Hidden in Plain Sight: The Black Women's Blueprint for Institutional Transformation in Higher Education

Abstract

Many institutional leaders find themselves struggling to achieve racial equity in a sociopolitical context where hatemongering, misogyny, xenophobia, heterosexism, and racism have been normalized and minoritized students, staff, and faculty have been relegated to the margins. Few institutional leaders (e.g., presidents, provosts, chancellors, boards of trustees, deans) understand how, why, and the extent to which minoritized peoples are affected by multiple and overlapping forms of oppression. As a result, institutional change efforts to transform campuses into identity-affirming and socially just learning environments often prove ineffective because college and university leaders typically engage in single-axis identity politics to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion. In this article, the authors challenge institutional leaders to take up intersectionality as a method of engaging in lasting transformational change that promises to advance racial equity in higher education. The authors also expose the limitations of existing institutional change models by highlighting their intersectional failures and prompt readers to imagine Black women as possibility models for institutional change that transforms higher education and advances racial equity.

“They Need to Hear Our Voices”: A Multidimensional Framework of Black College Women’s Sociopolitical Development and Activism

“…Consistent with scholarship on the developmental implications of Black youths’ exposure to and engagement with discrimination (Anderson et al, 2018) and political activism (Hope et al, 2018; Hope & Jagers, 2014), the participants discussed the impact of these and other events (e.g., anti-immigrant sentiments, the reversal of LGBTQ+ rights, and the rescindment of environmental protections) on their political ideologies and belief systems. For example, the women contested institutional responses to racial bias incidents, including campus policing procedures and administrators’ insistence on characterizing anti-Black violence as incidental rather than tied to a history of racial trauma against Black students on campus (Dancy et al, 2018; Patton & Haynes, 2018).…”

The Social Science of Institutional Transformation: Intersectional Change in the Academy

“…While academic institutions often seem stuck in maintaining conventional paths to institutional power, an intersectional approach to equity forces a rethinking of social science knowledge. And it is through the diversity of knowledge that comes with intersectionality that new knowledge is most likely to emerge (Patton and Haynes, 2018 ; Laursen and De Welde, 2019 ; Hofstra et al, 2020 ).…”

“…Intersectional analysis thus involves looking at the processes by which configurations of intersectional social relations and institutional sites arise (Choo and Ferree, 2010 ). By adopting intersectionality in programs to address equity in the academy, I argue that social sciences helped design strategies and inform notions of their own representation and overall mechanisms of institutional change (see Patton and Haynes, 2018 ).…”

“…Next, I consider the explicit introduction of intersectionality into ADVANCE as an important discursive moment for fostering equity for women with intersectional identities, particularly BIPOC women. As social scientists adopted an intersectional lens, they furthered the possibilities of transformation through the intersectional production of knowledge and continue to move the academy to structural changes to generate a culture of equity through the recognition of minoritized women of color (Patton and Haynes, 2018 ).…”

Juxtaposing #BlackGirlMagic as “empowering and problematic:” composite narratives of Black women in college.

“…Thompson shared in an interview with the L.A. Times, “I say ‘magic’ because it’s something that people don’t always understand … sometimes our accomplishments might seem to come out of thin air, because a lot of times, the only people supporting us are other Black women” (Thomas, 2015, n. p). Using BGM as a platform, Thompson catalyzed an opportunity to celebrate Black women’s achievements, success, and resilience (e.g., in sports, movies, education, and music) despite Black women’s historical legacy of adversity in society (Collins, 2000; hooks, 1981; Patton & Haynes, 2018).…”