black feminist thought and qualitative research in education

Black Feminist Thought and Qualitative Research in Education

Black feminist thought and qualitative research in education is guided by a particular understanding of the learning strategies informed by Black women’s historical experiences with race, gender, and class. Scholars of Black feminist thought remind us of a Black feminist pedagogy that fosters a mindset of intellectual inclusion. Black feminist thought challenges Western intellectual traditions of exclusivity and chauvinism. This article presents a synopsis of the nature and scope of Black feminist thought and qualitative research in education. Further, this article highlights the work of scholars who describe the importance of an Afrocentric methodological approach in the field of education because it offers scholars and practitioners a methodological opportunity to promote equality and multiple perspectives.

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Black Feminist Thought as Methodology

In this essay, we rely on a black feminist lens to challenge and extend what is appraised as rigorous research methodology. Inspired by a diverse, intergenerational group of black women referred to as the Black Women's Gathering Place, we employ black feminist thought (BFT) as critical social theory and embrace a more expansive understanding of BFT as critical methodology to analyze the experiences black women share through narrative. Our theoretical and methodological approach offers a pathway for education and research communities to account for the expansive possibilities that black feminism has for theorizing the lives of black women.

What Can We Learn From Black Feminist Thought?What Can We Learn From Black Feminist Thought?

Introduction: plenary on black feminist thought, black feminist thought, black feminist thought: knowledge, consciousness, and the politics of empowerment; de patricia hill collins, learning from the outsider within: the sociological significance of black feminist thought, rural women, anti-poverty strategies, and black feminist thought, intersectionality, black feminist thought, and women-of-color organizing, sweat, display, and blackness.

This essay analyzes two African artifacts—a nkisi and a bieri—in order to parse the utility of liquidity as a Black feminist analytic. Enlarging the concept of media to incorporate these artifacts, the text links diaspora, blackness, and affect to the violence of colonial rupture, while also using an analytic of sweat to explore forms of expressivity that escape capture. Sweat becomes a way to think between two axes within Black feminist thought: the pornographification of the racialized body that Hortense Spillers and others have described, and the joy and critique embedded in Audre Lorde’s erotic, especially in relation to formations of diaspora and spirituality.

Preface: “Be a Mystery”: (The Infinity of) Black Feminist Thought

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Black Feminist Thought and Qualitative Research in Education  

How does one understand the “other” when she is the “other” and few have been able to articulate a definition of the “other” that is acceptable to her and from which she can begin the understanding process?...

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CONTEXTUALIZING OUR BLACK WOMANHOOD

A theoretical understanding of black feminist thought, black feminist thought as methodology, employing black feminist methodology, conclusion: black feminist thought and establishing a black women's community, black feminist thought as methodology : examining intergenerational lived experiences of black women.

A shley P atterson is Assistant Professor of Curriculum and Instruction in the College of Education at The Pennsylvania State University. Correspondence to: Ashley Patterson, College of Education, The Pennsylvania State University, 165 Chambers Building, University Park, PA 16802, USA. Email: [email protected] .

V alerie K inloch is Associate Dean of Diversity, Inclusion, and Community Engagement in the College of Education and Human Ecology, and Professor of Literacy Studies in the Department of Teaching and Learning at The Ohio State University. Correspondence to: Valerie Kinloch, College of Education and Human Ecology, The Ohio State University, 163 Arps Hall, 1945 N. High Street, Columbus, OH 43210, USA. Email: [email protected] .

T anja B urkhard is a PhD candidate in the Multicultural and Equity Studies in Education program at The Ohio State University. Correspondence to: Tanja Burkhard, College of Education and Human Ecology, The Ohio State University, 127 Arps Hall, 1945 N. High Street, Columbus, OH 43210, USA. Email: [email protected] .

R yann R andall is Assistant to the Associate Dean of the Office of Diversity, Inclusion, and Community Engagement in the College of Education and Human Ecology at The Ohio State University, and a graduate student in Multicultural and Equity Studies in Education. Correspondence to: Ryann Randall, College of Education and Human Ecology, The Ohio State University, 163 Arps Hall, 1945 N. High Street, Columbus, OH 43210, USA. Email: [email protected] .

A rianna H oward is a PhD Candidate in the Literacy Studies program in the Department of Teaching and Learning at The Ohio State University. Correspondence to: Arianna Howard, College of Education and Human Ecology, The Ohio State University, 250 Arps Hall, 1945 N. High Street, Columbus, OH 43210, USA. Email: [email protected] .

Aspects of this research were funded by a grant titled “Bringing Service Learning to Life: Service-Learning for All Educators,” from the Corporation of National and Community Service, Learn and Serve program. We thank the reviewers and editors for input and critique that greatly improved earlier versions of the manuscript.

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Ashley Patterson , Valerie Kinloch , Tanja Burkhard , Ryann Randall , Arianna Howard; Black Feminist Thought as Methodology : Examining Intergenerational Lived Experiences of Black Women . Departures in Critical Qualitative Research 1 September 2016; 5 (3): 55–76. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/dcqr.2016.5.3.55

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In this essay, we rely on a black feminist lens to challenge and extend what is appraised as rigorous research methodology. Inspired by a diverse, intergenerational group of black women referred to as the Black Women's Gathering Place, we employ black feminist thought (BFT) as critical social theory and embrace a more expansive understanding of BFT as critical methodology to analyze the experiences black women share through narrative. Our theoretical and methodological approach offers a pathway for education and research communities to account for the expansive possibilities that black feminism has for theorizing the lives of black women.

What legitimately falls under the umbrella of “research” in the academy is constantly evolving and contested by various scholarly camps. Currently, in the context of educational scholarship, rigorous research is constituted as scientific and evidence-based, which signals the quantitative paradigm. 1 Additionally, in traditionally qualitative educational research, definitions of validity and rigor have been highly debated. 2 A positivistic stance toward research that values understanding the world as measureable and quantifiable also signals that an objective truth is an obtainable possibility. Consequently, other epistemologies approaching research from personal/political standpoints that honor multiple, possibly conflicting, positionalities are marginalized. As Patricia Hill Collins notes, prized traditional scholarship is heavily influenced by the positionalities of “elite White men” who have controlled the academic arena since its inception. 3 Thus, the methods and methodologies employed to conduct research that are considered to be rigorous and respectable are often unduly limited. This is especially the case when it comes to research by and about black women.

Individually and collectively, black women experience marginalization at the intersections of various identity markers including race, gender, sexuality, class, religion, nationality, citizenship status, and ability. 4 We focus on race and gender because, in alignment with black feminist scholarship, we believe that neither of these markers can be untangled from the other; both influence black women's standpoints, how we view the world, and how we experience our various truths. In this essay, we forefront the stories and experiences shared among a group of seventeen black women who gathered regularly to give and receive support. Via our narratives, we challenge the rigidity of methodologies that emerge from traditional scholarship, and offer embodied support for a black feminist methodology anchored by qualitative and critical paradigms. Before connecting our work to Collins's articulation of black feminist thought (BFT), we describe the emergence of our group and the theoretical and methodological perspectives adopted at its inception. Then, we provide illustrative examples of the application of black feminist methodology (BFM) as represented in selected stories. Finally, we argue for methodological approaches that center the voices, experiences, and lives of black women.

In spring 2014, approximately 100 teachers, students, community members, and advocates celebrated the success of a three-year, grant-funded critical service-learning initiative led by Valerie Kinloch. The initiative supported public school teachers and educational support staff in developing more than 80 critical service-learning projects in classrooms and community sites across Ohio's Columbus City School (CCS) district. During the culminating event, participants showcased their projects. For example, second graders sold self-designed fundraising raffle tickets advertising an upcoming exhibit of a Tanzanian sculptor they were hosting as an artist-in-residence. A group of middle and high school students addressed how they worked to raise awareness of human trafficking within the local community. High school students recounted visits they made to conferences in Denver, CO, and Atlanta, GA, to talk with educators and policymakers about the importance of community engagement to effective critical service-learning. Excitedly, the high school students also shared their collaborative efforts with a local church to establish the first wheelchair accessible fruit and vegetable community garden. In addition to the projects' observable outcomes, presenters described how they had grown as individuals. They captivated the audience with their candor, and called on those gathered to commit to working alongside schools and local communities.

While the presenters were sharing their projects and reflecting on lessons learned, another story was quietly unfolding. A local catering company had been contracted to provide refreshments for the event and, at the back of the room, a black female employee who was setting up food moved back and forth noiselessly between the preparation room and food display. Initially, when engaged in conversation with event attendees, she provided limited responses and excused herself to the preparation room. By the end of the program, however, it was clear that she had something to say. With Ashley Patterson and Arianna Howard nearby, Valerie thanked her for her service. The woman's response was: “I just have to say, I have thoroughly enjoyed this program. The work that you are doing is just great… I mean, these kids! We need this. Our community needs this,” she said gesturing toward the buzzing room. She continued with a knowing look, “And I also have to say… I never see us in charge. And I cater a lot of events. It is just making me so proud to see you up there doing all of this. You da bomb, girl! You gotta keep doing what you're doing!” 5 After thanking the woman for her sharing, we hurried to conclude the event.

Weeks after the celebration, Ashley, Valerie, and Arianna discussed the event and the many black women who had crossed our paths as a result of the initiative. Unbeknownst to each of us, individually we had been replaying the encounter with the catering woman in our minds. We were haunted by her insistence that the opportunity to witness black women in charge of a large-scale event focused on engendering positivity and social justice initiatives was a rare occasion.

Together, we thought about what prompted the woman to share her thoughts. We considered the many unspoken elements of her heartfelt comments. Intuitively, we understood that she had a love for us that transcended our newly established acquaintance, a love and pride rooted in our shared identities as black women. We agreed that each of us had needed to hear her reinvigorating affirmations. As we expressed thanks for having had this impactful experience, we began to think about how we could continue the conversation beyond our triad and how we could recreate the feelings of visibility, empowerment, and self-love among black women: “Let's get some black women together.” 6  

The notion of creating a space characterized by humanizing visibility, empowered womanhood, and unapologetic self-love aligns with BFT, which responds to the need for black women to have affirming spaces within a society in which we face intersecting forms of oppression because of our multiplicatively marginalized identity markers, race and gender at the forefront. 7 As such, BFT is a necessarily oppositional stance to the features of mainstream society that keep oppressive power dynamics in place and render black women systemically inferior. BFT provides a self-defined lens through which black women can be seen and our experiences understood. 8 According to BFT scholars, black women's knowledge is acquired through our various experiences living, surviving, and thriving within multiple forms of oppression. It is a self-defined, embodied way of knowing. In other words, black women's subjective knowledges represent a standpoint epistemology. 9 According to Collins, this is a way of being that “calls into question the content of what currently passes as truth and simultaneously challenges the process of arriving at that truth.” 10  

Alice Walker describes the power of women who love and revere other women both platonically and romantically, emphasizing the diversity among black women and celebrating our collective existence. 11 She contends, however, that the sociohistorical context that accompanies the word “feminist” is insufficient to capture her meaning fully and instead offers “womanist.” Rhetorically, the feminist movement developed in response to the needs of women in general, but in reality it undertook the needs of white women in particular, and this fuels the yet-unresolved semantic baggage around the terms “feminism” and “feminist.” 12 Walker clarifies, “Womanist is to feminist as purple is to lavender.” 13 In her examination of the womanist caring practices of black teachers, Tamara Beauboeuf-Lafontant writes, “because so many black women have experienced the convergence of racism, sexism, and classism, they often have a particular vantage point on what constitutes evidence… valid action… and morality.” 14 This aligns with Collins's belief that “for individual women, the particular experiences that accrue to living as a black woman in the United States can stimulate a distinctive consciousness concerning our own experiences and society overall.” 15 The varied experiences of individual black women contribute to a collective understanding larger than any single woman herself, and both womanist and feminist approaches to theorizing black womanhood offer productive insight.

Collins identifies the embodied knowing that black women acquire as a form of wisdom, which speaks to and with bell hooks's articulation of critical consciousness as a politicized understanding of the world and one's positionality that fuels action and activism. 16 The evolution from knowledge to resistant action is essential to black feminism. Through our interpretations of the world from black female positionalities, we resist by disallowing dominant, mainstream interpretations of who we are to overshadow, minimize, or discredit our truths. This act of self-definition, a core theme of BFT, is in itself an act of resistance. 17 Furthermore, while a collective understanding among black women is a foundational component of BFT, there is no assumption of sameness. 18 Rather, our experiences—both complementary and contradictory—across the spectrum of intersectional identities are all contributive components that can be black and feminist.

Collins explains that “self” is not defined as the increased autonomy gained by separation from others. Instead, the connectedness among individuals results in deeper, more meaningful forms of self-definition, empowerment, and solidarity. By establishing group solidarity, collective resistance against oppressive forces can be bolstered. BFT seeks neither to flatten the experiences of individual black women into one monolithic description nor to imply that such a standpoint indubitably engenders critical consciousness. 19 A vehicle for making black women's critical consciousness intelligible to black women and others, BFT opens possibilities for black women to resist oppressive forces that limit our self-empowerment and serves as a powerful methodological tool for research by and about black women.

Methodological frameworks impact the form and content of inquiry that researchers apply to the phenomena being theorized. According to Eurocentric, Western, positivist paradigms, there is one single, discoverable, absolute truth. 20 As Shelby Lewis explains, traditional methodological approaches are “based on the values, interests, and views of oppressive power holders,” which makes it the responsibility of researchers utilizing black feminism to demystify the value of subjective theories and methods. 21 Other measures constituting traditional academic research include: an assumed separation between power-bearing researcher(s) and the objectified individuals being researched; forms of data collection that truncate the robust exchange of ideas (e.g., rigidly structured interviews and surveys); and presenting results to serve those who author them more so than the people who inform them. 22 Our interpretations, guided by black feminism as theory and black feminist methodology (which exist staunchly outside of this traditional network), follow a different set of assumptions that emphasize humanizing, engaging, and inclusive practices.

Collins articulates BFT as “critical social theory,” given that “US Black women's experiences as well as those of women of African descent across the diaspora have been routinely distorted within or excluded from what counts as knowledge.” 23 Situating our interpretations within Collins's theory, we also embrace a more expansive understanding of BFT as critical methodology to underscore the identities, knowledges, and lives of black women as valuable. We named our collective the Black Women's Gathering Place (BWGP), and BFT influentially guided our group's naissance.

Several researchers use BFT to inform their methodologies, and we rely on their work to outline our own methodological moves. 24 BFM privileges embodied knowledges that emerge through the experiences of black women who name and speak their varied forms of truth. 25 Representative data, taking the form of oral stories, serve as social artifacts that contribute to the connections black women make across the stories we share. During data analysis and reporting, black feminist researchers commit to: making multiple truths visible, incorporating the interests and values of participants as a collective, and creating opportunities for self-definition and self-determination, 26 all while emphasizing the importance of black women's lived experiences.

We rely on Collins's belief that the “set of principles for assessing knowledge claims” 27 available to those who espouse black feminist epistemology can methodologically inform our involvements with black women, ourselves, and our research endeavors.

To utilize BFM, the lived experiences of black women are paramount to understanding how we resist forces that seek to oppress us daily. To prepare for the narratives that make legible black women's “everyday taken-for-granted knowledge,” 28 to be surprising and unpredictable, we (Ashley, Valerie and Arianna) initially agreed to think deeply about the topics addressed among participants who represented a diverse, intergenerational cross-section of seventeen black women. Our initial list identified twelve individuals from our local educational circles, including the university and public school system. Although we were troubled by not being able to invite every woman who crossed our minds, we decided to keep the group small enough to facilitate intimacy and were intentional about making intergenerational invitations. Ten of the invitees came to the first meeting and all but one continued on with the group. After the fourth meeting, the group agreed to extend invitations to a handful of other women who we thought might benefit from participating, bringing the total number to seventeen. Despite fluctuating attendance, everyone attended meetings with some regularity and remained active on the group email list.

Though we promised meaningful conversations, we did not have specific a priori topics or questions in mind. During our sessions, occurring bi-monthly across the span of eighteen months and lasting anywhere from two to four hours per session, no topic was off limits. We allowed the dialogue to unfold in accordance with participant interests. We entered the space committed to our roles as participants and with awareness that our shared identities as academic researchers; doctoral degree-seekers and holders; mothers, daughters, and sisters; cisgender and heterosexual women; and partners and activists heavily mediated our existence within and contributed to BWGP. Within the group our ages ranged from high school-age to post-retirement, and our ethnic backgrounds traversed the African, North American, and European continents. Our professional affiliations were tied to education, law, and the corporate world, and our socioeconomic statuses ranged from financially distressed to middle class.

Amid our diversity, our identities as black women were (and continue to be) exceptionally salient, which compelled us to heed hooks's warning to not allow a false hierarchy to manifest among group members. 29 Therefore, we confronted the complexity of the implications of our identities and the ways they sometimes intersected (creating feelings of insider-ness) and sometimes conflicted (revealing feelings of outsider-ness). For instance, during our first meeting, Ryann shared a lesson she had learned from her father as a child: “Not everyone who looks like you is for you.” She deciphered the statement as her father cautioning her against befriending peers based upon their skin color. Her insight captured the understanding, often made clear by group conversation, that connections along the lines of race and gender are not guaranteed. The understanding that black women are both similar and different, and simultaneously systemically marginalized and privileged, strengthened our group. 30  

From the use of conversation starter prompts to unstructured discussions to the open exchange of stories, we talked about current events, popular culture, and professional and personal experiences. We conversed about myriad topics ranging from child-rearing and being reared ourselves to workplace and romantic relationships to strategies for encouraging self-care and tactics for disrupting nearly undetectable forms of self-loathing. We initially audio recorded our sessions (with each member's expressed permission), but as our conversations became more candid, we collectively opted out of that practice as we discovered precise conversational records were unnecessary. Participants shared as much as they felt comfortable, which oftentimes included intimate details of disappointment, triumph, hurt, and personal rebuilding. As we were moved to, we provided each other with words and physical embraces of comfort. Increasingly, we spoke without filters or apologies. Introductory statements such as “I don't know if I should say this,” or “I don't know if anyone will be able to relate to this, but,” became less common as we established organic group cohesion.

As inner-group connection became palpable, Ashley, Valerie, and Arianna grew more interested in how group members conceived of themselves as individuals and BWGP participants. Because such insights are often traditionally gathered through interviews, we were concerned about sacrificing our primary commitment to being group participants. We considered the risk of appearing disingenuous about our roles as “members of the group, just like everyone else” if we requested that group members participate in formal interviews for research purposes. To mediate this, we resisted the term “interview” and its traditional, academic connotations in favor of recorded dialogic conversations . 31 At one BWGP meeting, we shared our intentions with the group, requested their participation, and provided time to consider our invitation. Via email, each individual group member consented to being interviewed and for their comments and likenesses to be included in written and oral artifacts.

