Monitor and Adjust: Navigating Academe Through the Performance of Equity and Justice

Introduction

There exists research that captures the experiences of Black women navigating historically white institutions of higher education both as faculty and as students. For example, Walkington (2017), asserts that power systems beyond academe result in a socially constructed and complex set of social inequalities for Black women faculty and graduate students working in higher education. Moreover, Dancy et al. (2018) discuss the notion of plantation politics to capture the logics of white superiority and Black denigration functioning to reproduce oppression in historically white institutions of higher education. Thus, despite participation of Black women in higher education for more than a century as both students and employees, they are continually met with personal and professional challenges. On the other hand, research concerned with the lived experiences of Black women who are simultaneously non-faculty employees and graduate students in historically white institutions is warranted. It is the space of a non-faculty employee, with no desire to become faculty that the author is positioned.

It is the author’s contention and experience that Black women who enter the space of academe as staff and students countering race, gender, and class as the performance of equity and justice obfuscates true liberation. Henry et al. (2018) reveal that co-occurring discrimination related to race and gender manifests in cold, unwelcoming environments, racial microaggressions, and isolation. Issues of class are raised by hooks (2000) as she contends students from poverty and those from working-class backgrounds have no place in academe unless they are willing to give up significant parts of who they are. Indeed, during her time as both an employee and student of a historically white institution, the author experienced the ongoing conflict about which parts of herself would be accepted, whether she in fact needed to give up parts of herself for her own development and understanding which elements of which interactions were tied to race, gender, and class. The author was caught firmly between the tension of feeling blessed by the opportunity for learning and growth, while stressed about the physical, emotional, intellectual, and psychological costs of the learning and growth. This chapter describes how early socialization and formative professional experiences shaped how the author navigated the historically white institution of higher education as a student and employee. For example, the author entered the historically white institution of corporate America without an awareness or critique of the intertwining nature of race, gender, and class. Growing up low-income communities, surrounded mostly by Black women, the author recalls that conversations she was exposed to only touched the periphery of racism and gender oppression, perhaps because those women also lacked the information for deep analysis or perhaps because safety and survival were more pressing concerns. The author was taught explicitly and implicitly the importance of being a STRONGBLACKWOMAN who relied only on her Christian faith in God, who should expect her reward in heaven for the pain endured on this side. The author was introduced to the single word STRONGBLACKWOMAN as referenced by Walker-Barnes (2014) in her analysis of patriarchal and religious oppression of Black women that begins in church and often extends to other areas of her life. Or, as noted by Collins (2000), perhaps it is in the failing, inner-city public schools and the increasing number of Black children attending them where Black teachers have lost the institutional memory of activism could be why the author and the Black women in her life could not adequately discuss or disrupt racism, sexism, or classism.