DISSERTATION | MARCH 2022

#NotYourMammy

Study

March 2022 marked the beginning of the data collection for my dissertation project - the #NotYourMammyStudy (IRB #: 22-040).  It felt surreal to share my ideas, perspectives, and aspirations for Black women in American academia with folks outside of my committee members and support network. I am supremely lucky to have worked with 27 other incredibly generous, vulnerable, and vibrant Black women in American academia. They are my sistren.

To my participants - my sistren - thank you for making this work possible.

I am proud to share that in April 2023, I successfully defended my dissertation - #NotYourMammy: Explicating the Experiences of Black Women Graduate Students as Learners and Laborers in American Academia" - with high distinction and no revisions 💅🏾

The Focus

The Focus

The Focus

The Focus The Focus The Focus

What was the Focus of #NotYourMammyStudy ?

I explored the ways Black women are expected to engage in affective work – the production of feelings or affects that ameliorate the needs/expectations of others – with a consideration of how such expectations are shaped by dimensions of racism and sexism specifically in the larger socio-historical context of higher education.

I am proud to offer work that is not a polemical diatribe rooted in identity politics, but an incisive critique of the structures of exploitation within American academia and an interrogation of how Black women graduate students enact their own agency throughout the process of degree completion.

As these institutions constantly measure us against the colonial archetype of the conciliatory mammy figure - the "normative yardstick" that dictates who and what a palatable Black woman should be - I leaned into a politic of refusal in stating that Black women, as emerging and seasoned intellectuals, are not our institution's mammies (Collins, 1990, p. 71).

Who Participated?

Through heavy social media recruitment, I connected with other Black women graduate students (18 + yrs. old) enrolled in a terminal advanced degree program OR recent graduates (within the last three yrs.) at a White Serving Institution (WSI) in the United States of America.

A terminal advanced degree includes, but are not limited to, a Doctor of Education (Ed.D.), Juris Doctorate (J.D.), Master of Divinity (MDiv), Master of Fine Arts (MFA), and a Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), etc.

How Do You Define "Black Women"?

There is no one all-encompassing definition of Blackness or womanhood. My framing of inclusion criteria meant that participants must self-identify as “Black” (which is inclusive of monoracial, multiracial, biracial, non-White/Anglo-Saxon community members who identify as "Black” or “African American”). 

This spectrum of non-Anglo Saxon "Black” honors the richness of Pan-African identities as "Black" is not synonymous with "African American".

Participants must also identify along the spectrum of “woman” as their gender identity. I referred to my target community as "Black women graduate students" and refrained from "female" to also honor the varied and multifaceted dimensions of what it means to identify as a woman and experience the pressures of misogyn

What Do You Mean by "spectrum of 'women'"?

I truly believe that there is no one definition of womanhood or gender - which in and of itself, is a social construct. Our sex chromosomes do not hold a causal relationship to how we experience gender and gender norms.

I am deeply grateful to have connected with participants who self-identified as a “woman” and/or with the myriad of ways misogyny impacts women and non-binary folks. My framing of Black womanhood is inclusive of folks who identify along the gender expansive spectrum of “woman” or “femme” regardless of sex assigned at birth. #TransWomenAreWomen.

The Work

The Work

The Work

The Work The Work The Work

What Were Participants Asked to Do?

Interested participants were asked to engage in one (1) virtual conversational interview and one (1) virtual talk back session - both of which were ranged from one (1) hour to two (2) hours. 

After completing all initial interviews with participants, I hosted virtual "talk back" sessions (one hour) to share initial findings, catch up/connect, as well as explore creative resources and activities. Participants also received access to the #NotYourMammyStudy private Discord (invitation only).

Talk back sessions are inspired by bell hook's Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black - as a figurative space to  talk back to the web of misogynoir that permeates  our education journeys as siblings in the struggle; I hope talk back sessions help "to define and determine alternative standards, to decide on the nature and extent of compromise" as we work towards crossing the graduation stage (hooks, 1989, p. 80). 

How Did Participants Connect with Me?