We must note that despite our desire to disrupt traditional interview practices such as the linearity of the question–response process, as well as the physical and linguistic distancing between interviewee and interviewer, we encountered challenges. 32 Departing from the established norms was uncomfortable for some, and engaging in conversational interviews not marked by linearity and unidirectionality was initially looked upon with suspicion. With the introduction of formalities such as interview questions and re-introduction of a recording device, participants expected to be asked prepared questions and would sometimes wait for the next question instead of engaging in a back-and-forth conversation. In hindsight, it was not enough to achieve disruption to simply want to resist traditional practices that position black women beyond knowledge production. However, these challenges encouraged us to reflect on ourselves as participants and researchers, and what we sought to do (i.e., nurture and be nurtured by a group of black women). Instead, we had to articulate our shifting understandings and growing consciousness as participants and be conscious of how group members wanted to enact this role. To address this concern, Ashley, Valerie, and Arianna participated in a recorded three-way conversation in which we were all simultaneously interviewer and interviewee. Methodologically, this allowed us to experience what it meant to flow between the two roles and share the responsibilities of conversational leading and following. In the next subsections, we share narratives that describe selected individual and collective experiences to illustrate how BFM centers the lives and stories of black women.

Being Invited In and Learning with Each Other

Throughout the group's inception and implementation, our primary goal as conveners 33 and participants of BWGP was the creation of a space where black women could hear each other and be heard. Grappling with the power that accompanied our positionalities as researchers, we sought insight from group members about their participation. In the following vignettes, two participants share their stories about being asked to join BWGP. From their reflections, we learn that the private reactions to being invited were not instinctually positive, which admittedly works against the black feminist praxis we envisioned. We also see that the reservations we felt about creating the group were not necessarily those shared by fellow group members.

ryann : It's interesting how past experiences can shape your reaction to present events. Sometimes without you even realizing it's happening. This came true for me when I was asked to join BWGP. When I was initially asked, the first response inside my mind was to say “no.” In that moment, I felt a real sense of anxiety about being in a group of all women because of certain experiences I’ve had in the past. Would I be able to trust these women I didn't know? Do I really want to allow them into my own personal circle? I’d allowed myself to trust black women in the past and that trust was shattered into a million pieces. Those women welcomed me with open arms and warm smiles, but later turned their backs on me. So why would I possibly put myself in that situation again? Well, life has taught me to view every new situation with a new pair of lenses. With that idea in mind, I decided to allow myself to take a leap of faith. Trust me when I tell you… it was a very big leap! While driving to our first group meeting, I wanted to make sure I kept my mind open and positive. Before I walked into Valerie's home, I made the decision to leave my anxiety, mistrust, and fear at the door. I walked in, greeted everyone there, and sat next to a young lady I had never met before. That within itself was uncomfortable for me, but I continued to go with the flow. We eventually got to know each other's names and what we all did for a living. I was willing to share my thoughts with everyone on being asked to join this group. Amazingly, no one made any negative comments or judgments toward me when I shared my concern of trust among women, especially black women. There were some there who also had similar concerns themselves. I appreciated the opportunity to get different perspectives on certain life situations we all had in common and others that were unique to just one or two of us. After the meeting concluded, I realized I was actually in a positive space with women to whom I could truly relate. Now, I enjoy getting together with the ladies and having a great time. At this point, can I honestly say I no longer have anxiety about being able to trust women? No, but I continue to push myself to be open and to allow each individual to create a genuine relationship with me. I am happy to be part of this great group of black women, and I look forward to all the positive things this group will do in the future.                *** tanja : When I was asked whether I was interested in joining BWGP, I was apprehensive. I wondered what would be expected of me. Would my biracial black body occupy a space that was supposed to belong to a more “authentically” black woman? Would my foreign-born self be out of place in a room full of what I assumed would be US-born black women with their visceral knowledge of racism and sexism in the United States? Nevertheless, I accepted the invitation, partially because my life as an international graduate student is often marked by isolation and loneliness. More importantly, when I asked why I was invited, I was told that it was exactly because of my foreign-born, biracial black, reserved self. I felt reassured that I didn't have to perform a particular type of black womanhood to be a desirable member, but that I could simply come as I am. The first meeting came. I remember sitting, uncomfortably at first, in the midst of beautiful women. After mere minutes, however, I felt myself drawn into their personalities and their stories of the past and the present. I remember laughing from my core at times, and feeling moved to tears at others. In this first session, I spoke as little as I could, because of my fear of sharing in front of these women, who all seemed so comfortable in their own skins. I wasn't sure if what had brought me to the space would be enough to sustain their desire for my presence. After a few meetings, I began to note that these women with whom I rarely interacted outside of the group were expressing a deep interest in my well-being and happiness. Now, I look forward to each meeting. I recognize how much I have been learning from the experiences shared by the others, for example, experiences of working in white spaces in corporate US America. Most of all, I recognize how much those experiences mirror mine in European workspaces. Despite our differences in age, upbringing, or phenotype, we have come to understand, protect, and sustain each other in ways that have become an important part of my life.                ***

By reflecting on, receiving, and ultimately accepting invitations to join BWGP, Ryann and Tanja provide examples of how they approached the collaborative research process that characterizes BFM. 34 Research collaborations—even those composed of black women and undertaken with a black feminist approach—cannot be overly romanticized. Both Ryann and Tanja expressed hesitations about joining the group that were founded in their own experiences. Ryann highlighted how her previous interactions with black women significantly affected her interpretation of what it could mean to collaborate and learn within an all-black women collective. Tanja demonstrated a contextualized understanding of herself as a foreign-born, biracial black woman. This self-understanding led her to make assumptions about how she might be seen by the black women in the group whom she perceived to be vastly different from her. Ultimately, both Ryann and Tanja took advantage of BWGP as a space where they could meaningfully self-reflect and encourage learning and collaboration among all participants, reiterating Collins's argument that it is necessary for black women to “find alternative locations and epistemologies for validating our self-definitions.” 35  

As conveners and participants of the group, we did not have the same reservations about group participation as Ryann and Tanja. Our hesitations were shaped by concern for how our dual, and sometimes competing, positions as group members and academic researchers would be interpreted by other members and affect our group dynamic. 36 We engaged in self- and collective-reflections regarding our desired positionalities as we determined tangible ways to mediate our apprehensions (e.g., eliminating meeting agendas, openly and vulnerably contributing our stories to the group, sharing our reflections about data collection). As a group, we came to understand that there are always unspoken stories behind the stories shared aloud. Likewise, we welcomed complexities into our conversations such as discussions about conflicting understandings of what it means to be a black woman (nationally and globally) and the oppressiveness of heteronormative understandings of blackness. Our anti-essentialist embrace of conflicting and complex dialogue challenged assertions of objectivity and a singular truth.

Who You Callin' an Angry Black Woman?

After all the women in attendance at our first meeting had helped themselves to food, we sat in a circle in the living room to inhibit any one person being seen as “the leader.” To begin the conversation, Ashley posed an ice-breaking question: “Who are some of the important black women in your life and why are they important to you?” Participants began to speak one at a time, while everyone else listened intently before offering affirmations and asking clarifying questions. Ryann, the first participant to share, mentioned her mother, as did the two group members who followed her. Then, Katrina, 37 cleared her throat before saying, “I'll go.” As our attention shifted to her, she said:

This kinda conversation is always hard for me because I'd say 90% of people—in my circles anyway—the first person that they would say is their mother. I would never say my mother. We have a [pause] relationship under construction. Growing up was very hard. I was the middle child. It was just lots of things going on at home. So, my family back in Cleveland, they are surprised that I turned out to be who I am, what I am, do what I do—bought my own home, all these things, before I was 25, all that—you know, like, “You?” And, you know, that I “talk white” and, you know, all these things. So there's, in my bloodline anyway, no women I would say. So it just kinda, it almost kinda just happened. I kinda, you know, took a little bit from women that I saw who were leaders, who were caregivers in their own families and kinda put myself together. And I'm actually still doing that. 38  

Katrina ended her commentary with nervous laughter. Her facial expression settled into a contemplative stare at the floor as we waited to be sure she had finished. Engaging in witnessing, Arianna met Katrina's eyes and offered, “I'm so glad you said that.”

               ***

After our third meeting and with group members' blessings, Ashley, Arianna, and Liz traveled to a national conference to share the group's experiences in a practitioner-focused educational setting. After sharing narrative examples to illustrate our experiences, we introduced our group and its purpose to the audience. While illustrating the inquiry approach we used, Ashley paraphrased a conversation from one gathering in which the controlling image of the angry black woman was demystified and, in the process, rejected by some group members and embraced by others.

Instead of ending our conference session with a question-and-answer segment that utilizes the teaching–learning binary, we invited audience members (many of whom were black women) to share their own lived experiences in response to the collective we described. One of the first audience members to speak began her commentary by thanking the panel. Paraphrased here based upon our collective memory, she then provided insight into what, for her, was a crucial moment:

I just wanted to say we have to be really careful about the words we use, because words are powerful. When you said the words “angry black woman,” I could literally feel my response to hearing that resonate through my body… and it was not a good feeling. Actually, I almost just got up and left. I really wanted to. But, I didn't. And I'm glad I stayed because, like I said, I really did enjoy the talk… but I was this close to leaving. I mean, I've been called an angry black woman before. And it's something I just hate to hear.

The commentator added an invaluable perspective to our presentation as well as to BWGP topics. In fact, she motivated us to consider the impact of controlling images 39 that seek to limit black women's social mobility and caricature us via “white supremacist capitalistic patriarchy.” 40 Mindful of her insight, we were also more cautious of how mere mention of controlling images could be painful and potentially result in BWGP members choosing to leave or forego participation.

Two common controlling images—mammy and sapphire 41 —are illuminated by the preceding vignettes. Katrina alludes to the imagery of the mammy in prefacing her comments with a confession that she would not name her mother as a black woman who is important to her. The mammy image historically emerged as a way to naturalize black women caring for white families. In so doing, they sacrificed their own families and themselves in ways that prioritized white families and their needs. Katrina may have felt compelled to share her divergent narrative because the mammy has normalized an embodiment of black motherhood that starkly contrasts her own lived experiences. To foster her personal growth, she sought out black women who embodied the black feminist notion of “othermothering”—the practice of women from the community at large sharing responsibilities of supporting younger generations alongside biological mothers. 42 Similarly, the conference audience member who took pointed issue with use of the phrase “angry black woman” was responding to the controlling image of sapphire—an angry, loud, rude, disrespectful, unsociable black woman. 43 The psychological oppressiveness of the sapphire image had such an effect on her that she reported a visceral reaction to its mention. From a black feminist perspective, we are compelled to acknowledge and draw insight from manifestations of embodied understandings of controlling imagery.

In both instances, we were able to “bear witness” to black women's experiences, 44 affirming their input by acknowledging their voices and maintaining spaces where multiple truths could coexist. Our interpretation of safety and comfort, indicated by the willingness of participants to bear witness to one another, forged opportunities for self-definition and self-valuation. 45 While Katrina appeared to be impacted by ideological remnants of the mammy image juxtaposed against her relationship with her mother, she also resisted it as she sought othermothers beyond her biological family members. The conference audience member's resistance to the sapphire image was clear and explicit. Though she was less descriptive about the model(s) of black womanhood that she endorsed, we interpreted her willingness to stay for the remainder of our presentation as an indication of interest in locating a replacement image. From our BWGP experiences, we learned that many black women associate a host of characteristics—compassion, integrity, admiration for self and others, love, respect, and loyalty—with black femininity that resist the imposition of the mammy and sapphire. These characteristics were present during our BWGP meetings and sutured to our understandings of black femininity as black women.

Black Women and Mentoring

Liz is a group member and veteran high school teacher working in CCS. In the following vignette, she describes how BWGP impacted her beyond the few hours each month we spent together.

I really find myself reflecting on the things we share here all the time. I had these two girls in my class—both sweet, sweet girls, good girls—who were literally about to fight one day. And they are not that type of girl so I'm just thinking, “What is going on?” So, I had to separate them and talked to each of them separately, and through the conversations, I started to realize that colorism was playing a big role in the situation. I don't think I would have picked up on that right away if not for participating in this group. I mean, I would have known if they would have said it outright, but I think just having this space where we're talking about things like that… I don't know. Maybe it was in the forefront of my mind, because I'm not sure I would have picked up on that element so easily a few months ago. They're both beautiful girls and I hate to see them having this issue! So, anyway, I thought about it more after that first day and then I asked the girls, if I brought them lunch, would they both be willing to meet over lunch and to have a discussion about what was going on. Try to find some common ground. And they agreed, so we're going to do that next week. 46  

Mindful of black feminism's commitment to connecting theory and method to everyday praxis, 47 we interpret Liz's comments as reflective of a tangible pathway to render black feminist sensibilities accessible to high school students.

Our third BWGP meeting was held at a local restaurant, in a private room. The eleven participants included almost all the women from the first and second meetings, as well as one participant's mother. As conversations flowed and naturally shifted from topic to topic, a member raised the question, “So, what do we want to do with this group? What do we want it to be?” The ensuing discussion highlighted the importance of fostering connections, understanding, warmth, and space among black women. 48 Mentoring was identified as one key reason and viable means for us to purposefully come together to create what hooks terms “homeplace,” or “a site where one could freely confront the issue of humanization, where one could resist.” 49  

Mentoring surfaced across the next several meetings and the question was eventually posed, “So what exactly do we want to do with the mentoring? How do we want it to look?” Participants registered concern with replicating mentoring programs they had previously participated in or witnessed in which “troubled” or “needy” individuals were required to engage with a person with whom they did not have a genuine connection. “I don't want to be spinning my wheels working with someone who doesn't want to work with me,” Lauryn insisted. The body language among the group displayed confirmation before Liz asked, “What about something like this? Like what we're already doing here? Meeting just to talk and get to know each other?” Kimmy added, “You know, it's not what we called what we're doing here or anything, but this kind of is a group of mentors who are also getting mentored. We're all playing different roles at different times.”

Methodologically, BFM not only seeks and organizes the information that is gathered throughout the research process, but also guides how the information gleaned is put to work. Concerned with research that is attentive to the nuances of black women's needs and contributive to the everyday development of black women, BFM necessitates that truths made visible by the research process be translated into action, resistance, and/or activism. While BWGP became a site for us to think about scholarship, it was always first a place for us to practice togetherness and alliance among black women. 50  

As a collective, we were unsatisfied with leaving BWGP at the discussion or scholarship level. The desire to reach other black women who could benefit from a similar experience motivated us to contemplate forming a mentoring program. Connecting to women beyond the group provided opportunities to embody insisting upon self-definition, speaking aloud our truths in spite of forces working to dismantle our knowledges, and supporting black women. 51 These practices informed our transition from theory to praxis as we questioned the power dynamics reinforced by traditional mentoring scenarios. 52 Envisioning a mentoring model focused on creating opportunities to hear and be heard by other black women, our efforts aim to bridge the sometimes disparate worlds of scholarship and engagement as necessitated by BFM.

The adoption of a BFT lens has fostered particular conclusions about our dialogic endeavor. We are acutely aware of the many ways our simultaneously marginalized and privileged identities impacted our roles as participants and researchers in BWGP. Additionally, daily encounters with other people, media, and societal structures remind us that, as black women, we are constantly engaged in a struggle to combat those features of everyday life that may otherwise break us down, suppress our capacities for self-knowing and self-love, and prevent us from deepening our interactions with others. Collectively, we are humbled to have connected with each other as BWGP members. Bearing witness to the divisive politics that can and do divide black women, we are especially grateful that the catering employee we reference at the beginning of this essay openly shared her thoughts with us and helped spark what became BWGP. As participant researchers, we remain committed to collaborating with other black women to name, share, and validate our multiple truths by embracing the influence of black feminist epistemologies in our lives to embody a methodology that privileges black women's embodied ways of knowing. 53 While mainstream, positivistic research traditions may raise questions about the validity of our research because neither the existence of a singular truth nor the necessity of researcher objectivity is pursued, we disagree. Not only does our utilization of BFM operationalize BFT as Collins contends, 54 it also legitimizes our methodological approaches. Guided by black feminism, our methodological decisions yielded significant insight into the lived experiences of black women.

At the time of publication, group members are still in contact although the frequency of face-to-face meetings has slightly reduced. 55 With our inner strength fueled by participation in BWGP, we remain committed to practicing black feminist methodologies within the many settings we navigate as black women.

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• Contents: Ruth Nicole Brown: A Praisesong for Johnnie - Lameesa W. Muhammad/Andrea L. Tyler/Adonica Jones-Parks/Lara Chatman: Navigating Inhibited Spaces: Black Female Scholars' Re-articulation of Knowledge Production in the Academy - Angela N. Campbell: "Out of the Mouths of Babes": Using Cynthia Dillard's Endarkened Feminist Epistemology to Reveal Unseen Gendered Passageways - Darlene Russell/Lisa Hobson/Denise Taliaferro-Baszile: Rising Harriett Tubmans: Exploring Intersectionality and African American Women Professors - Kyra T. Shahid: Eating from the Tree of Life: An Endarkened Feminist Revelation - Carla R. Monroe: Colorist Dimensions of Black Feminist Knowledge - Tuwana T. Wingfield: (Her)story: The Evolution of a Dual Identity as an Emerging Black Female and Scholar - Ezella McPherson: Having Our Say in Higher Education: African American Women's Stories of "Doing Science" Through Spiritual Capital - Kyra D. Gaunt: Truly Professin' Hip-Hop - The Rewind (1996): Makin' Black Girls Embodied Musical Play the Teacher - Roberta P. Gardner: If You Listen, You Will Hear: Race, Place, Gender, and the Trauma of Witnessing Through Listening in Research Contexts - Venus E. Evans-Winters: Black Feminism in Qualitative Education Research: Karla Manning/Adrienne Duke/Philip Bostic: Me, Myself, and I: Exploring African American Girlhood Through an Endarkened (Photographic) Lens - Amira Millicent Davis: Embodying Dillard's Endarkened Feminist Epistemology - Monique Lane: Black Girl Interrupted: A Reflection on the Challenges, Contradictions, and Possibilities in Transitioning from the Community to the Academy - Billye Sankofa Waters: "Oh, You'll Be Back": Bridging Identities of Race, Gender, Educator, and Community Partner in Academic Research - Corrie L. Theriault: Lessons Learned Through Double-Dutch: Black Feminism and Intersectionality in Educational Research - Qiana M. Cutts: Responsibility, Spirituality, and Transformation in the (For-Profit) Academy: An Endarkened Feminist Autoethnography - Bettina L. Love/Venus E. Evans-Winters: Why We Matter: An Interview with Dr. Cynthia Dillard. (Nana Mansa II of Mpeasem, Ghana, West Africa).
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Article contents

Feminist theory and its use in qualitative research in education.

