social and cultural aspect of college was by far the hardest for me, this was mid-1960s. Other than Amos and Andy, there weren’t hardly any African Americans on television. Maybe Nat King Cole [and] other singers. But in terms of dramas, so Sapphire was this mean, get-her-man-straight kind of sassy woman. But other than that, [there were not African Americans on TV]. Most of the kids that [I] went to school with came from rural communities or small towns.
Tweedy had a difficult time adjusting to college socially in large part because many of the White students were not used to associating with Black students. It is likely that White students’ perception of Black people, especially Black women, were limited to stereotypes represented in the media. The Sapphire stereotypical image that Tweedy mentioned is one of many enduring stereotypes that present Black women as hypersexual (see also Thomas et al., 2004). Tweedy further illustrated the hostile campus climate by contemplating her roommate relationship: When I first arrived on campus, I knew who my roommate was going to be. She was from somewhere in Wisconsin. Somebody saw me, went and told her that your roommate’s here. She runs down the steps and she sees me. She literally screams, her face in horror. She had no idea I was African American. So that was my first introduction. As I said academically, I was really well prepared. And she [my roommate] had an issue because I wasn’t supposed to be as smart as she was. She was better than I was at math, but I had French since I was a child. I offered for us to help each other. But she couldn’t handle it. My grades were good, at least as good as hers. That was really difficult for her because she what she had heard about Black people and who I was didn’t mix.
It might have been challenging for Tweedy’s roommate to accept that Tweedy was equally academically talented because it showed an alternative narrative to the stereotype that Black students were not smart. Tweedy also recalled challenges with White men: There was a man that was a commuter. He took psych with me. And we really enjoyed discussing the subject. And one day he asked me to go to one of the forest preserves. I didn’t think anything out of it. He drove me there ’cause you couldn’t walk. And then I thought, what am I doing in this forest preserve with this guy? I realized, he wasn’t going to do [me] any harm but I think he didn’t want to be seen with me. So being in the preserves where there was nobody, he felt much freer. Because I don’t think we had ever talked before outside of the classroom. I had events where I would be walking down the street leaving class and guys, it appeared, that they would deliberately move to the other side of the street because they didn’t want anybody to think they were walking with me.
As a smart Black woman, Tweedy often felt ostracized from her peers on campus. It did not matter whether her White male peer enjoyed discussing the classroom material. Her interactions with him were restrained because she perceived he did not want to be seen with a Black woman.
The hostile campus racial climate inspired Tweedy to explore opportunities off-campus including a month-long internship in New Mexico. Recalling that opportunity, she noted: The environment [on campus] was so difficult socially that I decided that I needed to do something. It was one of those life-changing events. One or two of the guys [on the trip] was engaged. And they were away from their girlfriends for a month. So, some of the guys were kind of coming on to us. There were very few Black people where we were at all. I probably was the only one most of the time. But I understood that the only reason they were interested in me was for the sex because they were away from their girlfriends. I had enough sense to understand what that was about. So, I said no thank you.
Tweedy believed her peers who were men only developed a relationship with her because of the stereotype that Black women might be “easy” to pursue sexually and wondered if this was a reason why men wanted to be around her. Tweedy rejected the expectation that she would be promiscuous because of her race and gender.
Upon her return from New Mexico, Tweedy reflected on another off-campus opportunity that further supported her goals: The next year, one of the Black alums worked it out so I lived in Englewood [Chicago] for a month and worked at a community center with gangs, the Disciples. And that was pretty wild too. Since the gang members knew who I was, I was probably safer than most people. That was the other beautiful thing that people kind of invited me into their lives. So, I ended up having various families that would let me stay with them on the weekend. But I think that’s really how I dealt with the [home campus]. I don’t think [home campus] was a warm place for Black students. So, I could manage the academics and do what I had to do. But coming to Chicago on the weekend was like a safety valve because people understood what I was going through, and said, “I’m gonna cook you some greens and cornbread, come on in.”
For Tweedy, going off-campus seemed to be the best opportunity for her to find locations that were safe and welcoming to her as a Black woman.
The following year, Tweedy enrolled at Spelman College for one semester as a domestic exchange student. While at Spelman, which is a historically Black, small, women’s college, she became involved in the community by playing an active role in Civil Rights Movement meetings: Some of the students [at Spelman] didn’t like me because I wouldn’t party with them during the week. Because I was so focused, listening to the people from SNCC [Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee] and SCLC [Southern Christian Leadership Conference] talk about what they were gonna do. I’d be the only female. I don’t know why they’d let me sit there. A bunch of men. And they were older. It was like my little classroom. Or I would be listening to speakers.
