Black Macho and the Myth of the Superwoman.

Mayfield, Lorraine; Wallace, Michele

doi:10.2307/2064291

Cited by 108 publications

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“…There is a problematic nature of this finding in terms of the stereotypes of Black women. Black women have often been seen as mammies, matriarchs, (Collins, 1990) and even superwomen (Wallace, 1978). Being a student's other-mother, may not allow Black women to be seen as leaders with positions of power, but instead as caretakers.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Black Women Teacher Educators, Race Uplift, and the Academic Other-Mother Identity

Hill-Brisbane¹

2017

Advancing Women in Leadership Journal

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This paper examines the intersections of teacher educators' identities and the notion of race uplift. It is basedon a larger study that explores the experiences and practices of Black women professors at three differenthigher education institutions. The author maintains that as a result of their outsider-within position and raceuplift stance, Black women teacher educators may produce an academic other-mother identity. Whileconsidering the concepts of womanist theory, this paper attempts to offer a thick description of the kind ofrace uplift practiced by teacher educators of color. The author defines the outsider-within position and thehistorical relationship between the race uplift theme and womanism, reviews current literature about teachereducators of color - highlighting their experiences and how they view their work in the academy, andexamines the outsider-within position in Black women teacher educators. The author concludes with adiscussion of the other-mother identity and Black women teacher educators.Research indicates that the experiences of Black women faculty involve racist and sexist practices bycolleagues and students. Additionally, these women experience feelings of isolation, discrimination, andtokenism. Collins (1998) cautions that being marginalized in intersections of race, class, gender, sexuality,and/or citizenship places a variety of well-meaning intellectuals engaged in higher education in commonborder zones, and these same systems of power reproduce hierarchies in "outsider-within locations." Middleclass African Americans in the United States, for example, are aggressively recruited to join eliteinstitutions of higher education and other sites of institutional power, only to find themselves, upon arrival,confined to a new designated "place", or "outsider-within location" (Collins, 1998). Professor AnnetteHenry, also a teacher educator, describes the outsider-within location clearly from personal experience:Standing like an oak by the photocopier, a White male graduate student utters the only words hehas ever said to me during his years in the college of education: "You're lucky you got this job;"he mutters, assuredly, un-stapling a document. "They don't usually hire, well;" he leans towardme and whispers,"outsiders," as if telling me a deep dark secret. (Henry, 1998, p. 5)That is, they appear to belong, because they possess both the credentials for admittance and the rights offormal citizenship, "but that does not automatically translate into substantive citizenship rights" (Collins,1998, p. 5). Several Black women scholars have termed the race-, sex-, and class-based oppression theyexperienced in institutions of higher learning as "double", "triple", or "multiple oppressions" (Anzaldúa,1998; Guy-Sheftall, 1995; James, 1999; James & Farmer, 1993; King, D., 1993). These terms are meant tosuggest the cumulative effect of experiencing, gender, race, and class exploitation (Knight, 1998).These new spaces that marginalized Black women occupy in the academy, coupled with the possible erosionof activism within teaching due to a growing Black middle class (Collins, 1990), led me to ask questionssuch as: what is the current relationship between agency and teacher preparation?; in what ways are teachingpractices influenced by these new "outsider-within" locations?; and, how do contemporary Black womenteacher educators utilize notions of "race uplift" to shape their work?This paper examines the intersections of teacher educators' outsider within identity and the notion of raceuplift. While considering the concepts of womanist theory, it attempts to offer a thick description of raceuplift as practiced by Black women teacher educators. It is based on a qualitative investigation of threeBlack women teacher educators that sought to answer two questions: In what ways do their experiencesinform their teaching practice, and how does the notion of race uplift inform their work? The sample wasclearly purposive because the goals were to deepen society's understandings of the significant experiencesand practices of Black women who prepare teachers for K-12 classrooms.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Black Women Teacher Educators, Race Uplift, and the Academic Other-Mother Identity

Hill-Brisbane¹

2017

Advancing Women in Leadership Journal

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“…An SBW's resistance to vulnerability often forces her to deal with the stress and hassles of daily life in solitude (Beauboeuf-Lafontant, 2009;Black & Peacock, 2011). Scholars suggest the SBW trope was created during slavery to identify a survival response to violence, exploitation, and oppression, and it has been passed intergenerationally through parents'-particularly mothers'-socialization of Black girls (Beauboeuf-Lafontant, 2009;Jones & Shorter-Gooden, 2003;Wallace, 1990).…”

