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

Abstract

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.

From Antiblackness to Cultural Health in Higher Education

“…Ivey et al [12] assert that Soul Wounds are a result of historical trauma for Indigenous People and People of Color in the United States, where "African Americans have their own version of the Soul Wound [as] a result of continued individual and institutional racism since the time of slavery and 'Jim Crow' segregation" [12] (p. 35). Racial battle fatigue [13] is a consequence of these Soul Wounds and can include stress, frustration, exhaustion, and depression [14]; however, there is also the possibility for healing.…”

“…Although previous research has focused on the benefits of collective coping and culturally-specific strategies [15][16][17][18][19], few studies conceptualize cultural health as we do. Exceptions include Grier-Reed and Ajayi [15] and perhaps Grier-Reed, Maples et al [14] who identify the importance of therapeutic counterspaces for working through racialized labor in ways that buffer racial battle fatigue and connect to psychological liberation in order to achieve cultural health. In contrast, the predominant use of the term cultural health focuses on mental or physical health in different cultural groups and/or health disparities across racial groups.…”

“…Achieving and maintaining cultural health in the face of antiblackness is no small feat. What can be considered a labor of love, the labor involved in achieving cultural health as a Black person can aptly be described as racialized labor, a term coined by Grier-Reed, Maples et al [14]. These authors identified six categories of racialized labor, including the two categories of questioning and affirming [14].…”

“…. [W]hiteness" and the category of affirming involved "affirming and defining Blackness" [14] (p. 112). Both are necessary to develop a sense of pride and resilience in one's cultural background (i.e., cultural health).…”

“…In addition, the group has been found to be therapeutic, providing safety, validation, connectedness, intellectual stimulation, resilience, empowerment, and a home base on campus in ways that overlap with traditional therapeutic factors in group work [21,27]. Finally, AFAM has been identified as a sanctuary for coping with racial microaggressions and a space for working through racialized labor and combatting racial battle fatigue [14,29].…”