• Emily Freeman Emily Freeman University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
• https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190264093.013.1193
• Published online: 28 August 2019

Feminist theory rose in prominence in educational research during the 1980s and experienced a resurgence in popularity during the late 1990s−2010s. Standpoint epistemologies, intersectionality, and feminist poststructuralism are the most prevalent theories, but feminist researchers often work across feminist theoretical thought. Feminist qualitative research in education encompasses a myriad of methods and methodologies, but projects share a commitment to feminist ethics and theories. Among the commitments are the understanding that knowledge is situated in the subjectivities and lived experiences of both researcher and participants and research is deeply reflexive. Feminist theory informs both research questions and the methodology of a project in addition to serving as a foundation for analysis. The goals of feminist educational research include dismantling systems of oppression, highlighting gender-based disparities, and seeking new ways of constructing knowledge.

• feminist theories
• qualitative research
• educational research
• positionality
• methodology

Introduction

Feminist qualitative research begins with the understanding that all knowledge is situated in the bodies and subjectivities of people, particularly women and historically marginalized groups. Donna Haraway ( 1988 ) wrote,

I am arguing for politics and epistemologies of location, position, and situating, where partiality and not universality is the condition of being heard to make rational knowledge claims. These are claims on people’s lives I’m arguing for the view from a body, always a complex, contradictory, structuring, and structured body, versus the view from above, from nowhere, from simplicity. Only the god trick is forbidden. . . . Feminism is about a critical vision consequent upon a critical positioning in unhomogeneous gendered social space. (p. 589)

By arguing that “politics and epistemologies” are always interpretive and partial, Haraway offered feminist qualitative researchers in education a way to understand all research as potentially political and always interpretive and partial. Because all humans bring their own histories, biases, and subjectivities with them to a research space or project, it is naïve to think that the written product of research could ever be considered neutral, but what does research with a strong commitment to feminism look like in the context of education?

Writing specifically about the ways researchers of both genders can use feminist ethnographic methods while conducting research on schools and schooling, Levinson ( 1998 ) stated, “I define feminist ethnography as intensive qualitative research, aimed toward the description and analysis of the gendered construction and representation of experience, which is informed by a political and intellectual commitment to the empowerment of women and the creation of more equitable arrangements between and among specific, culturally defined genders” (p. 339). The core of Levinson’s definition is helpful for understanding the ways that feminist educational anthropologists engage with schools as gendered and political constructs and the larger questions of feminist qualitative research in education. His message also extends to other forms of feminist qualitative research. By focusing on description, analysis, and representation of gendered constructs, educational researchers can move beyond simple binary analyses to more nuanced understandings of the myriad ways gender operates within educational contexts.

Feminist qualitative research spans the range of qualitative methodologies, but much early research emerged out of the feminist postmodern turn in anthropology (Behar & Gordon, 1995 ), which was a response to male anthropologists who ignored the gendered implications of ethnographic research (e.g., Clifford & Marcus, 1986 ). Historically, most of the work on feminist education was conducted in the 1980s and 1990s, with a resurgence in the late 2010s (Culley & Portuges, 1985 ; DuBois, Kelly, Kennedy, Korsmeyer, & Robinson, 1985 ; Gottesman, 2016 ; Maher & Tetreault, 1994 ; Thayer-Bacon, Stone, & Sprecher, 2013 ). Within this body of research, the majority focuses on higher education (Coffey & Delamont, 2000 ; Digiovanni & Liston, 2005 ; Diller, Houston, Morgan, & Ayim, 1996 ; Gabriel & Smithson, 1990 ; Mayberry & Rose, 1999 ). Even leading journals, such as Feminist Teacher ( 1984 −present), focus mostly on the challenges of teaching about and to women in higher education, although more scholarship on P–12 education has emerged in recent issues.

There is also a large collection of work on the links between gender, achievement, and self-esteem (American Association of University Women, 1992 , 1999 ; Digiovanni & Liston, 2005 ; Gilligan, 1982 ; Hancock, 1989 ; Jackson, Paechter, & Renold, 2010 ; National Coalition for Women and Girls in Education, 2002 ; Orenstein, 1994 ; Pipher, 1994 ; Sadker & Sadker, 1994 ). However, just because research examines gender does not mean that it is feminist. Simply using gender as a category of analysis does not mean the research project is informed by feminist theory, ethics, or methods, but it is often a starting point for researchers who are interested in the complex ways gender is constructed and the ways it operates in education.

This article examines the histories and theories of U.S.–based feminism, the tenets of feminist qualitative research and methodologies, examples of feminist qualitative studies, and the possibilities for feminist qualitative research in education to provide feminist educational researchers context and methods for engaging in transformative and subversive research. Each section provides a brief overview of the major concepts and conversations, along with examples from educational research to highlight the ways feminist theory has informed educational scholarship. Some examples are given limited attention and serve as entry points into a more detailed analysis of a few key examples. While there is a large body of non-Western feminist theory (e.g., the works of Lila Abu-Lughod, Sara Ahmed, Raewyn Connell, Saba Mahmood, Chandra Mohanty, and Gayatri Spivak), much of the educational research using feminist theory draws on Western feminist theory. This article focuses on U.S.–based research to show the ways that the utilization of feminist theory has changed since the 1980s.

Histories, Origins, and Theories of U.S.–Based Feminism

The normative historiography of feminist theory and activism in the United States is broken into three waves. First-wave feminism (1830s−1920s) primarily focused on women’s suffrage and women’s rights to legally exist in public spaces. During this time period, there were major schisms between feminist groups concerning abolition, rights for African American women, and the erasure of marginalized voices from larger feminist debates. The second wave (1960s and 1980s) worked to extend some of the rights won during the first wave. Activists of this time period focused on women’s rights to enter the workforce, sexual harassment, educational equality, and abortion rights. During this wave, colleges and universities started creating women’s studies departments and those scholars provided much of the theoretical work that informs feminist research and activism today. While there were major feminist victories during second-wave feminism, notably Title IX and Roe v. Wade , issues concerning the marginalization of race, sexual orientation, and gender identity led many feminists of color to separate from mainstream white feminist groups. The third wave (1990s to the present) is often characterized as the intersectional wave, as some feminist groups began utilizing Kimberlé Crenshaw’s concept of intersectionality ( 1991 ) to understand that oppression operates via multiple categories (e.g., gender, race, class, age, ability) and that intersecting oppressions lead to different lived experiences.

Historians and scholars of feminism argue that dividing feminist activism into three waves flattens and erases the major contributions of women of color and gender-nonconforming people. Thompson ( 2002 ) called this history a history of hegemonic feminism and proposed that we look at the contributions of multiracial feminism when discussing history. Her work, along with that of Allen ( 1984 ) about the indigenous roots of U.S. feminism, raised many questions about the ways that feminism operates within the public and academic spheres. For those who wish to engage in feminist research, it is vital to spend time understanding the historical, theoretical, and political ways that feminism(s) can both liberate and oppress, depending on the scholar’s understandings of, and orientations to, feminist projects.

Standpoint Epistemology

Much of the theoretical work that informs feminist qualitative research today emerged out of second-wave feminist scholarship. Standpoint epistemology, according to Harding ( 1991 , 2004 ), posits that knowledge comes from one’s particular social location, that it is subjective, and the further one is from the hegemonic norm, the clearer one can see oppression. This was a major challenge to androcentric and Enlightenment theories of knowledge because standpoint theory acknowledges that there is no universal understanding of the world. This theory aligns with the second-wave feminist slogan, “The personal is political,” and advocates for a view of knowledge that is produced from the body.

Greene ( 1994 ) wrote from a feminist postmodernist epistemology and attacked Enlightenment thinking by using standpoint theory as her starting point. Her work serves as an example of one way that educational scholars can use standpoint theory in their work. She theorized encounters with “imaginative literature” to help educators conceptualize new ways of using reading and writing in the classroom and called for teachers to think of literature as “a harbinger of the possible.” (Greene, 1994 , p. 218). Greene wrote from an explicitly feminist perspective and moved beyond simple analyses of gender to a larger critique of the ways that knowledge is constructed in classrooms.

Intersectionality

Crenshaw ( 1991 ) and Collins ( 2000 ) challenged and expanded standpoint theory to move it beyond an individual understanding of knowledge to a group-based theory of oppression. Their work, and that of other black and womanist feminists, opened up multiple spaces of possibility for feminist scholars and researchers because it challenged hegemonic feminist thought. For those interested in conducting feminist research in educational settings, their work is especially pertinent because they advocate for feminists to attend to all aspects of oppression rather than flattening them to one of simple gender-based oppression.

Haddix, McArthur, Muhammad, Price-Dennis, and Sealey-Ruiz ( 2016 ), all women-of-color feminist educators, wrote a provocateur piece in a special issue of English Education on black girls’ literacy. The four authors drew on black feminist thought and conducted a virtual kitchen-table conversation. By symbolically representing their conversations as one from the kitchen, this article pays homage to women-of-color feminism and pushes educators who read English Education to reconsider elements of their own subjectivities. Third-wave feminism and black feminism emphasize intersectionality, in that different demographic details like race, class, and gender are inextricably linked in power structures. Intersectionality is an important frame for educational research because identifying the unique experiences, realities, and narratives of those involved in educational systems can highlight the ways that power and oppression operate in society.

Feminist Poststructural Theory

Feminist poststructural theory has greatly informed many feminist projects in educational research. Deconstruction is

a critical practice that aims to ‘dismantle [ déconstruire ] the metaphysical and rhetorical structures that are at work, not in order to reject or discard them, but to reinscribe them in another way,’ (Derrida, quoted in Spivak, 1974 , p. lxxv). Thus, deconstruction is not about tearing down, but about looking at how a structure has been constructed, what holds it together, and what it produces. (St. Pierre, 2000 , p. 482)

Reality, subjectivity, knowledge, and truth are constructed through language and discourse (cultural practices, power relations, etc.), so truth is local and diverse, rather than a universal experience (St. Pierre, 2000 ). Feminist poststructuralist theory may be used to question structural inequality that is maintained in education through dominant discourses.

In Go Be a Writer! Expanding the Curricular Boundaries of Literacy Learning with Children , Kuby and Rucker ( 2016 ) explored early elementary literacy practices using poststructural and posthumanist theories. Their book drew on hours of classroom observations, student interviews and work, and their own musings on ways to de-standardize literacy instruction and curriculum. Through the process of pedagogical documentation, Kuby and Rucker drew on the works of Barad, Deleuze and Guattari, and Derrida to explore the ways they saw children engaging in what they call “literacy desiring(s).” One aim of the book is to find practical and applicable ways to “Disrupt literacy in ways that rewrite the curriculum, the interactions, and the power dynamics of the classroom even begetting a new kind of energy that spirals and bounces and explodes” (Kuby & Rucker, 2016 , p. 5). The second goal of their book is not only to understand what happened in Rucker’s classroom using the theories, but also to unbound the links between “teaching↔learning” (p. 202) and to write with the theories, rather than separating theory from the methodology and classroom enactments (p. 45) because “knowing/being/doing were not separate” (p. 28). This work engages with key tenets of feminist poststructuralist theory and adds to both the theoretical and pedagogical conversations about what counts as a literacy practice.

While the discussion in this section provides an overview of the histories and major feminist theories, it is by no means exhaustive. Scholars who wish to engage in feminist educational research need to spend time doing the work of understanding the various theories and trajectories that constitute feminist work so they are able to ground their projects and theories in a particular tradition that will inform the ethics and methods of research.

Tenets of Feminist Qualitative Research

Why engage in feminist qualitative research.

Evans and Spivak ( 2016 ) stated, “The only real and effective way you can sabotage something this way is when you are working intimately within it.” Feminist researchers are in the classroom and the academy, working intimately within curricular, pedagogical, and methodological constraints that serve neoliberal ideologies, so it is vital to better understand the ways that we can engage in affirmative sabotage to build a more just and equitable world. Spivak’s ( 2014 ) notion of affirmative sabotage has become a cornerstone for understanding feminist qualitative research and teaching. She borrowed and built on Gramsci’s role of the organic intellectual and stated that they/we need to engage in affirmative sabotage to transform the humanities.

I used the term “affirmative sabotage” to gloss on the usual meaning of sabotage: the deliberate ruining of the master’s machine from the inside. Affirmative sabotage doesn’t just ruin; the idea is of entering the discourse that you are criticizing fully, so that you can turn it around from inside. The only real and effective way you can sabotage something this way is when you are working intimately within it. (Evans & Spivak, 2016 )

While Spivak has been mostly concerned with literary education, her writings provide teachers and researchers numerous lines of inquiry into projects that can explode androcentric universal notions of knowledge and resist reproductive heteronormativity.

Spivak’s pedagogical musings center on deconstruction, primarily Derridean notions of deconstruction (Derrida, 2016 ; Jackson & Mazzei, 2012 ; Spivak, 2006 , 2009 , 2012 ) that seek to destabilize existing categories and to call into question previously unquestioned beliefs about the goals of education. Her works provide an excellent starting point for examining the links between feminism and educational research. The desire to create new worlds within classrooms, worlds that are fluid, interpretive, and inclusive in order to interrogate power structures, lies at the core of what it means to be a feminist education researcher. As researchers, we must seriously engage with feminist theory and include it in our research so that feminism is not seen as a dirty word, but as a movement/pedagogy/methodology that seeks the liberation of all (Davis, 2016 ).

Feminist research and feminist teaching are intrinsically linked. As Kerkhoff ( 2015 ) wrote, “Feminist pedagogy requires students to challenge the norms and to question whether existing practices privilege certain groups and marginalize others” (p. 444), and this is exactly what feminist educational research should do. Bailey ( 2001 ) called on teachers, particularly those who identify as feminists, to be activists, “The values of one’s teaching should not be separated sharply from the values one expresses outside the classroom, because teaching is not inherently pure or laboratory practice” (p. 126); however, we have to be careful not to glorify teachers as activists because that leads to the risk of misinterpreting actions. Bailey argued that teaching critical thinking is not enough if it is not coupled with curriculums and pedagogies that are antiheteronormative, antisexist, and antiracist. As Bailey warned, just using feminist theory or identifying as a feminist is not enough. It is very easy to use the language and theories of feminism without being actively feminist in one’s research. There are ethical and methodological issues that feminist scholars must consider when conducting research.

Feminist research requires one to discuss ethics, not as a bureaucratic move, but as a reflexive move that shows the researchers understand that, no matter how much they wish it didn’t, power always plays a role in the process. According to Davies ( 2014 ), “Ethics, as Barad defines it, is a matter of questioning what is being made to matter and how that mattering affects what it is possible to do and to think” (p. 11). In other words, ethics is what is made to matter in a particular time and place.

Davies ( 2016 ) extended her definition of ethics to the interactions one has with others.

This is not ethics as a matter of separate individuals following a set of rules. Ethical practice, as both Barad and Deleuze define it, requires thinking beyond the already known, being open in the moment of the encounter, pausing at the threshold and crossing over. Ethical practice is emergent in encounters with others, in emergent listening with others. It is a matter of questioning what is being made to matter and how that mattering affects what it is possible to do and to think. Ethics is emergent in the intra-active encounters in which knowing, being, and doing (epistemology, ontology, and ethics) are inextricably linked. (Barad, 2007 , p. 83)

The ethics of any project must be negotiated and contested before, during, and after the process of conducting research in conjunction with the participants. Feminist research is highly reflexive and should be conducted in ways that challenge power dynamics between individuals and social institutions. Educational researchers must heed the warning to avoid the “god-trick” (Haraway, 1988 ) and to continually question and re-question the ways we seek to define and present subjugated knowledge (Hesse-Biber, 2012 ).

Positionalities and Reflexivity

According to feminist ethnographer Noelle Stout, “Positionality isn’t meant to be a few sentences at the beginning of a work” (personal communication, April 5, 2016 ). In order to move to new ways of experiencing and studying the world, it is vital that scholars examine the ways that reflexivity and positionality are constructed. In a glorious footnote, Margery Wolf ( 1992 ) related reflexivity in anthropological writing to a bureaucratic procedure (p. 136), and that resonates with how positionality often operates in the field of education.

The current trend in educational research is to include a positionality statement that fixes the identity of the author in a particular place and time and is derived from feminist standpoint theory. Researchers should make their biases and the identities of the authors clear in a text, but there are serious issues with the way that positionality functions as a boundary around the authors. Examining how the researchers exert authority within a text allows the reader the opportunity to determine the intent and philosophy behind the text. If positionality were used in an embedded and reflexive manner, then educational research would be much richer and allow more nuanced views of schools, in addition to being more feminist in nature. The rest of this section briefly discussrs articles that engage with feminist ethics regarding researcher subjectivities and positionality, and two articles are examined in greater depth.

When looking for examples of research that includes deeply reflexive and embedded positionality, one finds that they mostly deal with issues of race, equity, and diversity. The highlighted articles provide examples of positionality statements that are deeply reflexive and represent the ways that feminist researchers can attend to the ethics of being part of a research project. These examples all come from feminist ethnographic projects, but they are applicable to a wide variety of feminist qualitative projects.

Martinez ( 2016 ) examined how research methods are or are not appropriate for specific contexts. Calderon ( 2016 ) examined autoethnography and the reproduction of “settler colonial understandings of marginalized communities” (p. 5). Similarly, Wissman, Staples, Vasudevan, and Nichols ( 2015 ) discussed how to research with adolescents through engaged participation and collaborative inquiry, and Ceglowski and Makovsky ( 2012 ) discussed the ways researchers can engage in duoethnography with young children.

Abajian ( 2016 ) uncovered the ways military recruiters operate in high schools and paid particular attention to the politics of remaining neutral while also working to subvert school militarization. She wrote,

Because of the sensitive and also controversial nature of my research, it was not possible to have a collaborative process with students, teachers, and parents. Purposefully intervening would have made documentation impossible because that would have (rightfully) aligned me with anti-war and counter-recruitment activists who were usually not welcomed on school campuses (Abajian & Guzman, 2013 ). It was difficult enough to find an administrator who gave me consent to conduct my research within her school, as I had explicitly stated in my participant recruitment letters and consent forms that I was going to research the promotion of post-secondary paths including the military. Hence, any purposeful intervention on my part would have resulted in the termination of my research project. At the same time, my documentation was, in essence, an intervention. I hoped that my presence as an observer positively shaped the context of my observation and also contributed to the larger struggle against the militarization of schools. (p. 26)

Her positionality played a vital role in the creation, implementation, and analysis of military recruitment, but it also forced her into unexpected silences in order to carry out her research. Abajian’s positionality statement brings up many questions about the ways researchers have to use or silence their positionality to further their research, especially if they are working in ostensibly “neutral” and “politically free” zones, such as schools. Her work drew on engaged anthropology (Low & Merry, 2010 ) and critical reflexivity (Duncan-Andrade & Morrell, 2008 ) to highlight how researchers’ subjectivities shape ethnographic projects. Questions of subjectivity and positionality in her work reflect the larger discourses around these topics in feminist theory and qualitative research.