Section: Fighting Strength With Strength: Uncovering Intersectionalit...mentioning

confidence: 99%

The Versatility of Intersectionality in Journalism and Mass Communication Research

Byerly

Sha

Grant

et al. 2023

Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly

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Multiple and overlapping forms of oppression-what Black feminist legal scholar Kimberlè Crenshaw (1989) called intersectionality-is slowly emerging in the scholarship of journalism and mass communication (JMC). Intersectionality is particularly used to reveal the structural relations of power that denote hierarchies of privileges and punishment. Crenshaw (1989) argued that oppression is a complex phenomenon whose analysis must consider multiple characteristics of identity, including gender, race, ethnicity, class, sexuality, religion, physical ability, and so on. In the process of adaptation, JMC scholars tend to apply the term variously as a concept, a theory, a methodology, and even praxis. Crenshaw herself opened the door to various categorizations of the term. In one of her early statements, she insisted that intersectionality was not being offered "as some new totalizing theory of identity" but rather as a provisional concept linking politics with postmodern theory and suggesting a methodology to "disrupt the tendencies to see race and gender as exclusive or separable" (emphasis added) (Crenshaw, 1989(Crenshaw, , p. 1244.This forum began as a session at the AEJMC conference in Detroit in August 2022, organized by George L. Daniels, for the purpose of broadening scholarly discourse on the use of intersectionality in JMC research. The authors of this Forum, who were presenters at that session, illustrate the range of possibilities in these synopses of longer papers presented at that session. Carolyn M. Byerly was the discussant and Bey-Ling Sha was the moderator for that conference session. Rachel L. Grant's essay emphasizes intersectionality's utility as both theory and praxis in her race and gender analysis of news messages about gymnast Simone Biles and former Miss U.S.A. Cheslie Kyst. George L. Daniels applies intersectionality as a theoretical framework to examine race, gender, sexuality, and class in his study of masculine identity among men of color. Mikayla Pevac's essay illustrates how intersectionality can be used as a normative theory by organizations doing preventive education on gender-based violence, which offers a framework for creating messages for diverse audiences. Carolyn Nielsen's essay emphasizes the importance of examining multiple identities in mass media research, showing in the process the utility of intersectionality as both a theory and a method for studying media messages and audience effects.

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“…She is, by every measure, a super woman: a figure to be envied and emulated. The myth of the superwoman (Wallace 1978) has been proven to harm women by creating impossible expectations. This new image of the ideal stepmother is similarly fraught.…”

Section: Ideal Stepmothers As Neo-liberal Modelsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Refiguring Motherhood Beyond Biology

Cole¹,

Renegar²

2023

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This book unpacks and interrogates dominant constructions of mothering, making use of interdisciplinary, ideological and theoretical perspectives to investigate how new rhetorics of mothering can expand the realm of maternal care-givers beyond the biological definitions of motherhood.This diverse collection is at the cutting-edge of rhetoric, feminism, and motherhood studies, and the chapters challenge the confines of biological parenting as heteronormative within the neo-liberal nuclear family. The contributors examine, how despite the diversity of parental relationships, many are excluded by the understanding of mothers biologically tied to their children. The volume seeks to expose the underpinnings of biological primacy and argues that 21st-century families and familial circumstances are ill-served by biological ideology. Topics include Re-Imagining Queer Black Motherhood, Chicana Feminist approaches to reproductive justice, the commercialization and medicalization of infertility, and ableism and motherhood.This is a unique and fascinating book suitable for students and scholars in gender studies, sexuality studies, communication studies, sociology, and cultural studies.

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Black Macho and the Myth of the Superwoman.

Cited by 108 publications

References 0 publications

Black Women Teacher Educators, Race Uplift, and the Academic Other-Mother Identity

Black Women Teacher Educators, Race Uplift, and the Academic Other-Mother Identity

The Versatility of Intersectionality in Journalism and Mass Communication Research

Refiguring Motherhood Beyond Biology

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