Thank you for your interest in my dissertation research! I facilitated this project during the uncertain and tenuous times if the (ongoing) COVID-19 global health pandemic. Given my interest in working with folks across the United States of America, I relied heavily on social media platforms to recruit interested participants. Huge shoutouts to Facebook pages, Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok (the latter of which came in during the end of the writing phase and offered opportunities to form friendships with other Black women who stumbled upon my random short-form videos on my work!)

If you'd like to learn about how this project is progressing, initial findings, or anything in between, check out 'The Threads' below.

If you have any questions, you can always reach out to me via email at kristian@beyondmarginality.com

Kristian Contreras, PhD

Notes from my sistren in the struggle; thank you for your fierce vulnerability and kinship.

We are more than what the academy dictates for us. May we move forward, planting more gardens with seeds of triumph, refusal, reclamation, healing, and the joy that lay at the foundation of #BlackGirlMagic.

  • I think for me it's the... There's a way in which people will always try to humble you.

  • I really had a lot of things happen, but I was still expected to be this... this...'Oh, you can do it. You can handle it. You're a strong Black woman.

  • ...it adds to this tax and this heaviness and this burden, and it's also like it doesn't feel reciprocal often, it doesn't feel like I gained as much insight from classmates, and I often feel like I don't gain insight or new information from my professors. We live very [chuckle] different lives, and majority of the time, you ain't teaching me nothing I don't already know. And when you are teaching me things I don't know, it's like oh, but it's really not applicable to the work I do...

  • I would say that my journey definitely fits in to that contradiction of being hyper-visible, but then my needs and my priority is getting sucked into this vacuum of what the institution requires of me, what my personal life requires of me, and then what I need of me is at the very bottom of that list.

  • So now I have to make you feel better? About you feeling bad about how you offended me? It is not my responsibility to make you feel better about this.

  • When the mess was made, I was the first person to call to fix it up without [any] support.

  • But then I got paid ... I went and looked at the average unemployment rate, and my payment was less than average unemployment rate. So how is [doing this work] a reward?

  • I can't be everything. I can't fix everybody's problems. They sure as hell don't pay me when you want me to fix something too like ...that's it... but you can't do that in your doctorate program because these people control you, like you do not get past them and their White sensitivity.

  • I'm doing this research right, but then I have to fight this personally. If I don't choose myself, I'm going to die.

  • When I enter my department building meetings, there's definitely like some dread going on... maybe like resignation, just in that knowing that you just have to be there for whatever event, you have to be there.

  • So I was missing my own deadlines, missing my own work to finish stuff for [an advanced doc student] because he needed stuff done during certain weeks. So, I was getting paid, yes, but at the same time it started being less and less worth it over time.

  • I have a whole terminal degree. A whole terminal degree. And it's not enough. And I'm very careful with the words I choose. You've seen me kind of pause and it's not because I don't know what I want to say. I am very careful with my words because words are powerful. And if we use the incorrect terminology or an inaccurate term, it can completely invalidate what we're trying to say, so I'm very careful to use... I've learned, I'm learning not to use the word, "but" because for me, that invalidates everything that I've said before.

  • I did everything they told you not to do in your doctorate, don't move, don't change jobs, don't relocate. Everything you're not supposed to... All the big things you're not supposed to do, I did. And I had to do them for my own mental health reasons, so that I could stay in the doctorate program.

  • It was just really jarring 'cause I definitely thought that in each case, it's like the combination of feeling exploited, like the first level of feeling exploited, and then feeling stupid on top of that, 'cause you're like ... I thought I was so on the look out ... and then you do this.

  • It's the crabs in a barrel kind of thing. I hate that term, but that's the only one that I can think of this second, but I think they don't feel as if I am being legitimate. When I say I really just am interested in connecting with another Black woman in the program to be supported, they don't respond.

  • I think the illusion of reward was experience, which I think like plays into the academic expectations anyway, that experience is supposed to be currency.

  • It's always Black women save the day.

  • I think in my experience because it was Black men, it definitely hit a little differently, 'cause Blackademia is so small as you know...

