Walking while Wading Under
Walking over while wading under
The struggle is real I hear people say
While trying to break bread and keep the lights on today
Privilege gives you keys to drive
Saving your feet many miles of aches and pains
While other folks keep pressing past every ache and pain
Walking over while wading under the pressures of today
The struggle was real I heard my ancestors say
While trying to pick cotton and keep their babies fed each day
Walking over while wading under the discrimination of yesterday is today
The struggle is still real I yell and scream each day
While trying to get through these invisible yet visible lines of boundaries
I walk over while wading under unfair predicaments
I walk over while wading under biases and prejudices
I walk over while wading under feelings of self-disbelief
The struggle is happening now
While being a Black woman in this white world full of ups and downs
—Erica Reid
Women of color within higher education settings are deeply afflicted by racism. The need to “wade” through as referenced in the poem above, is a result of what Lorde (1984) refers to as a “rejection of difference” (p. 116). This rejection is a direct result of racism, sexism, and discriminatory practices in predominately white institutions (PWIs) centered on Eurocentric norms and traditions (Green et al., 2018). Over the past two decades, the attempts to integrate diversity have fallen short, most evident in the number of completed doctorates within the United States from people of color. Less than 6% of earned doctoral recipients are people of color (Rios et al., 2019). This is customary when people of color attend PWIs, especially women of color.
Higher education is one of the most unwelcoming spaces for women of color as it becomes a terrain full of embedded innuendos resulting from the residual effects of slavery. Each aspect of the college experience is complex for Black women due to the multidimensional crossing or intersection of our layered identities within a Eurocentric, hegemonic environment. This decussation causes the experience to be what Bell (1987) and later Crenshaw (1989) referenced in Critical Legal Studies (CLS) as “greater than the sum of racism and sexism” that requires an intersectional lens to deconstruct (Crenshaw, 1989, p. 140). Through her work, Crenshaw (1989) illuminated the structural elements within the judicial system that greatly impacted the plight of Black women’s cases through the crossing of their identities. The impact of racism and sexism was greater at the point of intersection as each identity compounds the impact of racism within the environment.
Hill Collins and Blige (2016) also stressed the relevance of applying an intersectional approach to analyzing the experiences of Black and Brown people to dismantle the complexities hidden in the use of a single Eurocentric viewpoint. Women of color in academia often experience hegemonic masculinity, sexism, and racism within what Jones (2021b) defined as a “hostile” environment (Jones, 2021b, p.1) as doctoral students and faculty members. The intersection of being female and a person of color within higher education settings increases cultural and social frictions (Gray-Nicolas & Nash, 2021). The juncture of identities within academia often results in harmful experiences. For example, racial harm increased during the pandemic for faculty of color due to existing programmatic inequities (James et al., 2021). Furthermore, James et al. (2021) described four conditions (e.g., hyper-cognition, hyper-isolation, hyper-distress, and hyper-reactivity) that faculty of color experience. This type of harm has impacted the trajectory of Black women, who, prior to the pandemic, like men of color, are challenged by what Winters (2020) describes as Black fatigue; the social and emotional trauma dealt with every day while entering spaces as a Black or Brown person. This tension is intensified within academia, especially for Black women, as they are challenged with layered intersections.
Examining the experiences of women of color at the varying stages they engage in higher education is critical to decentering the hegemonic narrative which sustains whiteness in academia. One of the most significant processes of centering diversified populations within academia is through the understanding of their experiences within PWIs (Matias et al., 2019). Sharing life experiences is a critical part of Black and Brown people’s culture. Yosso (2005) like Ladson-Billings (2000) referred to this type of knowledge as community cultural wealth. Both stressed the relevance in recognizing communal knowledge as a vital aspect to understanding how to best create learning for Black and Brown students. The power in perspective of people of color is most actualized through storytelling where counternarratives constitute knowledges of different forms (Crenshaw, 1989; Jones, 2021a; Solórzano & Yosso, 2002). This chapter will apply a counter-narrative, approach to deconstruct the intersectionality of the lived experiences women of color had at PWIs in the southwest region of the United States. Through this lens, micro-aggressions (i.e., subtle daily attacks on people of color), discriminatory environments, racism, sexism, and hegemonic procedures are examined. Furthermore, counternarratives decrease the single-linear view about women of color within higher education.
Specifically, through the critical race theory (CRT) lens, three women of color examine the intersections of their race, gender, economic status to decenter “a majoritarian story,” where whiteness, hegemonic views of men reflecting upper-class ideas are centered (Jones, 2021a, p.6). The narratives of three women of color are shared by examining the following: (a) completing a doctorate, (b) starting a tenure track position, and (c) navigating mid-tenure during the pandemic. Within the counternarratives shared, one of the five tenets of CRT; “the centrality of experiential knowledge” will be applied (Yosso, 2005, p. 74).