Brown ( 2011 ) provided another example of embedded and reflexive positionality of the articles surveyed. Her entire study engaged with questions about how her positionality influenced the study during the field-work portion of her ethnography on how race and racism operate in ethnographic field-work. This excerpt from her study highlights how she conceived of positionality and how it informed her work and her process.

Next, I provide a brief overview of the research study from which this paper emerged and I follow this with a presentation of four, first-person narratives from key encounters I experienced while doing ethnographic field research. Each of these stories centres the role race played as I negotiated my multiple, complex positionality vis-á-vis different informants and participants in my study. These stories highlight the emotional pressures that race work has on the researcher and the research process, thus reaffirming why one needs to recognise the role race plays, and may play, in research prior to, during, and after conducting one’s study (Milner, 2007 ). I conclude by discussing the implications these insights have on preparing researchers of color to conduct cross-racial qualitative research. (Brown, 2011 , p. 98)

Brown centered the roles of race and subjectivity, both hers and her participants, by focusing her analysis on the four narratives. The researchers highlighted in this section thought deeply about the ethics of their projects and the ways that their positionality informed their choice of methods.

Methods and Challenges

Feminist qualitative research can take many forms, but the most common data collection methods include interviews, observations, and narrative or discourse analysis. For the purposes of this article, methods refer to the tools and techniques researchers use, while methodology refers to the larger philosophical and epistemological approaches to conducting research. It is also important to note that these are not fixed terms, and that there continues to be much debate about what constitutes feminist theory and feminist research methods among feminist qualitative researchers. This section discusses some of the tensions and constraints of using feminist theory in educational research.

Jackson and Mazzei ( 2012 ) called on researchers to think through their data with theory at all stages of the collection and analysis process. They also reminded us that all data collection is partial and informed by the researcher’s own beliefs (Koro-Ljungberg, Löytönen, & Tesar, 2017 ). Interviews are sites of power and critiques because they show the power of stories and serve as a method of worlding, the process of “making a world, turning insight into instrument, through and into a possible act of freedom” (Spivak, 2014 , p. xiii). Interviews allow researchers and participants ways to engage in new ways of understanding past experiences and connecting them to feminist theories. The narratives serve as data, but it is worth noting that the data collected from interviews are “partial, incomplete, and always being re-told and re-membered” (Jackson & Mazzei, 2012 , p. 3), much like the lived experiences of both researcher and participant.

Research, data collection, and interpretation are not neutral endeavors, particularly with interviews (Jackson & Mazzei, 2009 ; Mazzei, 2007 , 2013 ). Since education research emerged out of educational psychology (Lather, 1991 ; St. Pierre, 2016 ), historically there has been an emphasis on generalizability and positivist data collection methods. Most feminist research makes no claims of generalizability or truth; indeed, to do so would negate the hyperpersonal and particular nature of this type of research (Love, 2017 ). St. Pierre ( 2016 ) viewed the lack of generalizability as an asset of feminist and poststructural research, rather than a limitation, because it creates a space of resistance against positivist research methodologies.

Denzin and Giardina ( 2016 ) urged researchers to “consider an alternative mode of thinking about the critical turn in qualitative inquiry and posit the following suggestion: perhaps it is time we turned away from ‘methodology’ altogether ” (p. 5, italics original). Despite the contention over the term critical among some feminist scholars (e.g. Ellsworth, 1989 ), their suggestion is valid and has been picked up by feminist and poststructural scholars who examine the tensions between following a strict research method/ology and the theoretical systems out of which they operate because precision in method obscures the messy and human nature of research (Koro-Ljungberg, 2016 ; Koro-Ljungberg et al., 2017 ; Love, 2017 ; St. Pierre & Pillow, 2000 ). Feminist qualitative researchers should seek to complicate the question of what method and methodology mean when conducting feminist research (Lather, 1991 ), due to the feminist emphasis on reflexive and situated research methods (Hesse-Biber, 2012 ).

Examples of Feminist Qualitative Research in Education

A complete overview of the literature is not possible here, due to considerations of length, but the articles and books selected represent the various debates within feminist educational research. They also show how research preoccupations have changed over the course of feminist work in education. The literature review is divided into three broad categories: Power, canons, and gender; feminist pedagogies, curriculums, and classrooms; and teacher education, identities, and knowledge. Each section provides a broad overview of the literature to demonstrate the breadth of work using feminist theory, with some examples more deeply explicated to describe how feminist theories inform the scholarship.

Power, Canons, and Gender

The literature in this category contests disciplinary practices that are androcentric in both content and form, while asserting the value of using feminist knowledge to construct knowledge. The majority of the work was written in the 1980s and supported the creation of feminist ways of knowing, particularly via the creation of women’s studies programs or courses in existing departments that centered female voices and experiences.

Questioning the canon has long been a focus of feminist scholarship, as has the attempt to subvert its power in the disciplines. Bezucha ( 1985 ) focused on the ways that departments of history resist the inclusion of both women and feminism in the historical canon. Similarly, Miller ( 1985 ) discussed feminism as subversion when seeking to expand the canon of French literature in higher education.

Lauter and Dieterich ( 1972 ) examined a report by ERIC, “Women’s Place in Academe,” a collection of articles about the discrepancies by gender in jobs and tenure-track positions and the lack of inclusion of women authors in literature classes. They also found that women were relegated to “softer” disciplines and that feminist knowledge was not acknowledged as valid work. Culley and Portuges ( 1985 ) expanded the focus beyond disciplines to the larger structures of higher education and noted the varies ways that professors subvert from within their disciplines. DuBois et al. ( 1985 ) chronicled the development of feminist scholarship in the disciplines of anthropology, education, history, literature, and philosophy. They explained that the institutions of higher education often prevent feminist scholars from working across disciplines in an attempt to keep them separate. Raymond ( 1985 ) also critiqued the academy for not encouraging relationships across disciplines and offered the development of women’s, gender, and feminist studies as one solution to greater interdisciplinary work.

Parson ( 2016 ) examined the ways that STEM syllabi reinforce gendered norms in higher education. She specifically looked at eight syllabi from math, chemistry, biology, physics, and geology classes to determine how modal verbs showing stance, pronouns, intertextuality, interdiscursivity, and gender showed power relations in higher education. She framed the study through poststructuralist feminist critical discourse analysis to uncover “the ways that gendered practices that favor men are represented and replicated in the syllabus” (p. 103). She found that all the syllabi positioned knowledge as something that is, rather than something that can be co-constructed. Additionally, the syllabi also favored individual and masculine notions of what it means to learn by stressing the competitive and difficult nature of the classroom and content.

When reading newer work on feminism in higher education and the construction of knowledge, it is easy to feel that, while the conversations might have shifted somewhat, the challenge of conducting interdisciplinary feminist work in institutions of higher education remains as present as it was during the creation of women’s and gender studies departments. The articles all point to the fact that simply including women’s and marginalized voices in the academy does not erase or mitigate the larger issues of gender discrimination and androcentricity within the silos of the academy.

Feminist Pedagogies, Curricula, and Classrooms

This category of literature has many similarities to the previous one, but all the works focus more specifically on questions of curriculum and pedagogy. A review of the literature shows that the earliest conversations were about the role of women in academia and knowledge construction, and this selection builds on that work to emphasize the ways that feminism can influence the events within classes and expands the focus to more levels of education.

Rich ( 1985 ) explained that curriculum in higher education courses needs to validate gender identities while resisting patriarchal canons. Maher ( 1985 ) narrowed the focus to a critique of the lecture as a pedagogical technique that reinforces androcentric ways of learning and knowing. She called for classes in higher education to be “collaborative, cooperative, and interactive” (p. 30), a cry that still echoes across many college campuses today, especially from students in large lecture-based courses. Maher and Tetreault ( 1994 ) provided a collection of essays that are rooted in feminist classroom practice and moved from the classroom into theoretical possibilities for feminist education. Warren ( 1998 ) recommended using Peggy McIntosh’s five phases of curriculum development ( 1990 ) and extending it to include feminist pedagogies that challenge patriarchal ways of teaching. Exploring the relational encounters that exist in feminist classrooms, Sánchez-Pardo ( 2017 ) discussed the ethics of pedagogy as a politics of visibility and investigated the ways that democratic classrooms relate to feminist classrooms.

While all of the previously cited literature is U.S.–based, the next two works focus on the ways that feminist pedagogies and curriculum operate in a European context. Weiner ( 1994 ) used autobiography and narrative methodologies to provide an introduction to how feminism has influenced educational research and pedagogy in Britain. Revelles-Benavente and Ramos ( 2017 ) collected a series of studies about how situated feminist knowledge challenges the problems of neoliberal education across Europe. These two, among many European feminist works, demonstrate the range of scholarship and show the trans-Atlantic links between how feminism has been received in educational settings. However, much more work needs to be done in looking at the broader global context, and particularly by feminist scholars who come from non-Western contexts.

The following literature moves us into P–12 classrooms. DiGiovanni and Liston ( 2005 ) called for a new research agenda in K–5 education that explores the hidden curriculums surrounding gender and gender identity. One source of the hidden curriculum is classroom literature, which both Davies ( 2003 ) and Vandergrift ( 1995 ) discussed in their works. Davies ( 2003 ) used feminist ethnography to understand how children who were exposed to feminist picture books talked about gender and gender roles. Vandergrift ( 1995 ) presented a theoretical piece that explored the ways picture books reinforce or resist canons. She laid out a future research agenda using reader response theory to better comprehend how young children question gender in literature. Willinsky ( 1987 ) explored the ways that dictionary definitions reinforced constructions of gender. He looked at the definitions of the words clitoris, penis , and vagina in six school dictionaries and then compared them with A Feminist Dictionary to see how the definitions varied across texts. He found a stark difference in the treatment of the words vagina and penis ; definitions of the word vagina were treated as medical or anatomical and devoid of sexuality, while definitions of the term penis were linked to sex (p. 151).

Weisner ( 2004 ) addressed middle school classrooms and highlighted the various ways her school discouraged unconventional and feminist ways of teaching. She also brought up issues of silence, on the part of both teachers and students, regarding sexuality. By including students in the curriculum planning process, Weisner provided more possibilities for challenging power in classrooms. Wallace ( 1999 ) returned to the realm of higher education and pushed literature professors to expand pedagogy to be about more than just the texts that are read. She challenged the metaphoric dichotomy of classrooms as places of love or battlefields; in doing so, she “advocate[d] active ignorance and attention to resistances” (p. 194) as a method of subverting transference from students to teachers.

The works discussed in this section cover topics ranging from the place of women in curriculum to the gendered encounters teachers and students have with curriculums and pedagogies. They offer current feminist scholars many directions for future research, particularly in the arena of P–12 education.

Teacher Education, Identities, and Knowledge

The third subset of literature examines the ways that teachers exist in classrooms and some possibilities for feminist teacher education. The majority of the literature in this section starts from the premise that the teachers are engaged in feminist projects. The selections concerning teacher education offer critiques of existing heteropatriarchal normative teacher education and include possibilities for weaving feminism and feminist pedagogies into the education of preservice teachers.

Holzman ( 1986 ) explored the role of multicultural teaching and how it can challenge systematic oppression; however, she complicated the process with her personal narrative of being a lesbian and working to find a place within the school for her sexual identity. She questioned how teachers can protect their identities while also engaging in the fight for justice and equity. Hoffman ( 1985 ) discussed the ways teacher power operates in the classroom and how to balance the personal and political while still engaging in disciplinary curriculums. She contended that teachers can work from personal knowledge and connect it to the larger curricular concerns of their discipline. Golden ( 1998 ) used teacher narratives to unpack how teachers can become radicalized in the higher education classroom when faced with unrelenting patriarchal and heteronormative messages.

Extending this work, Bailey ( 2001 ) discussed teachers as activists within the classroom. She focused on three aspects of teaching: integrity with regard to relationships, course content, and teaching strategies. She concluded that teachers cannot separate their values from their profession. Simon ( 2007 ) conducted a case study of a secondary teacher and communities of inquiry to see how they impacted her work in the classroom. The teacher, Laura, explicitly tied her inquiry activities to activist teacher education and critical pedagogy, “For this study, inquiry is fundamental to critical pedagogy, shaped by power and ideology, relationships within and outside of the classroom, as well as teachers’ and students’ autochthonous histories and epistemologies” (Simon, 2007 , p. 47). Laura’s experiences during her teacher education program continued during her years in the classroom, leading her to create a larger activism-oriented teacher organization.

Collecting educational autobiographies from 17 college-level feminist professors, Maher and Tetreault ( 1994 ) worried that educators often conflated “the experience and values of white middle-class women like ourselves for gendered universals” (p. 15). They complicated the idea of a democratic feminist teacher, raised issues regarding the problematic ways hegemonic feminism flattens experience to that of just white women, and pushed feminist professors to pay particular attention to the intersections of race, class, gender, and sexuality when teaching.

Cheira ( 2017 ) called for gender-conscious teaching and literature-based teaching to confront the gender stereotypes she encountered in Portuguese secondary schools. Papoulis and Smith ( 1992 ) conducted summer sessions where teachers experienced writing activities they could teach their students. Conceptualized as an experiential professional development course, the article revolved around an incident where the seminar was reading Emily Dickinson and the men in the course asked the two female instructors why they had to read feminist literature and the conversations that arose. The stories the women told tie into Papoulis and Smith’s call for teacher educators to interrogate their underlying beliefs and ideologies about gender, race, and class, so they are able to foster communities of study that can purposefully and consciously address feminist inquiry.

McWilliam ( 1994 ) collected stories of preservice teachers in Australia to understand how feminism can influence teacher education. She explored how textual practices affect how preservice teachers understand teaching and their role. Robertson ( 1994 ) tackled the issue of teacher education and challenged teachers to move beyond the two metaphors of banking and midwifery when discussing feminist ways of teaching. She called for teacher educators to use feminist pedagogies within schools of education so that preservice teachers experience a feminist education. Maher and Rathbone ( 1986 ) explored the scholarship on women’s and girls’ educational experiences and used their findings to call for changes in teacher education. They argued that schools reinforce the notion that female qualities are inferior due to androcentric curriculums and ways of showing knowledge. Justice-oriented teacher education is a more recent iteration of this debate, and Jones and Hughes ( 2016 ) called for community-based practices to expand the traditional definitions of schooling and education. They called for preservice teachers to be conversant with, and open to, feminist storylines that defy existing gendered, raced, and classed stereotypes.

Bieler ( 2010 ) drew on feminist and critical definitions of dialogue (e.g., those by Bakhtin, Freire, Ellsworth, hooks, and Burbules) to reframe mentoring discourse in university supervision and dialogic praxis. She concluded by calling on university supervisors to change their methods of working with preservice teachers to “Explicitly and transparently cultivat[e] dialogic praxis-oriented mentoring relationships so that the newest members of our field can ‘feel their own strength at last,’ as Homer’s Telemachus aspired to do” (Bieler, 2010 , p. 422).

Johnson ( 2004 ) also examined the role of teacher educators, but she focused on the bodies and sexualities of preservice teachers. She explored the dynamics of sexual tension in secondary classrooms, the role of the body in teaching, and concerns about clothing when teaching. She explicitly worked to resist and undermine Cartesian dualities and, instead, explored the erotic power of teaching and seducing students into a love of subject matter. “But empowered women threaten the patriarchal structure of this society. Therefore, women have been acculturated to distrust erotic power” (Johnson, 2004 , p. 7). Like Bieler ( 2010 ), Johnson ( 2004 ) concluded that, “Teacher educators could play a role in creating a space within the larger framework of teacher education discourse such that bodily knowledge is considered along with pedagogical and content knowledge as a necessary component of teacher training and professional development” (p. 24). The articles about teacher education all sought to provoke questions about how we engage in the preparation and continuing development of educators.

Teacher identity and teacher education constitute how teachers construct knowledge, as both students and teachers. The works in this section raise issues of what identities are “acceptable” in the classroom, ways teachers and teacher educators can disrupt oppressive storylines and practices, and the challenges of utilizing feminist pedagogies without falling into hegemonic feminist practices.

Possibilities for Feminist Qualitative Research

Spivak ( 2012 ) believed that “gender is our first instrument of abstraction” (p. 30) and is often overlooked in a desire to understand political, curricular, or cultural moments. More work needs to be done to center gender and intersecting identities in educational research. One way is by using feminist qualitative methods. Classrooms and educational systems need to be examined through their gendered components, and the ways students operate within and negotiate systems of power and oppression need to be explored. We need to see if and how teachers are actively challenging patriarchal and heteronormative curriculums and to learn new methods for engaging in affirmative sabotage (Spivak, 2014 ). Given the historical emphasis on higher education, more work is needed regarding P–12 education, because it is in P–12 classrooms that affirmative sabotage may be the most necessary to subvert systems of oppression.

In order to engage in affirmative sabotage, it is vital that qualitative researchers who wish to use feminist theory spend time grappling with the complexity and multiplicity of feminist theory. It is only by doing this thought work that researchers will be able to understand the ongoing debates within feminist theory and to use it in a way that leads to a more equitable and just world. Simply using feminist theory because it may be trendy ignores the very real political nature of feminist activism. Researchers need to consider which theories they draw on and why they use those theories in their projects. One way of doing this is to explicitly think with theory (Jackson & Mazzei, 2012 ) at all stages of the research project and to consider which voices are being heard and which are being silenced (Gilligan, 2011 ; Spivak, 1988 ) in educational research. More consideration also needs to be given to non-U.S. and non-Western feminist theories and research to expand our understanding of education and schooling.

Paying close attention to feminist debates about method and methodology provides another possibility for qualitative research. The very process of challenging positivist research methods opens up new spaces and places for feminist qualitative research in education. It also allows researchers room to explore subjectivities that are often marginalized. When researchers engage in the deeply reflexive work that feminist research requires, it leads to acts of affirmative sabotage within the academy. These discussions create the spaces that lead to new visions and new worlds. Spivak ( 2006 ) once declared, “I am helpless before the fact that all my essays these days seem to end with projects for future work” (p. 35), but this is precisely the beauty of feminist qualitative research. We are setting ourselves and other feminist researchers up for future work, future questions, and actively changing the nature of qualitative research.

Acknowledgements

Dr. George Noblit provided the author with the opportunity to think deeply about qualitative methods and to write this article, for which the author is extremely grateful. Dr. Lynda Stone and Dr. Tanya Shields are thanked for encouraging the author’s passion for feminist theory and for providing many hours of fruitful conversation and book lists. A final thank you is owed to the author’s partner, Ben Skelton, for hours of listening to her talk about feminist methods, for always being a first reader, and for taking care of their infant while the author finished writing this article.