  • It's a punishment in that you really end up kind of restricting your life and like your... I don't wanna say your choices are restricted, but I don't know, the freedom, like the consequence of freedom of being able to do what you wanna do has just been different for me since we showed up in the pandemic.

  • ...but all of my colleagues in the background are texting me, "Oh, my God, we're so glad you said it. I'm like there are four of us, somebody else could have said this. Why did the burden have to be on me...

  • I had to take my own power back. I was tired of...That was my win of being able to say, "I really need you to hear the words that are coming out of my mouth." And again, as you see, I'm very conscious of the words that I use. So it didn't come across emotional. It didn't come across angry. It came across very factual. It came across with some citations.

  • And so...I was just... I was in absolute shambles. I was in shambles, I don't understand. But I was like, but this cannot be my life. This can't be it. So that was also... It was also, it was my break down moment, but also like a turning point for me where I was like, this cannot be how I live, this experience ... it just can't. It was in that breakdown that I had to find balance in the process.

  • I'm not going to be the... To use some of your wording. I'm not gonna be the mammy you need me to or you want me to be to be able to get through this process. I'm not doing that.

  • I got through it because I didn't necessarily care... and I tell people take that with a grain of salt, 'cause that's what works for me, but sometimes when I care too much, that is when, that is when I get into a conflict with people, and now we're going back and forth, and sometimes it takes disassociating and taking a step back and just being like, sometimes I can't, I can't care.

  • It's been a fight, you know, not The Color Purple it, right. All my life I had to fight, but that's kind of what it was. I didn't have the best journey kind of starting off.

  • It's definitely apparent to me that I'm being used in such a way without my knowledge until literally probably just now. And I am called on a lot to connect with students or to send messages to the students [on behalf of the university].

  • Are you only asking me and people who look like me, or are we asking everybody? It just comes across as if I'm being utilized in a way that's outside of my control, or that I don't recognize, or that is exactly what it is, just being exploited.

  • I'm like look, there's no need for gunners. There's no need for people stepping on other people to get to the top. There is plenty of room at this table and there's plenty of food for all of us to eat. And so we just need to support and help and hype each other up." So I do that a lot. I do do that a lot.

  • Well, you know, all research is me-search? Every person does research on something that's relative to them, something you care about...I was sharing their stories, which is also I'm part of that community too. I'm also first-gen. So, one, nobody can tell me about me. You can't tell me what I know and what I don't know.

  • They see me as smart, that I can handle a lot of stuff... that is just an expectation now and I don't wanna let them (faculty) down by saying no and not helping do extra things to help.

  • Now it's like I have to prove that I'm not the stereotypical, what you think a Black kid is ... I was giving so much of myself to everyone and everything in school and everything, that I just like, I didn't realize I was slipping into a very deep depression and very quickly.

  • So talking to people that are expecting things of me, can you read my proposal? Can you look at my chapter one? Can you? I am not your committee chair. Can you send me your proposal? I am not your template, your guide. You call on your ancestors for that. The way I did mine, the way I did my work, you need to do your own.

  • We don't realize it sometimes. I was like, "Oh yeah no, I'm great. It feels good to help other people." But now I'm starting to realize that, and thankfully sooner than later, that I can't function that way. I am not well when I do those things. And it's hard to admit... when you spend your life trying to be great and perfect and exceeding expectations, it's hard to... everyone's pushing me...

  • I still overachieve to be seen... you gotta placate people when ... I'm trying to create agency for myself.

  • They're trying to get, especially more Black students in the University. And I always feel like it's easy to get Black students, but [chuckle] it's how can you keep them is the issue…

  • I decided after five years working in local government, I was like, I'm leaving this career and also I'm leaving code switching behind. I'm leaving any kind of adapting, morphing, chameleon that I have to do to exist in this space. I'm done with that.

  • But at some point, I think for Black women we've learned that, "Okay, this is how I gotta get my foot in that door, I'll do it." So I think that some of that is, they have to almost. They have to do these studies, they have to help, they have to meet with everyone, they have to do this and that. And it's difficult because it's a game, right? We are all told, "This is the game, just play the game. Just do what they want and get out of there." Like that's the advice I've been give.

