“Out Here Fighting for My Life”: Exploring the Experiences of Black Women Student Affairs Professionals and Critical Incidents in Workplace Relationships With White Women at Historically White Institutions

Abstract

Using sista circle methodology (Johnson, 2015), this critical qualitative study explores the experiences of Black women student affairs professionals and the critical incidents that occur in workplace relationships with white women higher education professionals at historically White institutions (HWIs). The research questions explored how Black women student affairs professionals perceived, described, or navigated critical incidents with white women and how structural violence and racialized harm associated with these experiences influenced their careers. The study used Black feminist theory (Collins, 2009) and critical race feminism (Wing, 2003) as the theoretical frameworks to situate this study.

Seven Black women student affairs professionals with multiple intersectional identities from various institution types and across various student affairs functional areas completed a participant journal (Hatch, 2002) and participated in two sista circles. Findings suggest that participants experienced mostly negative critical incidents with white women supervisors and colleagues due to white women’s alignment with whiteness and white supremacist patriarchy. Findings also illuminate how critical incidents with white women contribute to Black women student affairs professionals being placed into outsider-within locations (Collins, 1998) at HWIs and the tools, strategies, and support systems that Black women utilize to survive and thrive in higher education. This study concludes with implications for research and practice as well as recommendations and considerations for HWIs and white women higher education professionals to listen to, support, and protect Black women student affairs professionals.