Hidden in plain sight: Uncovering the emotional labor of Black women students at historically White colleges and universities.

Abstract

We utilized the emotional labor triangle to understand how 16 Black women students who attended Historically white colleges and universities (HWCUs) navigated gendered-racialized oppressive environments that mattered to their academic success. This study contributes to a gap in the literature, as much of the research focused on students of color without disaggregating for gender or other social identities. In addition, the literature is scant on experiences of Black women students use of emotional labor. Emotional labor has largely been studied from a management perspective. Through qualitative semi-structured interviews, we examined the emotional labor Black women expended while pursuing their undergraduate degree. We employed a qualitative, intersectional, methodological approach to foreground historically marginalized voices and situated the study in the hypervisibility Black women participants described feeling as space invaders on their historically White undergraduate campus and at the same time the invisibleness of their voice and masking of their feelings as they encountered gendered racism. Further, we emphasized the emotional toll and stress that may occur for Black women when they do not utilize engaged coping mechanisms while expending their emotional labor. The study holds implications for educators to address emotional labor inequities within HWCUs.

Braids and bridges: A critical collaborative autoethnography of racially minoritized women teaching intergroup dialogue.

“…As we walk along the bridge from scholars who examined IGD from the perspective of IGD faculty and facilitators (Kelly, 2017; Khuri, 2004; Lau et al, 2011; Okello, 2020; Varghese, 2020; Zúñiga et al, 2011), our findings bear witness to challenges and supports WOC faculty face teaching IGD. The challenges we encountered of lack of resources, little power, especially when we were untenured WOC and teaching courses anchored in a social justice education pedagogy in patriarchal-centered spaces, were isolating and exhausting.…”

“…Support outside the classroom came from trusted colleagues and campus leaders who helped us obtain resources for the course to move forward. Challenges in doing IGD work are rooted in the emotional labor that is required to teach IGD (Kelly, 2017; Zúñiga et al, 2012) and the limited resources available to sustain the work (Zúñiga et al, 2007).…”

“…A few faculty of color have written about their solo experiences teaching or facilitating IGD. Kelly’s (2017) chapter chronicled her journey teaching IGD and revealed that her own racial identity development as a Black woman greatly impacted how she taught a race-focused IGD course. Similarly, Okello (2020) documented his experiences as a Black cisgender, heterosexual man teaching IGD to undergraduate students.…”

“…and (c) How have our identities shaped how and why we teach IGD? This study contributes to the number of texts and articles that documented the emotional labor of WOC in academia (Constanti & Gibbs, 2004; Gutiérrez y Muhs et al, 2012; Kelly et al, 2021), while offering insights specific to IGD.…”

Effects of Natural Mentoring Relationships on College Students’ Mental Health: The Role of Emotion Regulation

“…Future studies should examine whether and how natural mentors longitudinally affect emotion regulation skills and mental health with a more robust sample of marginalized students. This type of analysis may be especially relevant to students who hold multiple marginalized identities, given that they often experience stressors from simultaneous forms of oppression (Jones et al, 2020; Kelly et al, 2019). Moreover, given evidence that certain emotion regulation strategies may be more normative and/or adaptive within certain cultural contexts (Butler et al, 2007; Ford & Mauss, 2015; Hampton, et al, 2019; Matsumoto et al, 2008), it is essential to continue exploring interactions between students’ social identities and psychosocial functioning.…”