  • I'm not that keep your head down type. I wasn't put in a certain era for a reason 'cause I think I would have been killed so many times over cause you're not gonna... I don't wear disrespect well. You cannot walk over me. You will not talk over me. You will acknowledge me. I will do my research about my community and I'm gonna defend it.

  • When I realized that some of the professors decided that I wasn't gonna make it or that I wasn't smart enough to be there or whatever, that was almost an advantage because then other students wouldn't wanna be associated with me. Like you said, I'm a flight attendant for my department. I joked that I'm the villain like nobody wants to mess with me.

  • Cause you don't have access to my personhood. I'm somehow defective or damaged or something's wrong. What?

  • I am struggling. I am crying. Well see that's the thing when you have an invisible disability. No one believes it. And not only that, my disability, and I know this is a total privilege to even be able to say this, but my anxiety manifests as perfectionist. So, I'm crumbling? I'm about to join another organization. I can't sleep at night, guess what? I'm writing two more articles to be published. So if you see success, you're not seeing the complete meltdown that's happening inside because my mind tells me, "Well, just do something else. So just keep adding... at it.

  • New List ItemIt's especially in class because you're like, "Oh, to make it a comment again." But the moment they say we're doing groups work, "Butterfly, would you be in our group?" Oh, you know why? Because you know that I'm an orator, you know that I can present. But when I speak up about anything in class, you don't back me, you don't wanna hear it, you wanna make a counter argument, there's no kind of argument about my humanity, Google, it's not happening at all. I am not the Lorax. I am not.

  • I like to describe it as I've learned a lot about myself, and I learned a lot about... A paper has been evoked in me to talk about the trophy Black and … there's a way in which people say they've done a lot for me, but it's me... [they’re] already seeing me in a deficit when actually I've done a lot for myself and people who've come before me have done a lot to set me up here.

  • Everyone tells you that this process is supposed to destroy you. My background of being humble because... And I think culturally too, humbling gets you places. 'Cause you're thankful to the White person, and they give you more. I can become their sob story. They can see their saviorism in me. So there's a lot there. But I think a lot of it is this idea that grad school is supposed to break me, and so the fact that it hasn't, I think it's some of my gratefulness.

  • I would describe it as taxing, isolating, draining, traumatizing and enlightening. I know that the majority of those words are negative and I especially include enlightening at the end because despite all of that, I am very much learning and better understanding and respecting myself and my skills and my strengths, and that the skills and strengths of my people who are unfortunately not in this learning space with me, and it's also really shining a light on the realities of being a Black scholar in white spaces, shining a very bright light. But it's taxing, taxing.

  • I don't think [they] realize that being an educated Black woman is America's nightmare. And I have done the highest level … because people are so intimidated and afraid of Black intellectuals. There's this thought that, oh man, if Black people started thinking, they're just gonna riot and rise up, and this and that, we've been doing it.

  • I was like, "Ooh, compliments are actually excuses sometimes. And what do you do with that?

  • ...it's been moments like that where I feel like,"Okay. Is it my role to speak up to correct these moments where folks make these ridiculous comments?" But then that also feels like labor. Then it also feels like it's the work that I'm supposed to be doing because it's disrespectful and also I don't wanna leave this space feeling like I had the knowledge that I could have shared that might have changed how that person looked at the situation. And so it's always... ​ ... this constant question of choosing which battles to fight, for lack of a better phrase right now. And in terms of figuring out, "Am I being exploited right now without consciously resisting it or challenging it? Or is this a moment where I feel like I can show up and make a contribution and for it to not feel as taxing or taking as much of a toll on my spirit as I would have anticipated.

  • they don’t see me as smart, my work isn’t good enough… and I finally get it now, I’m not even a person in the department… look at how they forgot me

  • I was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed at the start but when I…. started asking why they kept giving ME menial tasks instead of the other people in my cohort, it was like they hit me with a switch

  • I read the PhD is not gonna love you, but I didn’t think it was actively trying to kill me...

