Psychological Heuristics and Faculty of Color: Racial Battle Fatigue and Tenure/Promotion

Arnold, Noelle Witherspoon; Crawford, Emily R.; Khalifa, Muhammad

doi:10.1080/00221546.2016.11780891

Cited by 72 publications

(64 citation statements)

References 35 publications

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“…As has been documented in other studies (Lisnic, Zajicek, and Morimoto 2019;Arnold, Crawford, and Khalifa 2016;Perna 2001), the tenure process and work in postsecondary education overall are made more complex and can be more challenging for people who hold less power and whose identities may be treated as a liability in academic culture. For example, multiple texts discuss how the history of tenure in the academy ignores the needs of faculty members who are not white, childless, able-bodied men (Benard, Paik, and Correll 2007;Dolmage 2017;Guarino and Borden 2017;Mamimseishvili and Lee 2018).…”

Section: Faculty Reflecting On Balance and Perception Of Tenure Achiementioning

confidence: 86%

Identities, academic cultures, and relationship intersections: postsecondary dance educators’ lived experiences pursuing tenure

Duffy

2020

Research in Dance Education

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The political hierarchies and assumptions built around tenure and promotion processes across U.S. postsecondary institutions are fraught with complexities and have a significant effect on eventual outcomes. A tenure case's success or failure could depend on many factors, possibly including circumstances out of a candidate's control such as the institution's geographical location, dominant cultures and systems in operation, ineffective mentorship, unclear policy, and, most relevant to this article, faculty members' identities. Faculty who hold minority or underrepresented status in relation to race, ethnicity, gender expression, sexuality, social class, age, or ability can face marginalization, bias, and work responsibilities unrelated to professional goals and personal needs. In this article, I describe how tenure-track dance faculty perceive their experiences working toward tenure through analysis of 50 participant survey responses. The participants' interpretations of how power, privilege, and identity affect(ed) their paths to tenure highlight problematic, sometimes discriminatory practices in academia and provide rich ground for cultivating improved mentorship practices and creating institutional and departmental policies that promote diversity, inclusion, and equity, while also supporting each individual's strengths and goals. Further, the participants in this study offer useful strategies for understanding and/or establishing worklife balance, setting boundaries, and prioritizing tenure responsibilities.

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Section: Faculty Reflecting On Balance and Perception Of Tenure Achiementioning

confidence: 86%

Identities, academic cultures, and relationship intersections: postsecondary dance educators’ lived experiences pursuing tenure

Duffy

2020

Research in Dance Education

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“…What does true healing look like? In another paper (Okello et al, under review), we address these questions around healing, but we raise the questions here given what Arnold et al (2016) found about excessive coping among Black educators. Although the participants in this study demonstrated resilience in the midst of racism, we want to push back on this notion of resilience or grit (Duckworth & Duckworth, 2016).…”

Section: Discussion and Implications For Practicementioning

confidence: 97%

Strategies for Practicing Self-Care from Racial Battle Fatigue

Quaye¹,

Karikari²,

Allen³

et al. 2019

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Racial battle fatigue is the exhaustion that People of Color feel from repeated exposure to racism, as well as its negative impact on their emotional, physiological, and psychological health and wellbeing. Although People of Color have engaged in resistance and resilience in the midst of racism, it still takes a toll on their bodies. In this article, we focus specifically on Black student affairs educators, given the racial battle fatigue they navigate working in a helping profession where they are often expected to prioritize students’ needs above their own. Using a narrative methodological approach, we centered the stories of 35 Black student affairs educators across various institutions to identify the strategies they used to practice self-care in the midst of racial battle fatigue, including unplugging from the people and places that caused them harm, building community with other Black educators, caring for their bodies, finding safe spaces, and using counseling. We offer implications for practice for Black student affairs educators and those working to support them in navigating racial battle fatigue.

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“…For example, Black women shared stories about being in a position of authority and not having their authority recognized (Grier-Reed & Ajayi, 2019). These women sought support as they labored to determine how to appropriately assert themselves and their authority at the institution without being seen as the angry Black woman (Arnold et al, 2016;Corbin et al, 2018;Haynes, 2019). AFAM was a resource helping to fill in the institutional gaps in these spaces of structural intersectionality, where students also questioned how to use their education to help their communities and how to bridge college life with home cultures.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For Black women racialized labor includes a continuing battle of perception in terms of being perceived as angry and being perceived as strong, where ghetto is a synonym for the angry Black woman (Corbin, Smith, & Garcia, 2018). In Black contexts such as mother/daughter relationships, strength may be associated with leadership (Oshin & Milan, 2020), but in a patriarchal system where being strong is associated with masculinity, strong Black women may be unwelcomed, scrutinized, and pressured to be nice even while facing discrimination and adversity (Arnold et al, 2016).…”

Section: Alyssa Maplesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…According to Williams et al (2019) even in the face of direct discrimination, People of Color often feel they must work to hide their fatigue or irritation in order to remain unthreatening to white people. For Black people in particular there may be an impetus to disguise emotions in order to avoid being seen as the angry Black person (Arnold et al, 2016;Corbin et al, 2018). Yet, this coping strategy comes at a cost.…”

Section: Alyssa Maplesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Emergence of Racialized Labor and Racial Battle Fatigue in the African American Student Network (AFAM)

Grier‐Reed

Maples

Williams-Wengerd

et al. 2020

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Although little may be new with respect to the lived experience of racialized labor for People of Color navigating whiteness and white spaces, this study is the first to identify racialized labor in everyday life. Adapting consensual qualitative research methods to a phenomenological frame, we examined 277 notes summarizing weekly discussions in the African American Student Network (AFAM) over a 13-year time period. Co-facilitated by Black faculty and graduate students, AFAM was a space for Black undergraduates to make meaning of their experiences and find community on campus. We defined racialized labor as the ongoing process of navigating hostile environments steeped in a white racial frame and identified six categories: (1) self-monitoring/self-policing; (2) flexing/making adjustments; (3) questioning; (4) affirming; (5) avoiding; and, (6) being the change or standing up for justice. Racial battle fatigue was one outcome of all the racialized labor—primarily anger, stress, frustration, hypervigilance, pressure, and exhaustion along with numbness, shock, sadness and disappointment. Both racialized labor and racial battle fatigue also occurred at the intersections of students’ lives in structural, political, and representational ways. Future studies that capture the ways in which racialized labor in everyday life is enacted by People of Color are needed. The ability to name racialized labor provides an important analytical tool for distinguishing the ongoing process of navigating racism from negative consequences such as racial battle fatigue. This line of research also has implications for creating spaces that facilitate racialized labor and wellbeing for Black people and People of Color.

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Psychological Heuristics and Faculty of Color: Racial Battle Fatigue and Tenure/Promotion

Cited by 72 publications

References 35 publications

Identities, academic cultures, and relationship intersections: postsecondary dance educators’ lived experiences pursuing tenure

Identities, academic cultures, and relationship intersections: postsecondary dance educators’ lived experiences pursuing tenure

Strategies for Practicing Self-Care from Racial Battle Fatigue

The Emergence of Racialized Labor and Racial Battle Fatigue in the African American Student Network (AFAM)

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