Refuting “How the other half lives”: I am a woman’s rights

Abstract

Through this commentary, I hope to trouble the way Black feminists are called on to repeatedly remind predominantly white audiences that white women cannot inherently define the lives of all women.

The poetic identity work and sisterhood of Black women becoming academics

“…We focus on granular aspects of the everyday experiences of Black women ECRs in Britain, in a way that cannot be captured by macro-level studies of higher education which adopt terms such as "racial harassment" (Equality and Human Rights Commission, 2019) rather than explicitly naming forms of systemic anti-Blackness, white supremacy and intersecting oppression. Collaboratively combing through our poetic articulations and putting them in conversation with research on Black women's higher education experiences (Emejulu, 2018;Gabriel & Tate, 2017;Johnson, 2019Johnson, , 2020Pennant, 2021;Rollock, 2019;Stringfield, 2016), resulted in our conceptualization of components of the experiences of BWBA in PWIs (Table 1).…”

“…After all, the omnipresence of the stoic mantra of "work twice as hard" (Cottom, 2019) to be considered as good and employable as non-Black peers, can be part of the pressures experienced by Black women scholars. Through our poetry exchange, anchored in the spirit of friendship, we found a way to situate feelings of self-doubt in academia within macrostructural issues concerning anti-Black racism, sexism, and power (Bailey & Miller, 2017;Johnson, 2019Johnson, , 2020.…”

“…Overall, extant writing emphasizes how, due to the intersections of anti‐Black racism and sexism, Black women are often “presumed incompetent” (Cottom, 2019; Gutiérrez y Muhs et al., 2012; Perlow et al., 2018), resulting in some being compelled to compartmentalize their identities when working in predominantly white institutions (PWIs; Boylorn, 2014; Carbado & Gulati, 2012). However, there is a dearth of contemporary studies of academic work that specifically focus on the early career researcher (ECR) experiences of Black women in Britain, with exceptions including the research of Pennant (2021, p. 245) on “The dire implications of navigating the overwhelming whiteness of the education system for Black women,” and the work of Johnson (2020, p. 89) on “Throwing our bodies against the white background of academia.”…”

Mud and glee at the crossroads: How can we consider intersectionality more holistically in academic fieldwork?

“…Furthermore, systemic discrimination towards a range of protected characteristics impacts upon academic fieldwork as it is those in positions of power within the institution who are the gatekeepers and policy‐makers; and most institutional gatekeeping and policy‐making fails to consider intersectionality (Bhakta, 2020; Miles et al, 2017). In equality agendas all too often gender is considered as the sole axis of marginalisation (Johnson, 2020) or, worse still, conflated with race such that white women have seen a meteoric rise in representation, power and status in the academy (Bhopal & Henderson, 2019) whilst their LGBTQ+, disabled and ethnic minority counterparts, be they male, female, non‐binary or any other gender identity, continue to be under‐represented (Núñez et al, 2019). Expectations of sustained excellence (Gourlay & Stevenson, 2017; Moore et al, 2017) and the intense and seemingly relentless demands of contemporary academic employment (Gill, 2010; Morrish, 2019) can also translate into taught fieldwork, rendering it a focal point of distress and ‘ordeal’ for staff from under‐represented groups (Tucker & Horton, 2019).…”

Enacting anti-racist visualities through photo-dialogues on race in Paris

“…This project stems from the wider work of the Race in the Marketplace (RIM) Research Network (see Grier et al, 2019;Johnson et al, 2019). In addition to yielding understandings linked to the racial politics of Parisian marketplace environments and public spaces, this project examines the nexus of photography and anti-racist pedagogy, shaped by critical race theory (Delgado and Stefancic, 2017), anti-racist scholarship (Johnson et al, 2018;Johnson, 2020) and work that recognizes the meaningfulness of images (Campt, 2017). Overall, we explore how photo-dialogues, paired with critical reflection on who and what constitutes the photographic gaze, can contribute to anti-racist research, pedagogy and praxis, by documenting and facilitating discussions of mobility, gentrification, White supremacy and the daily lives of racialized people.…”