The Threads

The Threads

The Threads

The Threads The Threads The Threads

WEAVING TOGETHER

The #NotYourMammyStudy might be my dissertation project - the culminating work of completing the Ph.D. - but it is also an exercise in community and feminist solidarity.  I connected with 27 other co-conspirators, dancers intellectuals, creatives, mothers, healing fighters, and curious dreamers. Including myself, 28 Black women in total participated in the #NotYourMammyStudy. This project is a weaving of all of our threads that bind us together in a most beautiful tapestry of possibility.

As I moved into the writing of this dissertation. I remained committed to honoring our shared vulnerabilities, staunch refusal when it comes to the exploitation of our labor, the murkiness of not knowing when to speak up or stay silent, and the in-between "aha" moments that help us each get to the finish line. Here are some of the common threads that feel the most vibrant.

Sistren in the Struggle

Over the course of two months, I interviewed 28 women and femmes who identify as Black women pursuing a terminal degree in American academia. All participants, including myself, attended or recently graduated from a White Serving Institution (WSI) in the United States of America.

Of this sample, 8 crossed the graduation stage and became doctors by the end of June 2022  🎉✨👩🏾‍🎓!

This visual illustrates participant's field of study - ranging from my own discipline of education to the arts.

COMMON THREADS

We know that there is no monolith when it comes to the rich community of Black women and non-binary folks. We each experience our Blackness, gender, sexuality, faith, bodies, intimacies, and culture(s) differently. While our socio-political identities as Black women and non-binary people link us, our struggles in American academia as terminal graduate students will always be complicated by the nuances of what it means to traverse this journey in our respective bodies. Here are some interesting shared elements that complicate yet bind our experiences.

  • 75% of participants self-identified as first generation students. They'll be the first in their families to earn an advanced degree.

  • 25% of participants named the importance of previously attending Historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs), Women's Colleges, and/or programs like Mellon Mays to help in preparing them for the overwhelming Whiteness of the academy.

  • Developing boundaries, and protecting them, continues to be a major theme in navigating White Serving Institutions (WSIs) - not only as a protective measure but also an avenue for relearning who we are outside of our programs.

  • 100% of participants described a commitment to lifting as they climb - whether that meant widening possibilities for their children, siblings, neighborhood communities, or other Black women looking to cross the graduate stage.

No matter where our journeys began or ended, and the stops along the way - each of my sistren in this project refused the role of the department mammy in one way, shape, or form. For some of us, this refusal was immediate - as axiomatic as breathing - while others, like me, needed time to grow and sharpen their voice so that no became a complete sentence. Throughout this ongoing journey, music and art sustains us. Sometimes it's a f*ck you anthem, a reminder of a higher power, a Megan Thee Stallion-knees type of dance, or a melody that keeps us moving forward. Here are the songs that make up the soundtrack to this season of joy, healing, and being present in our respective lives - curated by participants in the #NotYourMammyStudy

SOUNDTRACK TO THE SEASON

Talk back sessions were virtual hangouts hosted on the private #NotYourMammy Discord server. These one (1) hour hangouts are inspired by bell hook's Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black - as a figurative space to talk back to the web of misogynoir that permeates our education journeys as siblings in the struggle.

Throughout the months of July - August I hosted 6 hangouts to help "define and determine alternative standards, to decide on the nature and extent of compromise" as we each worked towards crossing the graduation stage and refusing the assumption that we'll be our departments' mammies in the process (hooks, 1989, p. 80).

Talk Back Hangouts

#CiteASista 

I believe in citing my sources, especially the Black and Brown women who make this project possible. Check out #CiteASista who exemplify what it means to defend Black women in our texts and daily lives. Interested in my reading list? You can explore some of the literature that inspired this project, challenged my thinking, and motivates my work. Check out my reading list here!

Love the artwork featured? All digital illustrations are designed/owned by artist, creative, and inspiration Melissa Koby. You can learn more about her beautiful work (and purchase them) here! Many thanks to the Pinterest algorithm for introducing me to many of her gorgeous pieces.

Interested in all the resources collected during the dissertation journey? Click below to view.

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