Gendered racism : the lived experiences of black undergraduate women at an HPWI : microaggressions, space and culture

Abstract

[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT AUTHOR'S REQUEST.] This current study examined how Black undergraduate women experience gendered racism at a historically, predominately white university in the South. With a lack of studies on Black women's college experiences, I took a critical intersectional approach to interrogate the role of racism and patriarchy together by utilizing a Critical Race Feminism perspective. With the approach I was able to explore and examine the lived experiences of gendered racism, gendered racial microaggressions in white-maled spaces on campus, Black-maled spaces on campus, as well as white women's spaces on campus. Using a critical race feminism theoretical, conceptual and methodological framework, I interviewed 25 Black undergraduate women who attended a state-flagship university in the Mid-Southern region of the US. I also conducted ethnographic fieldwork by shadowing 5-8 different participants from June of 2015 to January 2017 on campus and off campus. The findings of this study show that Black women received gendered racial microaggressions from white men, Black men, white women students and professors on campus. Black women also receive these microaggressions in white-maled spaces and Black-maled spaces. Furthermore, Black women experience challenges that prevents their acquirement of social capital based on the way their raced and gendered bodies are read. Lastly, Black women have no spaces on campus that serve both their raced and gendered identity together and participate in emotional labor that white students and Black men students do not experience.