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Black Feminist Thought and Qualitative Research in Education

2019, Education, Cultures, and Ethnicities

Black feminist thought and qualitative research in education is guided by a particular understanding of the learning strategies informed by Black women’s historical experiences with race, gender, and class. Scholars of Black feminist thought remind us of a Black feminist pedagogy that fosters a mindset of intellectual inclusion. Black feminist thought challenges Western intellectual traditions of exclusivity and chauvinism. This article presents a synopsis of the nature and scope of Black feminist thought and qualitative research in education. Further, this article highlights the work of scholars who describe the importance of an Afrocentric methodological approach in the field of education because it offers scholars and practitioners a methodological opportunity to promote equality and multiple perspectives.

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Racial Identity Development on the Margins: The Narratives of Black Women College Students with Experiences in the Foster Care System

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The purpose of this qualitative research study is to explore ways Black women college students with experiences in the foster care system construct meaning of their foster care experiences, and how these experiences have influenced their higher education experiences, and the current status of their racial identity development. Using semi-structured interviews, the participant’s narratives are constructed to span across defining moments in their childhood to their current selves in higher education. Guided by Black feminist thought and intersectionality, the questions that this research study asks are (a) how does being a Black woman with experiences in the foster care system impact a student’s experience in higher education? and (b) what kinds of knowledge do these Black women perceive as lessons, that they acquired during their time in the foster care system? In centering the experience of being in foster care, this research highlights intragroup differences among Black women college students to demonstrate the complexity of racial identity development that transcends the boundaries of traditional racial identity models of measurement. The findings of this research illustrate the complexity of racial identity development for Black women college student with experiences in the foster care system.

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Higher education is an important location for the development of racial identity among Black college students (Baber, 2012 ; Harper & Quaye 2007 ; Hurtado et al., 2015 ; Ritchey, 2014 ), whether the location is a predominately white institution (PWI), or a minority serving institution (MSI), such as a historically Black college or university (HBCU), college is a place where young adults learn how to positively contribute to society (Ritchey, 2014 ), and the experience allows students to explore themselves and shape their own beliefs (Chavous et al., 2018 ; Torres et al., 2009 ). Given the multidimensional nature of Blackness, Black students often arrive on campus having experienced different levels and forms of oppression (Baber, 2012 ). The field of higher education has consistently documented the prevalence of racism, it’s many forms in colleges and universities, and its capacity to impact the success of Black college students (Allen, 1992 ; Harper & Hurtado, 2007 ; Hurtado, 1992 ; Solórzano et al., 2000 ). Existing research on the relationship between the development of racial identity and higher education suggest that for Black students; racial identity is a critical part of psychosocial development and is associated with social adjustment, student engagement, mental health, and academic performance (Clayton, 2020 ; Harris & BrckaLorenz, 2017 ; Hatter & Ottens, 1998 ; Miller-Cotto & Byrnes 2016 ). The development of racial identity is constantly evolving based on a myriad of societal factors; in fact, Wijeyesinghe & Jackson ( 2001 ) noted that studies on racial identity development are like taking a “snapshot of a moving picture” (pp.2; as cited in Baber, 2012 ).

This paper explores how Black women college students with experiences in the foster care system develop their racial identities while attending a PWI. While Black women college students share common experiences with both Black men and white women, Black women experience racial and gender-based oppression simultaneously (Patton, 2009 ). Research focused on Black women in higher education is a consistently growing interdisciplinary field, and current research has reported that while its common for Black women to be portrayed in higher education as resilient and high achieving, researchers have documented Black women at PWIs experiencing feeling like outsiders (Shahid et al., 2018 ), feelings of isolation (Kelly et al., 2019 ), and encountering prejudices that are rooted in stereotypes of Black women (Lewis et al., 2012 ). While research on Black women in the academy has uncovered that Black women share commonalities in their higher education experiences, this study takes a different approach to explore if these commonalities ring true for Black women who are situated at a very specific intersection within the Black women collective standpoint, experiencing the foster care system.

The purpose of this research is to explore ways Black women college students with experiences in the foster care system construct meaning of their foster care experiences, and how these experiences might influence their higher education experiences, and the current status of their racial identity development. The questions that this research study asks are (a) how does being a Black woman with experiences in the foster care system impact a student’s experience in higher education? and (b) what kinds of knowledge do these Black women perceive as lessons, that they acquired during their experiences with the foster care system? This research is guided by the philosophical foundations of intersectionality in combination with Black feminist thought. Black feminist thought principles are used to conceptualize the participants’ lived experiences to understand the construction of their racial identity through an intersectional lens. Ultimately, this paper centers Black women with social identities that are not commonly represented in the collective Black woman intellectual tradition, to demonstrate the richness of intragroup differences among the collective standpoint of Black women, and how these differences further situate them at various points of Black womanhood. Understanding the experience of Black women in higher education has better informed higher education institutions on ways to continue to support Black women (Patton, 2009 ). In centering experiences with foster care system, this research showcases the intragroup differences among Black women, and increases the visibility of Black women in foster youth research, making this work critical to the field of social work and higher education.

Theoretical Frameworks

The theoretical framework for this study combines two theories that are created by and for the theorizing of Black women’s’ lived experiences. Collins & Stockton ( 2018 ) explain that in addition to guiding the research study, the purpose of theoretical frameworks in qualitative research is to articulate how the study will process new knowledge, clarify epistemological dispositions, identify the logic behind methodological choices, and build theory as a result of the research findings. Black feminism as a critical social theory aims to understand how Black women are marginalized through institutional structures and practices, social norms, and ideological elitism (Gist, 2016 ). Intersectionality is used in higher education research to analyze the various ways in which race and gender interact to shape the multiple dimensions of Black women’s experiences in education (Crenshaw, 1991 ). Intersectionality also provides scholars with a critical analytic lens to interrogate racial, ethnic, class, ability, age, sexuality and gender disparities (Harris & Patton, 2019 ). Understanding racial identity development among Black women college students with experiences in the foster care system with theoretical tools that are created and maintained by the intellectual traditions of Black women, situates this research as an original work. Theory attempts to explain phenomena logically and meaningfully (Collins & Stockton, 2018 ), and by theorizing this work with the tools of Black women, these stories are being constructed in a theoretical design where the advancement of Black women has always been the priority. It is critical to this work that Black feminist thought, and intersectionality are intertwined to serve as a theoretical guide, not only to fulfill its purpose in the context of qualitative research, but more importantly to provide an opportunity for these Black women’s’ lives to be theorized by the work of a long line of Black women.

Black Feminist Thought

“When I say I am a Black feminist, I mean I recognize that my power as well as my primary oppressions come as a result of my Blackness as well as my womanness, and therefore my struggles on both fronts are inseparable”- Audre Lorde, I Am Your Sister ( 1985 ) pp. 74.

Black Feminist Thought is a longstanding intellectual tradition that functions as a critical social theory, grounded in its commitment to justice for both U.S. Black women and other oppressed groups (Collins, 2000 ). Black feminist thought is versatile in nature and can function in many ways such as a consciousness and as an activist approach. As a critical social theory, Black feminist thought is a body of collective knowledge and set of institutional practices that aims to empower Black women within the context of social injustice sustained by intersecting oppressions (Collins, 2000 ). The historical evolution of Black feminist thought as an intellectual tradition has developed out of the need to improve Black women’s conditions in the United States (Taylor, 1998 ). In her work titled The Historical Evolution of Black Feminist Theory and Praxis ( 1998 ), Ula Taylor characterized the evolution of Black Feminist tradition in a series of waves. The reoccurring theme that can be seen through the evolution of Black feminism, is how the concept of liberation has been envisioned in the eyes of Black women, versus how liberation is envisioned in the eyes of Black women’s racial and gendered counterparts, and why the counter visions of liberation have never been beneficial for the advancement of Black women. Through the waves of Black feminism, white women feminist groups rejected Black feminist rhetoric around liberation if it did not immediately serve their needs, and organizations that were run by Black men rejected issues around gender (Taylor, 1998 ). Through this resistance and calls for the advancement of Black women throughout history, critical features of Black Feminism emerged. The distinguishing features of Black feminist thought that this study is grounded in includes: the power of self-definition, the tension of linking experiences and ideas, and the use of dialogue in assessing knowledge claims.

Intersectionality

While intersectionality has been recognized as an important form of critical inquiry (Collins, 2019 ; Harris & Patton, 2019 ; Nash, 2019 ), there has been debate regarding nearly every aspect of intersectionality and its ideas, from intersectionality’s histories and origins to its relationship to identity (Collins, 2019 ; Harris & Patton, 2019 ; Nash, 2019 ). In her 1989 work titled Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics , legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw first introduced the term intersectionality to the academy. Her work demonstrated how “U.S. structures, such as the legal system, and discourses of resistance, such as feminism and anti-racism, often frame identities as isolated and mutually exclusive, leaving Black women and their multidimensional identities unaccounted for” (Harris & Patton, 2019 , pp.1; Crenshaw 1989 ).

In its current form in the academy, intersectionality is at a crossroads (Collins, 2019 ). While intersectional ideas have been conceptualized in many ways from a concept to a heuristic device, a consensus of whether intersectionality is a developed critical social theory has yet to be reached (Nash, 2008 , 2019 ; Harris & Patton, 2019 ; Collins, 2019 ). Critical social theories are particular bodies of knowledge that work to both explain and critique, existing social inequalities with intentions towards creating possibilities for change (Collins, 2019 ). In an effort to contribute towards reaching a consensus on the sharpness of its critical edge, intersectionality is used in this study as both a metaphor and a heuristic device. In the context of identity, intersectionality is a lens to understand how individual identities are shaped from one social context to another (Collins, 2019 ). Heuristics are techniques that inform how people approach old and new puzzles, they are used for social problem solving, learning, and discovery (Collins, 2019 ). In a technical sense, heuristic devices provide a set of provisional lenses that can be used to interrogate social problems within an academic discipline (Collins, 2019 ). One of the objectives of this research is to illustrate to the field of higher education how Black women college students with experiences in the foster care system conceptualize their racial identities. Intersectionality is important to this research, because it encourages thinkers to consider the intragroup dynamics within the commonalities that Black women have, and further study the ways both the foster care system and higher education, influence identity development.

Both theories have their individual purpose in guiding this research. Black feminist thought and its core themes operate to recognize the connection between the past experiences of these women in the foster care system, how those past experiences have carried with them and further connects to their consciousness as Black women, and how all of these stories come together, to shape their everyday experiences in higher education. While Black feminism acknowledges that Black women do not all have the same experiences, nor do Black women agree on the significance of those varying experiences (Collins, 2000 ), intersectionality enables the reader to understand the richness of the intragroup differences among the participants in this study, and is better suited to serve as an analytical lens to examine the multidimensional layers that contribute to the formation of racial identity of a Black woman college student with experiences in the foster care system. Together, these frameworks allow their realities to be understood within theories that have been created for the advancement of Black women (Collins, 2000 ).

Review of Literature

In the following section I overview racial identity in higher education, racial identity for Black women in higher education, and identity development for foster youth in higher education. Highlighting key developments in each area, I illustrate gaps in each field to further demonstrate the urgent need for this study that connects all three of these research fields.

Racial Identity Development in Higher Education

Broadly, identity development is about the phenomenological experience of coming to understand oneself (Thomas et al., 2011 ). Historically, racial identity development has been primarily theorized in the field of psychology (Cross, 1971 , 1991 ; Helms, 1990 ; 1994 ; Sellers et al., 1998 ; Thomas et al., 2011 ), and this foundational work has commonly expressed that the ways Black people define what their racial group membership means to them is an important step in their racial identity development (Scottham et al., 2008). Identity development scholars are increasingly highlighting the importance of racial identity processes in the college context as relevant to the academic and psychological adjustment of Black students (Lockett & Harrell, 2003 ; Chavous et al., 2018 ; Graham-Bailey et al., 2019 ). Early work on racial identity development has been theorized on a single axis framework solely focusing on race, and these models of racial/ethnic identity suggest that individuals move across linear stages of development from having naïve beliefs about their racial group status to developing racial consciousness and a sense of pride in history, heritage, and group membership (Cross, 1971 , 1991 ; Helms, 1990 ; 1994 ; Sellers et al., 1998 ; Thomas et al., 2011 ). While there is no consensus on the ways to research the development of racial identity in higher education, racial identity development is important to explore within a higher education context, because college is a time period characterized by change, instability, an exploration of possibilities in academic and social domains, and college is a time characterized by a continuing process of personal identity exploration (Harris, 2017 ; Chavous et al., 2018 ; Graham-Bailey et al., 2019 ).

Racial Identity Development for Black Women in Higher Education

Early studies of racial identity development for Black women, have primarily taken a quantitative approach and used traditional racial identity models (Parks et al., 1996 ; Settles, 2006 ; Daugherty, 2011 ). Dr. Christa J. Porter has done important work in understanding identity development among Black women in higher education. In their work titled Articulation of Identity in Black Undergraduate Women: Influences, Interactions, and Intersections (2017), Porter expanded on their model of identity development in Black undergraduate women (MIDBUW) (2013). The model is unique from other traditional models of identity development because it works to support the experiences of Black women college students through an intersectional lens (Porter, 2017 ). While research on Black women in higher education is constantly growing (Howard-vital, 1989 ; Patton, 2009 ; Kelly et al., 2019 ; Patton & Njoku, 2019 ), racial identity research that accounts for other impactful identities such as experiencing foster care, remains limited. This is troubling, because there is sufficient research that documents the foster youth college experience, and how it stands alone from the college experience of people who did not experience the foster care system (Salazar, 2012 ; Smith et al., 2015 ; Lane 2020 ). Since college is an important site of location for racial identity development, this raises questions around what there is to be discovered about racial identity development among Black women college students with experiences in the foster care system. To understand the standpoints of racial identity, Dr. Beverly Daniel Tatum’s ( 1992 ) conceptualization of the process of racial identity development through the visualization of a spiral staircase is fitting. Tatum ( 1992 ) explains that: “As a person ascends a spiral staircase, she may stop and look down at a spot below. When they reach the next level, she may look down and see the same spot, but the vantage point has changed” (p.12). Identity development is complex, it’s shaped by family dynamics, historical factors, life experiences, as well as social and political contexts; therefore, the development of racial identity in this study is not confined to moving across time and space in a linear fashion (Tatum, 1992 ).

Identity Development for Foster Youth in Higher Education

Existing literature on children in the foster care system has encouraged the support of identity development, expressing that positive identity development has the capacity to improve outcomes of foster youth (White et al., 2008 ). While the existing literature validates the importance of identity development among foster youth, little is to be found on identity development among foster youth that is conceptualized through a critical, racialized and intersectional lens. Existing studies on foster youth generally consist of basic demographic characteristics (Barrat & Berliner, 2013 ; Batsche et al., 2014 ; Courtney et al., 2005 , 2009 , 2011 ). Existing large-scale studies of foster youth and their postsecondary education experiences have been conducted with minimal comparisons of their experiences directly related to race (Courtney et al., 2005 , 2009 , 2011 ).

There is existing research on Black college students with experiences in the foster care system. In their work titled Persistence, Motivation, and Resilience: Older Youth Aging Out of Foster Care Attending Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) Smith et al., ( 2015 ), examined the experiences of young adults who were in or had recently left foster care, and who were college students attending an HBCU. Ultimately this study found that while the participants enjoyed the HBCU experience, they collectively suggested progressive initiatives to accommodate youth who are in foster care that attend postsecondary institutions (Smith et al., 2015 ). While this research broadly illustrated the importance of a supportive college environment for students with experiences in the foster care system, how experiences in the foster care system and higher education intersect and collectively impact the development of their racial identity remains in question.

Another example of foster youth research progressing in recent years is the work of Dr. Tiffany Yvette Lane and their work titled Persistence: A Qualitative Study of the Experiences of African American Foster Care Youths Who Aged Out and Made the Transition to College . In this research, Lane ( 2020 ) documented college experiences of ten African Americans who aged out of foster care. The study explained that in the context of foster youth, protective factors are an essential concept of understanding how some at-risk individuals thrive and adapt, regardless of stressful situations (Lane, 2020 ). This study found that many of the participants described how race had significant meaning to them in the context of the college experience (Lane, 2020 ). The participants were well aware of the large number of African American children in foster care and were aware that many do not attend college (Lane, 2020 ). Further, the study found that their participants perceived African American foster care youths to be viewed in society in a negative way, and they wanted to contest stereotypes by persisting in college (Lane, 2020 ). Participants’ coping skills, self-awareness, access to resources, and perception of how society views African Americans and foster care youths were protective factors (Lane, 2020 ). This study made significant developments and discoveries around how Black foster youth college students navigate higher education, but this research study did not have the stories of how the participants experienced the foster care system, why it was important to them to contest stereotypes, and how they see themselves.

To address the reach gaps of how experiences in the foster care system and higher education intersect and collectively impact the development of their racial identity, this research study takes a wider lens to understand the development of Black women college students with experiences in the foster care system. Mapping out their life experiences and connecting each story they tell about their life, brings the examination to understanding the participants current selves. Through this individual tracing, the complexity of identity among Black women with experiences with the foster care system is captured.

Study Methods

Conceptual design.

This study is overseen by a balance between critical and constructivist paradigms and employs various theoretical frameworks that center Black women. As a collective conceptual framework, this guide seeks to reconfigure the complexities of Black woman marginality through an intersectional analysis where race, class, gender, and other social divisions are theorized as lived realities. Using multiple theoretical approaches in combination is important in theorizing this work to understand how identity is constructed in higher education. Constructivism is grounded in the notion that multiple realities exist, and this paradigm seeks to understand reality through dialogue (Abes, 2009 , 2016 ). Critical theory houses the assumption that multiple social realities exist simultaneously, and critical theory allows participants to challenge their marginalized status (Abes, 2009 , 2016 ). Utilizing a hybrid epistemological approach has the potential to benefit higher education research by revealing new possibilities for racial identity research to delve deeper into marginalized students’ intragroup differences.

The interviews in this study were designed in a semi-structured form, meaning the interviews were guided by an interview protocol with follow up questions inserted throughout the dialogue. The overall approach in the interviews was asking the participants to reconstruct the details of their development. The interviews spanned from fifty to seventy minutes. Questions from the interview protocol include, a request of the participants to describe their experience in the foster care system, when did they recognize going to college was something they wanted to pursue, how it felt when they first arrived at [site], what were some things about the college life they had to adjust to, and what are some things they have learned in life that has benefited them in college. The reconstructions that detailed their early life and stories around their initial interactions with the foster care system, are regarded as origin stories.

