Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic, racial injustice, and civil unrest of 2020 disproportionately impacted Black and Brown communities jolting “progressive” academic systems and exposing inherent inequities. Such inequality warrants authentic activism to promote social awareness and facilitate a culture of collaboration, respect, and inclusivity. This chapter centers on three early-career Black and Brown women leaders associated with counseling programs who voice their positionality statements, experiences, and views to align with relevant theoretical concepts. Black feminism, postcolonial feminism, and critical race theory pedagogies serve as the authors' foundation, highlighting race, culture, gender, and intersectionality to unmask cultural oppression in higher education. Committed to their lives' work as academics, researchers, and mental health practitioners, the authors assume substantial professional responsibilities and engage in emotional labor adopting a sense of family and mothering to support students. Finally, the authors provide suggestions to undo injustices during turbulent times.
TopBackground
As the world faces the devastation of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, the economic, physical, emotional, and psychological impact on individuals, families, and communities is extensive. Explicitly, the Black and Brown communities experience disproportionate rates of COVID-19 related deaths, infections due to deficiencies in access to healthcare, and underlying conditions such as hypertension, diabetes, respiratory illnesses, obesity, and other social determinants of health (CDC, 2020a; CDC, 2020b). Specific to social determinants of health, individuals who already struggle with mental illness or substance abuse face additional challenges, including unemployment, housing insecurities, and inaccessibility to behavioral healthcare (SAMHSA, 2020). In mid-December 2020, the nation’s number of COVID-19 related deaths was more than 318,000 and climbing (Stobbe, 2020). Although COVID-19 vaccinations are well underway for administering in the United States (CDC, 2020a), “vaccination fear” among Black and Brown communities is prevalent because of the nation’s history of deceit, exploitation, and inequitable care from the government medical and research communities (Jones, 2020).
Key Terms in this Chapter
Intersectionality: The interconnection and overlapping systems of multiple social identities, including but not limited to race, ethnicity, nationality, gender, ability, sexual status, sexual orientation, etc.
Cultural Taxation: A term coined by Amado Padilla in 1994 describes the extra burden of service responsibilities placed upon minority faculty and staff to serve as ethnic representatives as unofficial diversity consultants within the university setting.
Sojourner Syndrome: A process that describes the multiple roles and social identities of Black women to foster resilience in oppressive occurrences.
Microaggression: A common, indirect, subtle, intentional, or unintentional discrimination interaction or behavior against persons of a marginalized group.
Authentic Leadership: Authentic leadership is a leadership theory that focuses on transparency, morals, and ethics to promote trustworthiness, balanced decision-making, and self-awareness to improve followers' well-being.
Critical Race Theory: A theoretical lens that explores race/culture and racism in the dominant discourse and attends to how perceptions of race impact victims.
Black Feminism: A philosophy that concentrates on Black women's experiences and viewpoints.
Resilience Fatigue: A cumulative response to prolonged or complicated or traumatic stresses.
Transformative Leadership: Transformative leadership is a leadership theory that focuses on inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation, individual consideration, and idealized influence to promote trust and loyalty among leaders and followers.
Postcolonial Feminism: A feminist perspective developed in response to Western feminism that focused on Western women's experiences to categorize women in other countries.
Black Strategic Mothering: A philosophy that identifies how Black women make decisions in their couples’ relationship, family, and profession with a more significant focus on the Black community's survival.
Racial Battle Fatigue: A cumulative response to racial oppression coined about people of color in historical White institutions.