“It’s a Double-Edged Sword”: A Collaborative Autoethnography of Women of Color Higher Education and Student Affairs Administrators who Teach in the College Classroom

Eat glass and walk on fire, while managing a pandemic: Narratives of African American women who serve as senior housing officers.

“…During the pandemic, when most other departments moved their operations online, residence life became even more important as the go-to resource for students (Nyunt et al, in press). Knowing what students-and in particular students of color were experiencingmade participants feel passionate about advocating for them and taking on additional DEI-related work (Boss et al, 2019;Griffin et al, 2013;Howard-Hamilton & Patitu, 2012). But while participants felt a need to advocate, they had to carefully weigh how they voiced concerns (Lewis-Flenaugh & Myrick, 2022).…”

“…Women, in general, carry the major responsibilities for caring for dependents and managing household duties on top of their workplace responsibilities (Seedat & Rondon, 2021). African American women are uniquely burdened by this responsibility (Boss et al, 2019) as the lack of generational wealth impacts household responsibilities, cultural family responsibilities within the African American household, and responsibilities around elder care (McKinnon-Crowley et al, 2021). Balancing career duties and other obligations at home increases stress and can lead to burnout (McKinnon-Crowley et al, 2021).…”

“…African American women leaders often find their authority questioned, have their qualifications validated, or face extended trial periods (DeCuir-Gunby et al, 2020). But while their leadership is questioned, they also often find themselves tapped for additional diversity-related tasks such as leading diversity initiatives on campus, serving on committees to represent diversity of the campus, or engaging in additional mentoring of students of color (Boss et al, 2019;Griffin et al, 2013;Howard-Hamilton & Patitu, 2012).…”

“…Second, institutions need to acknowledge and reward the additional labor African American women engage in (Boss et al, 2019;Griffin et al, 2013;Howard-Hamilton & Patitu, 2012). Staff members in housing and residence life departments, in general, faced unreasonable workloads during the pandemic, indicating a need for departmental and divisional leadership to re-evaluate workloads and job responsibilities (Nyunt et al, in press).…”

Embodying a praxis of care: The urgency of carework in supporting student activists

“…Institutions fail to recognize how this labor is raced, gendered, and classed (Nadesen, 2021), and also how they consistently undervalue the work itself because of its "feminine" valuation (Cardozo, 2017). Within these environments, staff of color have described similar ways carework becomes integrated and additive to their responsibilities (see Briscoe, 2021;Jones Boss et al, 2019) because they care about students. Care becomes weaponized into the expectations and demands that, "privilege the emotional relationship and obscures the inequity and exploitation that undergirds this work" (Nadesen, 2021, p. 166).…”