8 - Studying while Black: reflections on researching Blackness in White space

Summary

I will never forget the first time I read Ain't I a Woman by Audre Lorde. I was in the final year of a psychology bachelors’ degree, reading outside the syllabus for an essay question I had written myself. Prior to this, I had thought of Black feminism as an activist term, but bell hooks introduced it to me as an academic one; I had not realised that talking about the lives of Black women was a ‘proper’ academic subject, and especially not doing so using a first- person voice. I fell in love. I remember going to speak to my then advisor about it – an affable social psychologist of identity with a love of George Herbert Mead – and him telling me he was unable to recommend any readings as he was unfamiliar with the subject area. I had a response, deeply personal and emotional, that I found difficult to understand at the time, but I recognise now as the stomach- turning vertigo of walking face first into the steep walls of academia's ivory tower. This was a moment of alienating clarity in a long history of those responsible for my education being under- equipped to support my development as a Black feminist academic. I think of this moment now as the start of a journey, one that I am still working out how to navigate – how to be a woman of colour producing Black feminist research in the White spaces of academia.

Years later I was confronted with another moment of dissociating clarity when I began to think in earnest about finding a PhD supervisor. Having loved the intellectual and political environment of my master's course, it was my goal to return to that department as a doctoral candidate and as the time came to prepare my application, I began to think about who I might approach as a potential supervisor. Knowing I was lucky to have close mentorship relationships with several faculty members, I felt confident beginning my search; until, that is, I realised none of their research biographies listed critical race theory – let alone Blackness – as a specialism. I faltered, feeling the tower creeping ever- so- slowly higher.