The upheavals caused by the COVID-19 pandemic continue to affect the lives of faculty across the globe. Inasmuch as the pandemic brought profound levels of anxiety, loss, and turmoil, it also created an opportunity to address ineffective and unjust policies in academia. For Black women academics, reflections on the pandemic do not linger on the realignment, reinvention, and reinvigoration of their professional lives because alignment, invention, and invigoration as fully accepted peers in the academy have never existed for them. Instead, the opportunity now is for Black women faculty to step into a space that has never been fully accessible to them as professionals. The pandemic provided an opportunity to recognize pervasive and systemic inequalities for minoritized individuals and communities that have always been reflected in the academy and to create an environment of inclusion and empowerment for everyone. Reimagining academia as an inclusive environment means intentionally challenging racial stereotypes and promoting spaces where Black women faculty feel included and connected.
TopPandemic Within A Pandemic
The challenges of the pandemic affected all faculty at all institutions; however, Black women faculty at large were disproportionately affected because the pandemic magnified already existing consequences of structural racism, persistent health disparities, and pervasive inequalities (Njoku et al., 2021). Black faculty faced increased personal and professional pressure due to the pandemic’s effects on Black communities dealing with rampant illness, unemployment, and death. In fact, rates of infection, hospitalization, and death from COVID-19 were twice as high for Black Americans, and the underlying conditions contributed to the staggering rates of mortality associated with race for hospitalized patients with COVID-19 (Rubin-Miller et. al., 2020; Yehia et. al., 2020.)
In addition, as a result of the racially charged experiences that fueled the #Black Lives Matter movement, Black faculty, professional staff, and students suffered collective racial trauma (Sosoo et al., 2022). Black women were at the forefront of the racial storm that had been brewing for decades. Black women have always been at the center of the liberation movement and felt compelled during the pandemic to continue in the struggle through protest, marching, teaching, and supporting the Black community in this time of intense racial crisis (Njoku & Evans, 2022).
The COVID-19 pandemic openly revealed to the larger society the underlying disparities and injustices that the Black community has always known, and that gave rise to the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on People of Color (Centers for Disease Control, 2021; Dubay et al., 2020; Sneed et al., 2020). The multi-layered plight of Black Americans during the COVID-19 pandemic has been called “a pandemic on a pandemic” (Laurencin & Walker, 2020), and American society could no longer simply look the other way. Further, amid the tumult following George Floyd’s murder, racial issues could no longer be avoided because the shocking images permeated the media. America had to confront the racial reckoning that unfolded in real-time during an unfolding mass health crisis (Reny & Newman, 2021; Powell, 2022).
In the academy, the upheaval also reverberated. Perhaps counter-intuitively, the pandemic also created an opening for broader ways of thinking, enriched worldviews, and new methods of teaching, service, and scholarship. There have been opportunities to discuss race and racism in a new way, and this has opened the door for new alliances with other faculty members who wish to join in solidarity against systemic racism that became so evident to the world. In order to allow this crucial work to continue, however, it is important to understand the complexities that currently exist and the underlying conditions that gave rise to the inequities in the first place.