Participants and Research site

Three Black women attending a PWI in California participated in this exploratory study. According to the University’s website, Black college students make up 5% of the undergraduate population and 6% of the graduate student population. To be eligible for participation in the study, participants had to be (1) 18 years of age or older, (2) identify as African American women, (3) had experiences in the foster care system, and (4) enrolled full time in college. Although there were eligibility requirements for participation, there was still a lot of flexibility within these requirements. Participants could be in either undergraduate or graduate school, the study was open to participants from all majors and disciplines, and the way they exited the foster care system whether it was aging out, being placed with relatives, or adopted, was also flexible. With that, their education level, academic focus, and their experiences with the foster care system all varied. Recruitment methods consisted of electronic flyers being distributed to resource centers on campus as well as student communication platforms. Participant procedures included completion of a short qualifying questionnaire to establish eligibility, and a two-part semi-structured interview that consisted of both a sit-down and walking interview. Once prospective participants completed the online preliminary questionnaire, they were contacted based off their selected preference of email or text message to be notified of their eligibility. Of the five prospective participants, three were eligible for participation. Throughout this research study, I use pseudonyms in place of their names to protect their identities.

Trustworthiness and Limitations

In order to increase trustworthiness, member checking was used in constructing the findings. Member checking involves soliciting feedback on emerging findings from the participants (Merriam, 2009 ). Participants were sent their respective sections of the constructed excerpts, and they also had the opportunity to select their own pseudonym. Two out of the three participants completed the member checking process. Even with the steps taken to ensure trustworthiness, this study is not without limitations. The first limitation is due to the exploratory nature of this study, the findings of this study cannot be generalized to the entire population of former foster care youth who are in college. The second limitation of this study involves the one- dimensionality of the methodological design. Social work research that centers Black women should consider methods beyond in-depth interviews in order to explore meaning of experiences through collectivity. A myriad of methods may expose a different set of findings regarding dialogue around differences in experiences.

Positionality

As sole author of this piece and creator of the student-centered research study, I [INSERT NAME] come to this work as a Black transracial adoptee. While I do not have direct experience with the foster care system, I have commonalties with each of the participants in terms of their family structures, and their racialized experiences. Through my lived experiences as a Black woman transracial adoptee, I have embarked on my own unique journey to understanding Black womanhood. It was Black feminists like Audre Lorde who gave me the tools to understand the how racial identity has evolved in my own life. In her work titled The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action , Lorde ( 1984 ) expressed “To survive in the mouth of this dragon we call America, we have had to learn this first and most vital lesson - that we were never meant to survive”. Supporting the development of racial identity among Black women in America is a political act of love and is a tool for our collective survival. In doing this work I am committed to continuingly making Black women who have existed at different points of the intersections, visible. I am dedicated to naming, defining, and speaking for ourselves. I am committed to breaking the many silences that have yet to be discovered.

Data Analysis

The analytical strategy of this research started with transcribing the data through an online transcription service and following that process with reviewing the material by hand. Thematic analysis involves building themes that note relationships, similarities, and differences in the data (Ravitch & Carl, 2016 ). The thematic coding process took place in three stages: open, axial and selective coding (Strauss & Corbin, 1990 ). The open coding stage was an exploration of the raw data in which codes were created. From there, the data analysis went into the axial coding stage which involved categorizing and compartmentalizing codes in relation to each other. The coding component of the thematic data analysis process ended with a round of selective coding. During this final coding phase, the codes were refined to reflect a specific dimension of an intersectional experience to highlight, how participant’s experiences brought them to their current standpoint of their racial identity. Therefore, the themes that emerged from the three-stage coding process are origin stories, reflection on an aspect of their life in relation to how the participants see themselves, and racial identity development.

The three themes that emerged from the coding process are interconnected in a way that traces the participants lived experiences. The first theme in the findings is the origin stories of the participants. This section shares the specific stories that come together to illustrate the foster care experiences. The second theme presented in the findings is personal reflection, where the participants reflected on their past experiences in various ways. The findings then arrive to the final theme: racial identity development. In this section, we hear how the participants see their racial identity.

Origin Stories

In using a Black feminist approach to construct this study, the lived experiences of these women are the subject of inquiry. The findings of this study begin with presenting the participants origin stories. The stories of how these women came into living the life they currently live is important to begin with so that the listener can better understand how these women see themselves. People are naturally prone to composing and telling stories about the origins of their identities and these stories help make sense of and communicate who we have “become” over time (Zheng et al., 2021 ). While all three Black women have experiences with the foster care system, each woman in this study entered and exited the system in vastly different ways, and these experiences have shaped their identities differently.

The origin story of Serenity

Serenity was eighteen months old when she first entered the foster care system. She described her birth mother as developmentally delayed and not able to properly take care of her. Serenity’s grandfather was also in the household taking care of both her and her mother, but Serenity expressed hearing that her grandfather “wasn’t a good person”. In telling the early stories of her existence, Serenity described the reasons of the removal from her mother and grandfather as “neglect” and being diagnosed as a “failure to thrive”. After the initial removal, Serenity was placed with an older couple. Serenity remembered other children living at this home and remembering a little boy. This foster home was the only place Serenity had lived during her time in the foster care system, and she lived there from the age of eighteen months to three and a half years old. Serenity never went back to live with her mom. At the age of three years old, Serenity moved in with a different family, and she was officially adopted by them when she was four years old. Upon exiting the foster care system through adoption, Serenity shared that the finalization of the adoption took around six months. This was a new chapter for young Serenity, and in discussing the emotions around her adoption and never going back to live with her birth mother, Serenity shared that her family threw her an adoption party in celebration:

I had an adoption party. I do remember crying, because we like planned… like a dancing thing, and I was still nervous in front of people so like…. I ended up crying and running to my mom…So yeah it was pretty big deal…like meeting family little by little…it wasn’t like everyone at once meeting me, it was just a few people at once…

Serenity identifies as a transracial adoptee, and there is a significant amount of literature that expresses the complexity of identity development among transracial adoptees (Ferrari et al., 2015 ). In understanding Serenity’s stories to come, it’s important to highlight the connection between meeting her new adopted family, and her emotions in response to the new environment.

The origin story of Ada

Ada was seven years old when she arrived in the United States from Africa. Upon her arrival, she was accompanied by her younger brother who was six years old. In the first few years of Ada and her brother living in the United States, they lived with their maternal aunt and uncle and their two children. Life inside their first home in the U.S. consisted of their aunt, who was pregnant at the time, and their uncle having “really volatile fights, and one time it got out of hand”. Ada recalled several details of that night that she found strange that she remembered, like eating grape nuts. The incident took place in the evening when her aunt and uncle were arguing in the kitchen:

My uncle took the stove guard and hit my aunt over the head. She fell to the floor and her head was bleeding. My brother who was around eleven years old at the time, called the police and the police came…and things happened. My uncle and aunt had two kids at that time, the fourth child was back home still in Nigeria. So…they separated her two kids, put them in different foster homes.

Along with the two other children, Ada and her brother were removed from her aunt and uncles’ home after this event. Reflecting on this event that had changed her home circumstances, Ada said she was grateful the foster care system put her brother in the same foster home. She further explained: “I don’t know what I would have done if they had separated us”.

This story was a defining moment in Ada’s early experiences in the United States. We went onto discuss the background stories of what led to Ada and her brother’s arrival to the United States. Ada explained that parents sent her and her brother to the United States for education purposes. Ada’s parents were living in Africa when she and her brother were placed in the foster care system. Ada explained that she maintains a healthy relationship with her parents. In telling me about her parents, Ada explained that her father is an OBGYN, and her mother is a defense attorney. She reflected on the moment her parents found out about Ada and her brother being removed from their relatives:

My Dad had traveled abroad to study medicine and wanted to give his kids opportunity of exposure. And so, I remember the first phone call we got from them in foster care. It was like bittersweet, because I was experiencing what I thought was like a normal American childhood. Because my culture is so different, and my uncle and aunt were so different from like, my friend’s parents. I was like…. I want to know what it feels like to be an American kid. Not a Nigerian American kid, an American kid.

Throughout the interview Ada expressed that it was bittersweet to be in a foster home, because on one hand she longed for a United States experience and living in the foster home played a significant part of that idealization, but on the other hand she felt reluctancy in telling her parents that. Ada went onto to illustrate what her foster parents were like, and she revisited the thought of her parents, through exploring her feelings around telling her birth parents how they were enjoying themselves:

My foster mom was Black, and my foster dad was white. They had this beautiful relationship, and they were older. They were probably like, in their 60’s or older. And they regularly…. they would foster. They used to like foster a lot of kids, I guess that’s the right way to put it. And so, there was also another brother and sister that were in the foster home. I remember the first time I talked to my parents over the phone and they’re like, ‘Are you okay?’, you know, I was like, ‘do I want to tell them I’m great? Do I want to tell them this is fun?’

Six months into living with the older interracial couple, Ada’s time in the foster care system ended. She recalls hanging up Christmas decorations on the house when the social worker came:

I don’t remember my social worker that much, but I just remember them telling me and my brother that day ‘Oh we think you’re going to be able to go back to your uncle and aunt’. I was sad. I was really, really sad. Like… I don’t want to go back to a dysfunctional home. I don’t want to miss a first normal Christmas. I don’t want to like go away from these new friends I met. I was like academically excelling, and my brother was as well, and I had gotten into so many different extracurricular activities that normally I wouldn’t be like… kind of allowed to do before. So…it was kinda sad.

From Ada’s perspective, the foster care placement was a better environment than living with her aunt and uncle. Listing out the positive parts of her time in the foster care placement such as her academic performance and trying new things she wouldn’t have been able to do before, Ada felt strongly about her home environment changing once again. The placement lived up to her idealization of experiencing life in the U.S. and she was sad about those good moments ending. Ada and her brother ended up going back to the home they were originally removed from.

The origin story of Laila

Laila was a senior in college when we conducted this interview. The story of Laila is a story of understanding and growth. Laila’s parents were always in her life, “but they struggled raising her”. Laila had always been surrounded by her grandparents, and they were a fundamental part of her childhood. At the age of fourteen, Laila’s grandparents they took guardianship of her, and she officially moved into their house:

My grandparents’ house has always been here. So even when I was living with just my parents, it was sort of that home that I would also come back to if anything happened or, you know, if I just needed somewhere to stay.

As Laila was transitioning to living with her Grandparents, she transferred high schools. In describing this time in her life, Laila reflected on her long terms plans she had, expressing that she potentially wanted to go to college, and she was very interested in participating in social activism. She explained that her Grandparents served as a stable entity and they really helped. Laila went on to discuss her experience in transferring schools’ multiple times starting in the sixth grade. In the schools she attended before the one she graduated from, she was ‘getting bullied and there was a lot of social tension”. Through the school transfers, she ended up attending a charter school, where she had a really good time and met some of her closest friends that she still carries today.

Laila did a lot of self-reflection during our interview. Regarding her friendships, Laila talked about through her school transfers and how her friendships kind of broke away and came back together. She expressed how she sees this kind of shifting within her friendships as a beautiful bond:

We created each other, we created a family with each other, when all of our other families were kind of… doing their own thing, I really think that is what it comes down to, is folks needing to take care of themselves and how do we take care of others when we can’t take care of ourselves? How do we love and respect others when we’re still figuring out what that means for us?

Laila recognized that her family played a part in how her friendships formed, but she expresses that these difficulties with her family, influenced her appreciation for her friendships. While acknowledging that her parents had struggled, she expressed love and understanding for them. From this moment, Laila connected this message of her friendships to how she conceptualizes her family:

That’s something that I had to come to terms with my family, like, there are things that my family whether grandparents, my friends, me…that we’re all still trying to figure out. when I came to terms with that I was like, ‘Okay, I can’t even be angry at my mom or whoever for not being this… this parent figure thing that we all imagine the typical mom or parent to be’.

The act of leading with understanding has influenced how Laila reconciles her relationship with her struggling parents. Laila spent time in the interview explaining the lessons she has learned through her experience with the foster care system, and how she carries these lessons with her today:

The importance of forgiveness and also setting boundaries…And working within! You know, really trying to understand who you are from within, because at the end of the day, that’s what really is going to have the most impact and difference in your life and how you view the world and how we interact with others. And again, I think something that I always say is like, ‘we don’t really have control over some things that happen in our lives or how other people move and do things, but we do have control over how we react and over how we carry ourselves’. So, you know, um…I think family is so important, you know? … and whatever that means for you, whether that’s by blood or not, you know?... and finding community is family. Building community and friendship and bonds with people who…you know, share similar values and all of that…yeah, again, like I think…. I’m really really grateful to have my grandparents.

In a conversation of difficult times, Laila opened up to share with me that her father passed away a little over a year ago from when the interview was conducted. She reflected on how her father’s passing was a very big shift, and how losing her father changed her perspective of her relationship with parents and family in general:

I’m really really grateful to…have known my mom and my dad and like…had the experience and the time that I did with my dad, you know, it was hard for him to have passed. That was difficult because I knew like… I thought I had more time with him, you know.... I was like, ‘Oh, this is a new beginning’.

Personal Reflection

Serenity reflecting on the present.

Throughout the interview Serenity described herself as “really introverted”, and she “enjoys spending time by herself”. After spending time discussing her life as an adoptee, Serenity was asked how she feels about where she is now in terms of her development and being in college. I asked Serenity how she felt when she first arrived to [site], and she recalled being emotional:

I’m always nervous when like there’s some big change, but it’s like nervous and excited. I cried a lot that day. I don’t know why. It was really weird, but that first week was really hard. I’m not really sure why.

Serenity explained that she expected college to be a little bit different. She thought about her younger self in that moment, sharing that when she was younger in middle school, she was already thinking “college was going to be so great”. In the present, she explained that she has “struggled a little bit, and she didn’t expect herself to struggle at all”. Serenity explained that she has felt like she has been “mentally struggling” during her time in college and this difficulty had its beginning “in high school when she was diagnosed with social anxiety”:

I was diagnosed with dysthymia, which is like a persistent mild depression basically. So that kinda had impacted me…a lot. Not a little, a lot. It’s hard but like…I’m trying.

Throughout the interview Serenity described herself as a “perfectionist”, and how she has “always been kind of hard on herself”. She was asked what the university could do to support her in her endeavors, and she expressed that “a lot of times she just feels like she should be doing things by herself, and that’s kinda how she is” … she expressed that she “feels like she shouldn’t ask for help” …and she “honestly doesn’t know” how the University could help. She did however, express that she knows how to ask for help when she feels like she needs it, and the program at the University that is focused on supporting former foster youth has been a positive experience when she has used it, and she described the program as “super supportive”:

They’re very resourceful. Sometimes, I think about like…sometimes I feel like I shouldn’t get the benefits…because like I don’t really need them. I mean it’s nice to have priority enrollment for housing, but I feel like other people are more…like need it more.

While Serenity believes she should be doing things by herself, she has warmed up to the idea of utilizing resources that are geared towards supporting her in college. Her thoughts do raise questions as to why she persists to think she doesn’t deserve access to these resources. In discussing her life in college, Serenity was asked what are some things that she has learned in her life, that has benefited her in college:

One big thing is that grades aren’t everything…. because that was my life as long as I can remember. I always wanted good grades. I actually wanted to be valedictorian in high school. So, I kind of like I sacrificed a lot of stuff, a lot of social stuff to get good grades. And, like here… I’ve heard like…I heard that it’s good to learn and to know things, rather than to just like try to get the best grade. Because like in high school, I didn’t really like know things…I just tried to get the grade. And then I would just like forget what I’ve learned, and I want to actually know and understand what I’m learning. I think that’s the biggest thing.

College has been a place where Serenity is beginning to take lead on her intellectual growth, and she is doing this by self-evaluating what she wants to take away from her classes. While she expressed that she has seen herself as a perfectionist, and she has always been hard on herself, she acknowledges that she has been trying in navigating college. Ultimately, Serenity expressed feeling like she made the right decision to attend the university site, and “it was a really good decision she thinks she is supposed to be here”.

Ada reflecting on the past and present

In asking about any hardships Ada might have experienced in foster care, and difficult lessons that she learned during that time, she took a long pause and said, “This is gonna be a lot”. She continued:

It taught me that…I should just be careful…with men, like no matter how old or young. There was another pair of a brother and sister that were living in the home. I didn’t really see this coming, but there was a time where the brother like, tried to…like, be intimate with me, you know? And I’m 12 and he was like….I think at the time he was like, 17 or something. And so, I just remember being petrified, like, ‘I don’t want this to be a memory. I don’t want to leave this good place, feeling scarred by that’. And I was like, ‘how is this gonna change things?’ And so like, I kind of like fought him off. I remember like pushing, pushing him off of me, so that he wouldn’t try to do anything, but he tried. It was weird after that…. He would be really mean for no reason, and I felt like I couldn’t say anything because I didn’t want to disrupt the family dynamic, you know…I felt like, I was kind of negotiating between keeping the peace and for things to keep being normal. I didn’t want to bring up another problem that would get me taken out of the home that I liked so much.

Ada experienced a tense moment in the foster care system, that she has carried with her in how she navigates relationships with men, but it’s important to recognize that she resisted that moment defining her overall experience in the foster home. Rather, she reframed this tense moment into a lesson:

I feel good in the grand scheme of things…grateful for how… grateful for the things that I’ve gone through in my life that take me to where I am, and that took me to where I am now. So, I feel good, and I feel especially good about that… like that terrible experience aside, I feel good about the overall experience. It taught me a lot. And I’m grateful that nothing happened in that moment. Like, because that could have really been probably devastating. It just taught me to be like really optimistic about stuff and not let one bad experience…. Color the whole experience for me, you know? Not to let one bad part of it cover the whole thing. I feel like that… that one taste of my Blackness in that…in that experience got me comfortable around more Black people, you know, feeling like we had something in common.

A consistent theme throughout Ada’s story is her act of reframing experiences for the sake of her livelihood. Ada longed for “normal” experience in the United States, that was different from her ethnic culture. While being removed from her relative’s home due to her guardians having violent fights was a new situation for her and her brother, Ada saw this as a way to experience the U.S. way of life she had envisioned as a child and experiencing the foster care system gave that to her. Despite the tense moments in Ada’s life, she reframed those times into broader self-teaching moments on relationships with men, and how to move forward in navigating life with optimism.

Laila reflecting forward

Laila’s self-reflection has been in a forward movement. She told these stories of difficult times to further connect how these moments shaped her identity in higher education and the connection she feels among her college peers:

I learned a lot from all that stuff. I went to college, and I met other people who have actually been in the foster care system and have experienced stuff. I realized the different…you know, how my experience is so different than others and how we all share something. I don’t know, it’s really it’s really beautiful though in that aspect.