Tweedy noted that Civil Rights meetings were typically organized and led by older men. She did not feel very welcomed as a woman. Her interest in organizing did not fit the identity of a typical college-aged Black woman at the time. This caused a conflict between her identity and her interests, forcing her to choose between being social with classmates and attending community organizing meetings. Tweedy’s choice to pursue her interests with the community ultimately led to some tension between her and some of her Black women classmates at Spelman.
Upon Tweedy’s return to her home campus, she continued to pursue her interest in campus organizing, but found herself in conflict with choosing parts of her identity when it came to dating Black men on campus and working with them in student organizations: I even had trouble with the Black guys on campus because I wouldn’t go to bed with them and I wouldn’t be whatever they wanted me to be and I was my own person. I was dating a guy, and we were both working in the Black student organization. And this was a time where, you know, they recognized a skill that I had but the men wanted to be up front. And so, I have a lot of regret that I laid back. I decided that the organization was more important than us dating. But the bigger issue was they [the men] wouldn’t let me have leadership. And even to this day, I think they believed that the guys started the Black student organization. [But] I did. But the irony was, even though they wouldn’t let me have any leadership, they wouldn’t go to the bathroom without asking me first. So, they respected my opinion. And I think that was the one accommodation that I made.
Tweedy explained that it was difficult to be in relationships with Black men because she would have to change parts of her identity to meet the expectations of who they thought she should be. This ultimately caused her to resist dating Black men on campus. Tweedy reluctantly made accommodations for Black men by diminishing her role as a leader in the Black student organization that she started. Tweedy also became more submissive and allowed some of the Black men to be seen as the leaders. But she reportedly carried some regret for that decision.
According to Tweedy, during the 1960s when she was in college, it was unusual for Black women to be leaders of communities and social movements. Tweedy’s desire to be a leader during this time period created a conflict between Tweedy and her Black peers. She felt isolated from her Black women peers because she did not participate in their social functions. She did not exactly fit in with Black men either. Tweedy resisted the expectation of women during that time, and instead, she devoted a significant amount of time to doing community work, where women were underrepresented.
Tweedy found her safe spaces off campus by getting involved in community work. Her community engagement in Chicago served as a comfortable social opportunity for her to thrive, pursue her interests, connect, and feel a sense of authenticity to who she was as a Black woman. Through community work, Tweedy positively intersected her identities as a smart, Black, woman.
Intersectional Analysis of Tweedy’s Experience
As if laying the historical foundation for what Faygen, Dawn, and Vivian would identify many decades later, Tweedy’s college experience was laden with the need to resist stereotypes about her identities. In many of Tweedy’s experiences on her college campus, she found herself either being forced to choose parts of her identity or resist the expectations of how her peers thought she should behave. Tweedy contended with the stereotype that she would be promiscuous and less of a leader. The need for Black women to resist stereotypes about their character and intelligence is not something that was new in the 1960s when Tweedy experienced it, and it has continued to persist across generations (Harris-Perry, 2011; McGee, 2016; McGee & Martin, 2011; O’Connor, 2002). According to Tweedy, the images of Black women in the media during the 1960s did not focus on academic achievement (Thomas et al., 2004), but being hypersexualized and promiscuous. Tweedy wondered if the reason that her White roommate and colleagues were unfavorable toward her was because she was Black and smart.
Tweedy grappled with identity pressures (Winkle-Wagner, 2009a) and defied stereotypes of who she was supposed to be as a Black woman. Tweedy was intelligent, well-traveled, discerning about whom she dated, a community leader, and a college student. Her intersecting identities disrupted stereotypes and expectations for Black women in higher education (see also Fries-Britt & Kelly, 2005). In order to be her authentic self while in college, Tweedy sought off-campus communities that allowed her to actively disrupt identity pressures that were placed on her on campus. Her need to pursue community off campus suggests that the intersecting social structures that she encountered disallowed her from fully engaging on campus (e.g., patriarchal structures that maintained who she should be as a woman, racism that affected her interactions). During a semester away at a historically Black institution and another month in the racially and economically diverse city of Chicago, Tweedy connected with Black students and community members who did not question her intersecting, privileged, and marginalized identities. Tweedy attempted to find a safe way and location to integrate her identities, interests, and skills (Patton, 2010). Like many Black women on college campuses, she coped with negative stereotypes of Black womanhood. But she cultivated a positive sense of self by pursuing a variety of academic, leadership, and community opportunities (Winkle-Wagner, 2015).
