E Pluribus Unum (Out of Many, One)

Abstract

Written to initiate a dialogue about race in the academy, this narrative focuses on the experience of Black Ph.D. students in predominantly White academic institutions. Experimental in method and representation, this article poses important questions about race in academia. The author utilizes several qualitative opportunities, writing as autoethnography, poetry, and narrative. As a participant and researcher of the experience, the author is given the unique position of telling and listening, observing and explaining, strategizing and editing. The author takes your story (a construction developed to create a bridge between your world and mine) and combines it with her story, (the author’s motivations for writing about this experience), and folds it into their story (compiling the findings of the research based on an interview), to create our story (a collective narrative of the Black Ph.D. experience). Hence, the title, “E Pluribus Unum,” which translates “out of many, one.”

Using Participatory Action Research to Develop a Working Model That Enhances Psychiatric Nurses’ Professionalism: The Architecture of Stability

“…Rather, the idea in this study was to merge the researcher within the social practice. Thus, participants were on some occasions collaborators in the process of gathering and interpreting data and served as co-researchers and analysts; in addition the author/researcher is termed “I” (Boylorn 2006 ; Chilisa 2012 ). Due to these interwoven roles, the process of data collection and data analysis has been viewed as cyclical and ongoing throughout the process, rather than a set of predetermined steps, as in nomothetic epistemology.…”

Paradoxes of Sexuality, Gay Identity, and the Closet

“…An autoethnographer uses personal experience to make unique and unfamiliar aspects of a group familiar for insiders and outsiders, and, in so doing, say something about or motivate change in a particular culture(s) (e.g., Bochner 2002; Boylorn 2006; Ellis 2002, 2009; Pelias 2004, 2007). An autoethnographer may also interview cultural members (e.g., Ellis, Kiesinger, and Tillmann‐Healy 1997; Foster 2006; Marvasti 2006) and analyze cultural artifacts (e.g., Boylorn 2008; Denzin 2006), but does not apply predetermined, sense‐making criteria to her, his, or others' experience and the artifacts; rather, the person allows patterns to emerge, inductively, through analysis of the experience and artifacts.…”

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“…Through the openness of the stories the reader is able to initiate conversations about race, allowing stories to emerge as a way of acknowledging race issues and responding to them 8 (Boylorn, 2006; see also Ellis, 1995Ellis, , 2002Ellis, , 2009). …”

“…Even other students of color seemed to feel left out of the conversation because there was so much emphasis on the plight of "being Black" 11 and in an effort to bridge the minority experience as one experience seemed to forget the added layers of oppression and negative stereotypes and slavery legacies that are uniquely and inextricably linked to being African American. Though African Americans share similar experiences of oppression with other marginalized groups, the experience of racism for Black people is unique due to the legacy and implications of slavery and the insinuation of inferiority that justified treating Black people as less than human (Boylorn, 2006;Collins, 2004;Feagin et al, 2001;McIntosh, 1997;Tatum, 1997). * * * The first meeting, a month earlier, was an ice-breaker.…”

“…My feelings of implication and isolation are not isolated. Being thrown against a White background significantly affects the experiences of Black students in historically and predominantly White academic institutions (Boylorn, 2006). 2 In the fall of 2007, I was coinstructor for a course that focused on race, class, and emotions.…”