Laila has been able to find community and feelings of connection among her fellow college students with experiences in the foster care system. Her experiences with her friendships before college influenced how she forms connections in college. Laila went onto tie her experiences together by reflecting on her upbringing, her schooling, and experience with the foster care system to make sense of how she views herself as an individual:

Now looking back, of course, like it takes a village to raise a child, it completely takes teachers and administrators and everyone kind of working together to do what’s best for the student and do what’s best for the child and the youth. And so, I definitely also was really grateful, of course, for my grandparents. And I do remember some particular teachers who really inspired me and like, things that they would say when I was a freshman…. that like always stuck with me and really influenced how I perceive myself and how I view the world....

The people in Laila’s life that supported her when her parents could not, served as her foundation to continue to navigate the world. This expression of gratefulness illustrates the importance of support systems for young people experiencing the foster care system.

Racial Identity Development

Serenity’s racial identity development.

In discussing the Serenity’s college experience and how that has intersected with her racial identity, Serenity reflects on her expectations of college and how her original thoughts have changed:

Interesting. I was actually excited to come to the school that had like more Black people than where I grew up there was not...that many Black people. Most of the time I was the only Black person on like a sports team or like in a classroom or something. Um... but I don’t know it’s different because like, I don’t feel like I fit with my own race, which kind of sounds weird, but I grew up in a white family. And I grew up in a town that was mostly Hispanic and Caucasian…and so I’m comfortable with every other race except like, Black people, which is really weird, but like, it’s my normal kind of.

The complexities of Serenity’s identity development become more and more pronounced as her self-narrative moves from her origin story, discussing her college life expressing that she feels as if she doesn’t deserve access to resources, and speaking on her racial identity and the discomfort she experiences around people of her same race. In understanding Serenity and her navigation with mental health and college adjustment, it’s important to recognize that Serenity is someone who underwent a lot of environment adjustments at a very young age through experiencing the foster care system, and based on her findings, she grows into adjusting to her new environments. Serenity expressing that she is not fully comfortable around people of her own race merely illustrates the complexity of her experiences as a transracial adoptee (Ferrari et al., 2015 ; Fedosik, 2012 ) and her current standpoint sets her story apart from the other women in this study. This is Serenity.

Ada’s racial identity development

During her time of switching homes, Ada had changed schools as well. Through these schooling experiences, Ada reflects on her first exposure to Black American culture:

And so, coming to [city] was like...it was like…. like a mixed/diverse kind of area. You know, Latinos, Black, whites…. And I was like ‘this is new’. {laughter}. So that was the first time I felt...Black. You know? I was like getting immersed in culture and the music, and all the... you know, dances and all this stuff and I was like, ‘oh this is interesting. I like this’ {laughter}.

In discussing Black culture with Ada, I continued to ask clarifying questions regarding the specific aspect of Black culture she was referring to. Ada discussed her African heritage throughout the interview, and she embraces her ethnicity pridefully throughout the conversations that were had. Ada found a balance between keeping her ethnic pride strong and being open and excited to new United States cultural experiences. Her ability to reframe her intersecting experiences comes of use in being immersed in a new culture:

Yeah, like American Black! Yeah, not like, like African Black, which I didn’t have any issues about my culture or like, I didn’t not like my culture. I loved it. It’s just, you know, it was a different kind of, like celebration, like a part of my identity, bringing in a different part. I don’t know…. Seems like as a kid…. I’m just like, ‘yes, this is fun. This is...I feel like... not alone’. Because I mean, how many [ethnicity] kids would we meet? barely any.

Oftentimes, school transfers can be difficult for children navigating the foster care system (Fries et al., 2014 ), but Ada’s form of resistance, which includes reframing of situations she has faced in her lifetime, as well as learning to lead with optimism, has had a positive impact on how she experienced K-12, and on the development of her racial identity. Her identity development was influenced by others around her growing up, and this influence has carried with her, into her time in higher education. In discussing her campus life, she often spoke of her admiration of her colleagues and their sense of racial solidarity:

I have a colleague, who like every Black person we see here at [site]… she’ll be like, ‘I see you’. and I’m just...She’s so outgoing and I want to be so much more like her. I don’t want to look... look like I’m not friendly, but it’s just like how I... like I’m just not like the most friendly person on the outside. And so, that is one thing that I, you know, admire about that colleague of mine, is that she wants other Black students here to know like, ‘we’re in this together’.

In a conversation about how she feels as a Black student at [site], Ada reflects on the progression of their identity development as someone who has navigated the foster care system and higher education:

I feel like the Black in me is just…. over the years, it’s just been….it has stuck more… like ‘okay, this is what it means to be Black’. Just being here …. I feel like, just the fact that I’ve gone through this, that and the other, and then finally landed here…. like I feel the most Black I’ve ever been... and so that colleague that I’m telling you about, yea…. I should be like, saying ‘Hey!’ to the fellow Black students. You know, cuz there ain’t a whole lot of us {laughter}.

What Ada has experienced throughout her life is commonly viewed as difficult and troubling, but Ada’s ability to reframe these events into lessons that go onto to protect her wellbeing, has served her favorably. Being removed from her relative’s home and entering the foster care system served as a form of escape from the violence she was witnessing. It’s important to note that Ada learned to reframe difficult situations from a young age, through her experiences in the foster care system, and that ability influenced her development as a Black woman. Ada has been able to define herself on her own terms and she aspires to spread feelings of collectivity and community among other Black college students, recognizing that there is not a lot of Black students where she is enrolled. Working hard to protect her spirit, and now feeling as Black as she has ever felt in college, this is Ada.

Laila’s racial identity development

Laila’s approach to how she sees her racial identity has commonalities with how she has connected with friends, and how she conceptualizes her experiences with the foster care system. We have seen Laila lead with love and understanding, and she gives herself the same amount of grace in understanding her racialized self. While discussing her racial identity, specifically how she feels about her Blackness, Laila offers up a deep illustration of her racial identity:

Yeah, um, you know, I feel… I love being Black, I love... I love like…reflecting on it, it’s something that takes a lot of time. And I will say, like it definitely adjusts…depending on the people who I’m with, you know, in the sense that like… I know that I am… you know, very white passing and so like…. I completely understand when…sometimes there’s a miscommunication or like misunderstanding. During times like those, I just don’t take them personal, and I try to learn how to be as supportive and effective as possible. I’m talking about particularly when I’m with other Black folks obviously… if it’s white folks then like, you know, then it’s educate…educating them that being Black is not monolithic. And that, you know, it’s sometimes…. it’s even that with other Black folks and other folks in general, like being people of color and being… just people in general.

After a brief pause, Laila connected this story to how she views her larger purpose in life:

And so when… I think like, I’m totally meant to be this… like, again the courage, and the spirit that I am, and look the way I do, I feel like….it’s this opportunity to create change and do more…. What is it…. preventative work. You know utilize… understanding white privilege, understanding the systems that are at play, and understanding my role and position within it. And of course, again, this is something that takes so long to understand this is something that of course, you know, I’m not perfect in um…but, at least I’m always trying to be aware of that.

The salience of Laila’s racial identity has influenced a personal practice of educating her peers about identity, that challenge their assumptions around her own racial identity. Laila discussed how her framing of her own white privilege while simultaneously being a Black woman, has been seen in the eyes of others.

Being you know…being so proud to be Black can be difficult for other people, you know what I mean? Like….no matter what you look like, you know, people… that’s always the thing… Black power is always looked at as…. Um, oh, you know…. this hateful thing, this negative thing…., so…. you know, it’s definitely a process though. I think that it’s taken time, and again has been…I’ve dealt…I’ve been in a lot of different situations because of being white and then also, you know, being Black and how other people perceive that, you know?

Laila’s political commitment to Blackness has been perceived in various ways by people she interacts with. By approaching these questions around her identity with the practice of education filled conversations, this approach serves as protection for the salience of Laila’s racial identity, while simultaneously being a learning opportunity for those who question Laila’s racial identity. Laila was later asked who in her life has empowered her as a Black woman. She revisits the thought of her father to further connect her growth to her present reality:

First and foremost, my dad always… he was the one that I learned and understood what the implications of race was. When I was in preschool, we were pulled over. The cop was like, ‘is this really your dad?’, and like that right then taught me immediately that like… people perceive us differently…I didn’t know really what it was, you know what I mean? Like, I guess I probably didn’t really understand, like, what that really meant for his life and for just everything. But I definitely realized that there was something going on there and that, you know, that there was a difference between how we are perceived.

Witnessing her father being pulled over by the police and being questioned whether her father was in fact her father, taught Laila how her racial identity was seen by others, in comparison to her father. Laila then connects this childhood racialized experience with how she saw her racial identity in approaching higher education:

Even further, more than that, you know, when I came to [site], well, even before then… like, you know I had a teacher, who was my sociology teacher, and she was also sort of a college advisor. Or she was…and I remember talking to her being like…. about going to [campus organization] [site] weekend, ‘oh, like, I don’t really know if I am…. you know, people aren’t gonna perceive me as Black enough’. I’ve always been very proud of it, but it’s definitely something that other people have always…. you know, try to say some shit about… like, that’s always going to be a thing, and I had to realize that. And so, she really helped believe in me and was like, ‘No, you know who you are, and you know you need to go there. That’s what you know, and that’s who you are’. And she really helped me because she’s from Trinidad. she was always there for me. Her and I were really close.

Laila had been nervous about attending an event at her new university, concerned that her racial identity wouldn’t be accepted and embraced. Contrary to her worries, Laila’s experience during the [campus organization] event at [site] marked the beginning of her community building at [site]:

When I got to [site] and [campus organization], I met some of my closest friends during that weekend. And you know, working for [site mentorship program] has been amazing getting to work with other Black youth, other Black college students, and helping us work together on what Blackness means for us. And what does it mean to be Black in the United States…. What is African versus African American…What does it mean to be trans in the Black community…What queer, you know…what are all of these different sections, these different ideas and concepts…that fall under and within and without…Blackness. And so…it’s been really really beautiful to be on this journey with those folks.

Laila has been able to find community during her time in higher education with people who have similar racial identities, and also people who have experienced the foster care system. Throughout her time sharing these stories, Laila consistently expressed how beautiful it has been to grow with her peers.

Laila’s experiences in life have all connected to contribute to the salience of her racial identity. Through her parents struggling to raise her, she was removed and placed with her grandparents which served as a stable environment for her to explore her interests and engagement with activism. In transferring schools and finding a safe educational space for herself, she made friends who had similar family difficulties and she calls these friends’ her family. Laila was nervous about going to college and how her racial identity would be perceived but she has multiple groups of friends that she shares various identities with, and she has been able to build community with these groups. Through her practice of leading her navigation throughout life with love and understanding, Laila has been able to protect her racial identity and address others in how they understand racial identity. Her experiences with her family have influenced the way she makes meaning of herself and how she forms bonds with others. This is Laila.

This research study was set out to convey the complexities of racial identity development for Black women college students with experiences in the foster care system. The findings highlight a wide variety of commonalities and differences among these three Black women, and this display of intragroup dynamics structurally mirrors the continually growing body of subjugated knowledge that forms the collective Black women’s standpoint in United States society. Through the stories within the findings, the meaning of their experiences is visible through understanding their lived experiences with the foster care system, and how their experiences intersect with their current standpoints of their racial identity development. Taken together, the stories of these three women raise questions around the power of understanding intragroup differences and considerations for social work research in understanding the development of racial identity for Black women.

The origin stories of these women collectively reflect intragroup differences within experiences with the foster care system. Serenity was eighteen months old when she was removed from her mother’s home, and she exited the system through transracial adoption at the age of four years old. She discussed her experiences as a transracial adoptee, often being the only Black person on a sports team or in a classroom. Serenity lives with mental health conditions, such as social anxiety, and being in college has been an adjustment for her, experiencing discomfort around people in the same racial group. Ada came to the United States from Africa when she was seven years old, to live with her aunt and uncle. For Ada, being in the foster care in comparison to what she was experiencing in her biological home, was a positive experience. Throughout her time in the foster care system Ada confronted any changes such as school transfers, as a new opportunity to have exposure to United States culture. Laila expressed that her parents struggled to raise her, but the home she transitioned to was not a new place for her. Living with her grandparents gave her the stability she needed as she was transferring schools during her childhood. Taken together, the origin stories of the Black women college students in this study reflect how experiences in the foster care system vary across individuals, they shape life lessons that contribute to how they see themselves, their aspirations, and these origin stories are inextricably linked to how they experience higher education.

Intragroup Differences of Racial Identity

Black women are multidimensional, possessing various social identities, which is why it is important to understand these societal issues at large that Black women commonly encounter, and how these issues are made up of a mixture of societal values, socialization experiences, and they create messages for Black women individually and further influence racial identity (Thomas et al., 2011 ). Serenity had a different level of proximity to whiteness than the two other participants in this study. The experience of being a transracial adoptee, and how that identity can shift in higher education is visible in Serenity’s conceptualization of her Blackness. Serenity expressed that she presently did not feel as though she fits in with her own race, and how she considered that her normal. Serenity opened up about her struggles with her mental health in college and how that has been impacting her experience. Despite her struggles, her perfectionist persona persists in how she approaches her academics but learning from her past she expressed how it is important to her that she engages with the subject matter in her classes for the knowledge, rather than for the sake of the grades.

Being in the foster care system for Ada in comparison to what she was experiencing in her biological was more positive. While she expressed enjoying her time in the foster home that she was placed in, she also reflected on moments of potential sexual assault in the foster home. Ada was not willing to let those moments define her overall experience because she understood the impact that moment could have on her identity. Instead, she reframed this tense moment and expressed how she felt like that moment was the first taste of her own Blackness and she reframed that moment as a lesson for herself to be cautious with men, and to lead with optimism and not let one bad experience, define the whole experience.

Laila had an interest in activism from a young age, and by often being confronted with issues of colorism among people regardless of their racial identity, Laila had found her calling. Laila expressed that while she had to learn that her racial identity was going to be challenged throughout her life, she feels as if she is meant to look the way she does. Throughout the interview she expressed her love for being Black, and despite people questioning the legitimacy of her racial identity, Laila uses those moments as opportunities to educate people about the multidimensionality of Blackness.

Through an intersectional lens, these women are at vastly different points of their racial identity development and Black feminist thought legitimizes these intragroup differences. All of these women have encountered problems commonly faced by Black women in America such as mental health, sexual assault, and colorism, however each of these women have resisted these issues and have reframed their encounters as power that has carried with them to higher education. These findings reflect how identity development evolves over time in higher education, and the power of academic student spaces shaping racial identities. Serenity was the newest to the university, and the development of her racial identity while in higher education was vastly different from Ada and Laila. It’s important to consider what the participants did not say. Ada and Laila expressed how their friends and family influenced their racial identity, and Serenity passed on that question first and later said Serena Williams. Serenity is situated at a specific point of her racial identity, while Serenity’s construct of her racial identity stands apart from the others, the use of dialogue through an intersectional lens brings the listener to the understanding of how she has arrived at this current point of her identity. Existing literature on racial identity development suggests that in order for Black women to be healthy, they have to recognize both the prevalence and reality of racism and sexism in their lives, and that identity development occurs in light of racism and sexism (Thomas et al., 2011 ; Shorter-Gooden & Washington, 1996 ). This position is not permanent, nor linear. How Serenity sees herself and her comfortability around her same race peers is likely to move as if she was ascending a spiral staircase (Tatum, 1992 ), as she continues to navigate higher education.

Implications and Recommendations for Social Work Research

In contributing to the advancement of racial identity research in the field of social work, I offer theory-centered implications to consider. This research was grounded in several core themes of Black feminist thought: the power of self-definition, the tension of linking experiences and ideas, and the use of dialogue in assessing knowledge claims. The ways in which these themes were used in this study, could inform social work research and practice. The power of self-definition involves Black women crafting identities that empower them (Collins, 2000 ). To be a Black woman in America, involves a series of negotiations between being objectified as other by society, and separating our own self-definitions away from those controlling images (Collins, 2000 ). The process of racial identity development serves as a site of location for these negotiations, and it is important that social work research highlights this process within Black women with experiences in the foster care system, for their experiences often stand apart from the current research on foster youth. The second theme that this study was grounded in was the tension of linking experiences and ideas. As expressed earlier in highlighting intragroup dynamics of the Black women in this study, while Black women face similar societal challenges, this does not mean Black women all have the same experience, nor are they the same in how they make meaning of these experiences.

As seen in this study, the same could be said about Black women with experiences with the foster care system, and future research should keep diving deep into intragroup dynamics among Black women with foster care experiences. The final grounding theme in this study is the use of dialogue in assessing knowledge claims. Collins (2009) asserts that new knowledge generated by Black women is rarely worked out in isolation, and are commonly developed through dialogues with other members of the community. In sharing a similar experience of developing my racial identity apart from my birth family, I was able to connect with the participants in this study on how the different ways they reflected on their past experiences, the lessons, and messages they generated from those moments, and how they carry those stories with them in higher education. In utilizing a qualitative methodology design to conduct this research, we were collectively able to assess the experiences of these women through dialogical engagement. In future research the use of focus groups, and other methods that center the voices of the participants would allow space to generate knowledge creation and validation. Taken together, these recommendations highlight the power in theorizing the lives of Black women with frameworks that were created to improve the societal conditions of Black women.

This exploratory study sought to understand the ways Black women college students with experiences in the foster care system construct meaning of their experiences and how these experiences have carried with them and further influenced their racial identity development. The study illustrated that direct and indirect connections between past experiences with the foster care system exist and are present in their higher education experiences and their current standpoints of their racial identities. The intersectional characteristics of their lived experiences with the foster care system demonstrated how Black women with this identity can have commonalties in their experiences, yet so many differences exist in how they make meaning of their experiences, and the impact of these experiences on their racial identity. The participants commonly took lessons from their experiences in the foster care system and reframed them into lessons and messages that they have carried with them throughout their development as Black women in America, and these lessons have benefited them and their navigation of higher education. These crafted identities serve as tools of resistance in navigating their development and their college experiences. Through speaking their truths in this study, Serenity, Ada, and Laila have highlighted how dialogue plays a part in how we come to understand racial identity development for college students with experiences in the foster care system. Interdisciplinary scholars engaged in foster youth research should consider how these stories are situated beyond the current tools of measurement for racial identity development and continue to explore the intragroup differences of college students who have experiences in the foster care system; how these students engage with the societal issues they encounter, and how these experiences impact their racial identity. In advancing the study of racial identity development, studies to come should explore how racial identity experiences might differ for college students in different educational contexts such as community colleges or MSIs.