Discussion
The narratives presented in this study illustrate various ways that Black women resisted stereotypes, negotiated Unchosen Me identity pressures (Winkle-Wagner, 2009a), and, ultimately, found or created a path toward authenticity and uniqueness. All four women coped with instances where they encountered and then resisted stereotypes of their intelligence as Black women. Each woman ultimately negotiated identity pressures and found ways to assert their own self-definition and self-valuing in order to find their authentic sense of self.
Resisting stereotypes of what it means to be a Black woman seemed to transcend generations and to also illustrate ways that the narratives in this analysis are illustrative of long historical trends for Black women (see also McGee, 2016; O’Connor, 2002). While Tweedy’s college journey was in the 1960s and the other women (Faygen, Dawn, and Vivian) went to college in the 2000s, they all asserted that they spent significant energy toward resisting stereotypes. Although Tweedy’s rejection of stereotypes of Black women’s hypersexuality and lacking intelligence was in the 1960s, there is a long line of literature suggesting that these stereotypes over time are well indoctrinated into contemporary times (French, 2013; Harris-Perry, 2011; McGee & Martin, 2011; O’Connor, Lewis, Rivas-Drake, & Rosenburg, 2011). In the 2000s, Vivian and Faygen both encountered stereotypes that science and design majors were out of the ordinary for Black women. While these instances correspond to more recent research on stereotypes about academic abilities in science or math for Black students (McCoy et al., 2015; McCoy et al., 2017; McGee, 2016; McGee & Martin, 2011), historically, Black students have been formally or informally excluded from particular disciplines such as math and science (O’Connor, 2002; Winkle-Wagner & McCoy, 2018). In the same vein, Dawn named pressure to choose between her identity as a Christian and her racial identity as a Black woman, alluding to a long historical tension between Christianity and Blackness for Black women (Abrams, 2014; Wiggins, 2005). Finally, Vivian contended with stereotypes about beauty and about what activities are appropriate for Black women. While Vivian’s time in college was in the 2000s, stereotypes of Eurocentric beauty standards that are purposefully exclusive to Black women have persisted over many decades (Craig, 2002). Defying and challenging stereotypes takes effort on the part of Black women (Harris-Perry, 2011). Black women’s efforts could be better spent on curricular and cocurricular engagement.
Each of the women wrestled with identity conflicts and pressures that made them believe they had to choose one aspect of their identity over another. Sometimes this meant that the women felt as if they were in a liminal space where they could not fully fit into one identity or the other. For example, Vivian questioned if she had to choose between being a leader in an activity she loved, cheerleading, and her identity as a Black woman. Vivian was voted by her peers to be the student voice for change in campus culture. However, her image and the ways in which she served as a leader were policed on her campus—where some forms of activism were treated as more respectable than others. Vivian’s choice between her leadership and her other identities exhibits long-standing issues of policing the activities and appearances of Black women. Tweedy similarly handled conflicts between her work in racial justice and her identity as a woman. Some of the challenges that Tweedy noted of being a women leader within a social movement in the 1960s may have shifted in recent social movements. The Black Lives Matter movement, propelled forward by the hashtag #blacklivesmatter, was largely created by Black women (Garza, 2014). Yet even with these promising changes, Black women still have reported many instances of having to fight to be heard or understood in contemporary times (Kelly & Winkle-Wagner, 2017; O’Connor, 2002; Patton & Croom, 2017; Winkle-Wagner, 2009a).
While all four women highlighted identity pressures and identity conflicts, they also identified ways to challenge stereotypes and assert their individuality. Ultimately, all four Black women asserted their own unique version of Black womanhood. These findings point out the importance of focusing on within-group differences among Black women (Crenshaw, 1991; Kelly et al., 2017; Kelly & Winkle-Wagner, 2017; Winkle-Wagner, 2015) and also the need for more research that allows Black women to self-define their identities rather than play into identity politics that were inconsistent with how they viewed themselves (Crenshaw, 1991). Consistent with the intersectionality where one can find ways to assert multiple overlapping identities, Black feminist thinkers have long maintained the necessity of Black women’s self-definition and self-valuing as a key component of Black feminist theorizing, and these data offer compelling evidence of the importance of these efforts (Collins, 1986, 2002). The women cultivated different pathways toward finding ways to define self, giving multiple examples of how Black women might be able to find authentic selves. For instance, Dawn found a way to embrace her Christianity and her Blackness through founding a group that focused on Black Christianity. Faygen advocated for herself with her advisor and maintained her sense of self by focusing on her academic pursuits in the safety of her design studio. Vivian embraced her Black womanhood and her identity as a leader. Tweedy brought together her Blackness, womanhood, and fortitude as a change agent to find her authentic self through multiple leadership opportunities both on and off campus, defying gendered roles in the 1960s.
This study offers insight into how Black women actively dispelled stereotypes and how Black women identified positive notions of self. There remains a paucity of research that explores the experiences of Black women in an in-depth way so that the findings can offer insight into nuanced ways of negotiating Black womanhood (but see Patton & Croom, 2017; Winkle-Wagner, 2015). Participants made connections to literature on high expectations, such as the Black superwoman myth, that Black women need no help or support (Woods-Giscombé, 2010). These narratives that demonstrate negative stereotypes and having to prove one’s intellectual worth speak back to research only done on Black men (Harper & Quaye, 2007; Strayhorn, 2014). The identification of ways that Black women resisted stereotypes and dealt with identity politics is important because it is a shift away from deterministic views of race and gender where individuals have little control over what happens to them because of oppressive social structures. The findings of this study suggest that Black women can and have, for quite some time, identified ways to assert their own agency, self-determination, and self-identification of Black womanhood.
Perhaps one of the reasons the Black women were successful in defying stereotypes and expectations that were placed on them was because of the support of like-minded individuals (e.g., community members, student leaders of protests in the 1960s, and Black women peers in their academic major). However, these instances had to be intentionally sought out by already marginalized students. The onus is on the campus faculty, staff, and administrators to create integrated organizations and spaces on campus to cultivate students’ holistic growth (Luedke, 2017; Porter, 2017). Curriculum and programs that educate campus communities about stereotypes are needed. Students should be taught how to resist and cope with intersecting systems of oppression. Institutions need to work to dismantle oppressive systems.
Implications and Recommendations
There are implications for research, theory, and practice based on these findings. Given the finding that the Black women in this study identified ways to self-value and self-define their own notions of Black womanhood, there is a need to embrace theoretical models that center agency and self-determination. There are assets-based approaches that are currently being used in educational research that might be useful theoretical tools for research and work with Black women. We studied Black women using intersectionality (which was rooted in Black feminist thinking), critical life stories, and the Unchosen Me. More work should be done with assets-based theoretical foundations (Reavis, 2018).
Research that documents Black women’s experiences from a critical and intersectional lens can provide evidence that institutions need to spur change. Campus stakeholders such as administrators, student affairs practitioners, faculty, and staff who assess existing support structures aimed at supporting Students of Color can determine whether these services include Black women with intersecting identities. For example, campuses could offer support networks such as sister circles (see Rentfro, 2017) that emphasize Black women’s challenges and triumphs on campus (see also Winkle-Wagner, 2009a). One way to better serve Black women, and perhaps other communities of Students of Color, is to reject one-size-fits-all models as they are likely not productive and may be detrimental to Black women (Winkle-Wagner, 2009a). Often multicultural offices, diversity programs, and scholarships are centered on race while women’s centers and gender studies’ programs are focused on gender. Never the two shall meet. Innovative centers of inclusion, equity, and excellence could be formed around institutional demographics and student needs with staff in these centers that are educated on intersectionality, critical theories, and holistic college student development. Institutions who hire, prepare, and reward faculty and staff for their intersectional and holistic support of students inside and outside of the classroom are needed (Luedke, 2017). For instance, Bensimon (2004) developed an equity scorecard (Harris & Bensimon, 2007) where campuses can be evaluated on their equity-related practice and these kinds of initiatives could be a way to monitor possible rewards for holistic practices. Curriculum that prepares graduates to leave campuses prepared to work and engage without losing their sense of self (Rockquemore & Laszloffy, 2008) is also dire for marginalized students. The narratives of Black women in this study resist the status quo, suppression, and oppression of identities and call for higher education institutions and the actors within them to fully include all students.
Conclusion
The narratives in this study are representative of some of the expectations of Blackness that the Black women faced while in college, particularly at PWIs. While some PWIs recruit and retain Black students through cultural centers and diversity programs that bring students a sense of a Black community on campus (Patton, 2010), many institutional efforts are not nuanced in ways that address the diverse needs of students. This study brings to life intraracial differences between the Black women participants while also pointing to ways institutions can support rather than hinder intersectional identity development. There is not a single monolithic group of Black women on college campuses (Fries-Britt, 2002). Programs and educators who create progressive and liberating opportunities for students will help them not just graduate, but to thrive (Kelly et al., 2017).
Footnotes
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