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Devost, A. Racial Identity Development on the Margins: The Narratives of Black Women College Students with Experiences in the Foster Care System. Child Adolesc Soc Work J 40 , 237–254 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10560-022-00883-z

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Black Feminism in Education

Black Women Speak Back, Up, and Out

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Table Of Contents

• About the editors
• About the book
• This eBook can be cited
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Section I. Black Feminism and Intellectual Spiritual Pursuits
• Chapter One: A Praisesong for Johnnie
• Chapter Two: Navigating Inhibited Spaces: Black Female Scholars’ Re-articulation of Knowledge Production in the Academy
• Chapter Three: “Out of the Mouths of Babes”: Using Cynthia Dillard’s Endarkened Feminist Epistemology to Reveal Unseen Gendered Passageways
• Chapter Four: Rising Harriett Tubmans: Exploring Intersectionality and African American Women Professors
• Chapter Five: Eating from the Tree of Life: An Endarkened Feminist Revelation
• Chapter Six: Colorist Dimensions of Black Feminist Knowledge
• Chapter Seven: (Her)story: The Evolution of a Dual Identity as an Emerging Black Female and Scholar
• Chapter Eight: Having Our Say in Higher Education: African American Women’s Stories of “Doing Science” Through Spiritual Capital
• Chapter Nine: Truly Professin’ Hip-Hop—The Rewind (1996): Makin’ Black Girls Embodied Musical Play the Teacher
• Section II. Black Feminism in Educational Research
• Chapter Ten: If You Listen, You Will Hear: Race, Place, Gender, and the Trauma of Witnessing Through Listening in Research Contexts
• Chapter Eleven: Black Feminism in Qualitative Education Research: A Mosaic for Interpreting Race, Class, and Gender in Education
• Chapter Twelve: Me, Myself, and I: Exploring African American Girlhood Through an Endarkened (Photographic) Lens
• Chapter Thirteen: Embodying Dillard’s Endarkened Feminist Epistemology
• Section III. Responsibility for Who and What as a Black Feminist Educator?
• Chapter Fourteen: Black Girl Interrupted: A Reflection on the Challenges, Contradictions, and Possibilities in Transitioning from the Community to the Academy
• Chapter Fifteen: “Oh, You’ll Be Back”: Bridging Identities of Race, Gender, Educator, and Community Partner in Academic Research
• Chapter Sixteen: Lessons Learned Through Double-Dutch: Black Feminism and Intersectionality in Educational Research
• Chapter Seventeen: Responsibility, Spirituality, and Transformation in the (For-Profit) Academy: An Endarkened Feminist Autoethnography
• Chapter Eighteen: Why We Matter: An Interview with Dr. Cynthia Dillard (Nana Mansa II of Mpeasem, Ghana, West Africa)
• Contributors
• Series index

← viii | xi → Acknowledgments

Every book project is a team effort with many individuals providing support and guidance. I would like to express extreme gratitude to my coeditor and sister-friend, Bettina “Bet” Love, for jumping on board with this project with no hesitation, for helping keep me organized, and for adding that extra creative touch to the book. Also, I would like to give much thanks to Cynthia Dillard for hearing, understanding, accepting, and tweaking the vision that Bettina and I had for the book. Undoubtedly, Dr. Dillard, your guidance made this volume a better book than we could have imagined. Thanks for pushing us to think more critically and expressively about what is possible in performing a Black womanist identity in the academy. Also, I wish to acknowledge the unwavering support of the Peter Lang team. Thanks for supporting scholars living at the margins. For my behind-the-scenes support, I would like to thank the entire Winters clan: Steve, Stephen, and Serena. Working on a book project means deadlines, and deadlines mean a distracted spouse and mother. Yet, you all always support this women’s work that I do on behalf of the family, community, and nation. Thank you all for always having my back and displaying much needed patience. Lastly, I thank all of the coauthors who have made this book idea a reality. Our spirits are inscribed onto these pages and together we represent our mothers and foremothers well, giving voice to the past, present, and future of endarkened knowledge and activism. —Venus

First and foremost, I would like to thank the creator. Her love is undeniable and abundant. I am humbled that the authors of this book trusted Venus and ← ix | x → me with their impressive work that embodies the love and spirit of Black girls and women everywhere. Thank you for your trust and for holding the work to a standard that would make our ancestors smile. A special shout to my sis, Venus, an amazing scholar who never stops working and fighting for social justice. Thank you for the invitation to join you on this journey. Dr. Dillard (Nana Mansa II of Mpeasem, Ghana): Your love and light are beyond words. You inspire us to reach back and remember our greatest achievements and how we must “do the work” in the present. Thank you for being the light at the end of the sometimes long, dark, and frightening tunnel called life in the academy. I am beyond grateful for your mentorship and love for me and my family. To my family, Chelsey, Chance, and Lauryn, thank you. The ways in which you look at me with love, admiration, and devotion inspire me to be more than I ever could imagine. Love you all!

Peace. —Bettina

← x | 1 → Introduction

The authors of this book share with the academic community the ways in which we have learned to embrace, resist, adapt, and reconceptualize education research, teaching, and learning in ways to better serve our personal growth, individuals, our cultural communities, nation, and all of humanity. Although books are available on how Black women navigate the academy, what makes this book unique is that contributing authors intentionally and creatively reflect on how they use endarkened feminist epistemological frameworks , a term coined by Cynthia Dillard (Nana Mansa II of Mpeasem, Ghana, West Africa) to construct stories on educational transformation as raced, gendered, and cultural embodied work.

In her book On Spiritual Strivings: Transforming an African American Woman’s Academic Life , Dillard (2006) explains,

I use the term “endarkened” feminist epistemology to articulate how reality is known when based in the historical roots of Black feminist thought, embodying a distinguishable difference in cultural standpoint, located in the intersection/overlap of the culturally constructed socializations of race, gender, and other identities, and the historical and contemporary contexts of oppressions and resistance for African American women. (p. 3)

While Black feminism and writings have long traditions, Dillard’s theoretical and methodological writings are some of the first works in the field of education that successfully interweaved Black feminists’ politics, spirituality, and Africanism with traditional education research, curriculum, and practice. ← 1 | 2 → Historically, women of African ancestry, such as Gwendolyn Brooks, Septima P. Clark, Anna Julius Cooper, Fanny Lou Hamer, Elizabeth Higginbotham, and Mary Church Terrell, among many others (see Giddings, 1996; Guy-Sheftall, 1995; Phillips, 2006, for an extensive overview and collections of Black feminist thought), have extensively written or publicly spoken about the significance of Black women’s experiences in developing meaningful educational philosophies and practices that are culturally (and politically) relevant to those of the African Diaspora. The message conveyed by African women scholar-activists across the world was that Black women as laborers and nurturers, of our own children and other people’s children, have an ontological way of being, viewing, and conveying the social world that could simultaneously contribute to social theory and serve democratic purposes.

Many Black women in the field of education find themselves at once culturally isolated and politically embattled as scholars. Thus, besides developing a critical consciousness out of our historical experiences of marginalization (and the forms of resistance that Black women have drawn upon to adapt and survive) as Black and woman and poor/working class, those of us located within the academy also have developed an endarkened feminist epistemology often out of our solitary confinement in the white ivory tower.

Similar to other Black womanist scholars, the editors’ intellectual pursuits and articulations here have been certainly shaped by the philosophies of Black feminists Patricia Hill-Collins, Angela Davis, bell hooks, Clenora Hudson-Weems, Audre Lorde, and Alice Walker. The aforementioned Black feminists remind us that women of African ancestry’s multiple identities create a multiple consciousness (King, 1988) that is informed by resistance against racism, sexism, and class inequality. In relationship to this book, what Hudson-Weems’s ( Africana Womanist Literary Theory ), hooks’s ( Ain’t I a Woman ), Walker’s ( In Search of My Mother’s Garden ), Davis’s ( Women, Race, and Class ), Lorde’s ( Sister Outsider ), and Collins’s ( Black Feminist Thought ) theoretical cogitations provided for us theoretically, methodologically, pedagogically, and spiritually nearly a decade ago, is what Cynthia Dillard’s endarkened feminist epistemology is doing for the next generation of Black women, emerging and budding scholars in the field of education—it provides a more global perspective on Black women’s ways of knowing.

As Evans-Winters discussed in Teaching Black Girls (2011), Black women of our generation never experienced de jure segregation, the civil rights movement, or Baptist church teachings, which are the experiences that many Black feminists declared informed their identities as feminist scholars. While many younger Black women scholars have been reared and influenced by other women’s and community members’ stories of Jim Crow segregation, the women’s and civil rights movements, and the religious practices of the Black church, we are ultimately a part of a generation that has mostly experienced de facto segregation in urban ← 2 | 3 → communities and suburban integration. Another difference between Black women scholars matriculating through the academy more recently and those Black feminists who came before us? We are accessing the formal marketplace in the midst of internationalization and a neoliberal post–civil rights academic climate. Therefore, we tend to be curious about an identity that extends beyond U.S. borders, an identity that is possibly accorded more acceptance and freedom. In this book, many of the authors speak to locating their identities as scholars in communities of affinity (Dillard, 2006) for spiritual preservation.

Nevertheless, different from many of our Black feminist predecessors, we have benefited from Brown v. Board of Education , the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Title IX, ethnic studies and gender studies programs in higher education, and multicultural curriculum. Also, Black women scholars today live in a historical moment where most Americans remain skeptical of organized religion and have disengaged from formal institutions of worship, yet, Black women are also a part of an ethnic group that is the most religious in this country. Demographic patterns, cultural shifts, and political mandates indubitably shape present-day Black women scholars’ worldviews.

Along these same lines, Love (2012) emphasizes in Hip Hop’s Li’l Sistas Speak that Black girls’ and young women’s identities have been shaped by more than simply history. Today’s generation of African ascended women are shaped by contemporary images of Black women that are constructed by popular media, including rap music and hip-hop culture. For the editors of the volume and the authors of this book, popular culture has shaped our racial and gender identities as scholars, activists, and critical pedagogues. Contradictorily, pop culture has been a site of both cultural affinity and, simultaneously, a site of resistance. Readers will certainly be able to identify within this text where the authors accept and reject the complexities of popular culture, and how an endarkened feminist perspective helps all of us to disentangle the web of culture (Geertz, 1973). The messages conveyed in the book’s chapters are undoubtedly shaped as much by a historically constituted racialized gender paradigm as they are by a creative imagination often characterized by the rhythm and blues that accompanies Black girlhood in the post–civil rights world.

As readers will discover in the chapters presented in Black Feminism in Education , many Black women scholars exist in a liminal space between the traditional and the modern. Many Black women scholars in this volume are synchronously questioning the intentions of White feminism and patriarchy, while also embracing a multicultural/multiethnic, multi-vocular, and multigenerational Black feminist epistemology that crosses multiple (cultural, political, and geographical) borders. In other words, contemporary Black women scholars are even pushing traditional Black feminism forward by adding their own experiences and perspectives to the dialogue.

← 3 | 4 → As Dillard articulates in Learning to (Re)member the Things We’ve Learned to Forget: Endarkened Feminisms, Spirituality, and the Sacred Nature of Research and Teaching (2012),

What is needed are models of inquiry that truly honor the complexities of memories. Of indigenous and “modern” time, experienced not just in our minds, but in our bodies and spirits as well. Frameworks that approach teaching and research as sacred practices, worthy of reverence. (p. 10)

The scholars in this book merge past lived experiences with their learned knowledge to bring forth a more complex reality of what it means to be a scholar in a White supremacist patriarchal imperialist society (for example, see hooks, 2013, for an explanation of using more veracious language to name racism). Propitiously, Dillard’s notion of endarkened feminism brings forth a framing or language that may be more conducive and representative of how many 21st-century Black women engage theory, research, and practice. Below is a concise outline of the conceptualization of endarkened feminist epistemology (Dillard, 2000, 2006, 2012) and its major themes that have noticeably emerged across chapters presented within this book.

1. Endarkened women scholars’ ideas, conceptualizations of the social world, and aesthetics are grounded in a historical and/or global Black feminist thought.

2. A Black feminist epistemology culturally and ontologically differs from traditional White feminist thought.

3. A Black feminist epistemology is located in Black women’s existence at the intersections of race, class, and gender oppression in a society that privileges whiteness, maleness, and wealth.

4. An endarkened feminist epistemology challenges, and at times necessarily rejects, Eurocentric Western canons and research methodologies.

5. An endarkened feminist epistemology is purposefully activist and community-engaged.

6. Spirituality is an underlying theme of a Black woman’s scholarly identity and is connected to the types of research and relationships one seeks out in (and outside) academe.

7. An endarkened feminist worldview is connected to a transnational identity that exceeds borders and connects histories, cultures, and ways of being in the social world.

Our standpoint is simultaneously located in seeking to better identify, understand, and name Black girls’ and women’s vulnerabilities, resilience, and forms of resistance across the African Diaspora. Many women of African ancestry also seek to ← 4 | 5 → challenge traditional Eurocentric positivist ways of knowing and inscription of the social world; we seek to turn to alternative indigenous knowledges to read the self, community, and spiritual world. Thus, Black feminist theorists tend to draw upon alternative research methodologies, and pedagogies that are possibly transformative and healing for all involved in the research, teaching, and service experience.

Biographical notes

Venus Evans-Winters (Volume editor) Bettina L. Love (Volume editor)

Venus E. Evans-Winters is Associate Professor of Education in the Department of Educational Administration and Foundations at Illinois State University. She holds a Doctorate in educational policy studies and a Masters degree in school social work from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her research interests are school resilience, urban education, critical race theory, critical pedagogy, and feminism(s). Bettina L. Love is an award-winning author and Associate Professor of Educational Theory & Practice at the University of Georgia. She is the author of Hip Hop’s Li’l Sistas Speak: Negotiating Hip Hop Identities and Politics in the New South. Her work has appeared in numerous books and journals, including the English Journal, Urban Education, The Urban Review, and Journal of LGBT Youth.

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• Black Americans Firmly Support Gender Equality but Are Split on Transgender and Nonbinary Issues   

2. Black Americans and their views on feminism

Table of contents.

• Black adults differ by gender and education in their views on the progress of gender equality
• Gender, faith and family
• Black adults say feminism has had a significant impact on women’s rights
• How Black Americans describe feminism
• 3. Black Americans’ views on transgender and nonbinary issues
• Acknowledgments
• The four studies

The relationship between Black Americans and the U.S. feminist movement has been contentious since the 19th century. Feminist activists such as Susan B. Anthony and Alice Paul racially stereotyped Black men during Reconstruction and kept Black women suffragists at the back of women’s marches in the early 20th century.

In the 1970s, Black women criticized the feminist movement for being narrowly focused on the issues of middle-class White women . Many White feminist activists expressed a desire to work outside the home, one that many Black feminist activists did not share because Black women had historically been a part of the labor force as enslaved workers, farmers and maids. And in an era that saw the codifying of Roe v. Wade, Black women’s fight for reproductive rights extended beyond abortion to advocacy against forced sterilizations .

Since the 1990s, Black Americans’ feminist tensions have often revolved around questions of intraracial harm and betrayal. Anita Hill’s sexual harassment allegation against Clarence Thomas, the women who have made sexual assault claims against hip-hop stars such as R. Kelly and Russell Simmons, and Meredith Watson’s sexual assault claim against former Virginia Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax are all examples of Black women being positioned as race traitors who are “trying to bring a good brother down.” Indeed, Black Americans’ relationship with feminism is fraught from both external and internal challenges to the movement’s legitimacy.

This chapter draws data on Black adult’s views of feminism from a Pew Research Center survey of U.S. adults conducted in March and April of 2020. 5

Despite this history of tension, about three-quarters of Black adults (76%) say the feminist movement has done a lot to advance women’s rights in the U.S. This includes 28% who say the feminist movement has done a great deal to advance these rights and 48% who say it has done a fair amount. Much smaller shares say the feminist movement hasn’t done much (17%) or anything at all (6%) to advance women’s rights.   

While Black adults view feminism as impactful overall, they have different views on the extent to which the movement has helped various groups of women. About half of Black adults (49%) say feminism has helped Black women, either a little (33%) or a lot (16%). About a quarter of Black adults say feminism has hurt Black women (26%), either a little (10%) or a lot (15%). At the same time, 22% of Black adults say feminism has neither helped nor hurt Black women.

Black adults differ on this question primarily by education. Those with a bachelor’s degree (61%) are more likely than those with a high school diploma or less (45%) to say feminism has helped Black women. In contrast, about three-in-ten Black adults with a high school diploma or less or some college education (28% each) say feminism has hurt Black women, while 19% of Black adults with a bachelor’s degree say the same. And Black adults with a high school diploma or less (19%) are more likely than those with a bachelor’s degree (8%) to say feminism has hurt Black women a lot .

Reflecting some of the historical tension described above, Black adults are more likely to say that feminism has had a significant positive impact on White women than on Black women. While 42% of Black adults say feminism has helped White women a lot, a much smaller share say the same about Black women (16%).

When asked specifically about the impact of feminism on their personal lives, about a third of Black women (36%) say feminism has helped them personally, either a little (29%) or a lot (7%). Smaller shares say that feminism has hurt them (13%), either a little or a lot (7% respectively). And half of Black women say feminism has neither helped nor hurt them personally (49%).

When asked how they would describe feminism in the U.S. today, the majority of Black adults say it is “empowering” (68%). This is higher than the shares who describe it as “inclusive” (45%), “polarizing” (34%) or “outdated” (24%).

About seven-in-ten Black women (71%) and 65% of Black men describe feminism as empowering, as do 70% of Black adults 18 to 49 and 65% of Black adults 50 and older.

However, Black adults differ by education on this question. While three-quarters of Black adults with a bachelor’s degree (75%) describe feminism as empowering, a smaller share of Black adults with a high school diploma or less share this view (63%).

Differences by education also appear in other descriptors of feminism. A majority of Black adults with a bachelor’s degree (57%) characterize feminism as inclusive. The same is true of only 39% of Black adults with a high school diploma or less and 44% of those with some college experience. While 41% of Black bachelor’s degree holders describe feminism as polarizing, only 30% of those with a high school diploma or less say the same. And roughly one-in-five Black bachelor’s degree holders (18%) describe feminism as outdated, while about a quarter of Black adults with a high school diploma or less (25%) or some college experience (26%) share this view.

And while Black adults (68%) and the general public (64%) are both most likely to view feminism as empowering, Black adults are less likely than Americans overall to characterize feminism as polarizing (34% vs. 45%) or outdated (24% vs. 30%).

Aside from their descriptions about feminism in the U.S. overall, Black adults were also asked about how well the term describes them personally. About half of Black adults say “feminist” does not describe them (48%), saying it applies either not too well (25%) or not well at all (24%). Roughly a third of Black adults say “feminist” describes them somewhat well (36%). And only 16% say it describes them very well.

Black men (63%) are much more likely than Black women (36%) to say “feminist” does not describe them well. Meanwhile, Black women are more likely than Black men to say that feminism describes them somewhat well (44% vs. 27%) or very well (20% vs. 10%).

And 54% of Black adults with a high school diploma or less say “feminist” does not describe them well, compared with 43% of those with a bachelor’s degree and 44% of those with college experience and no bachelor’s degree.

• In this survey, Black adults only include U.S. adults who are single-race Black and have no Hispanic background, unless otherwise noted. ↩

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