The university is not your home: lived experiences of a Black woman in academia

Abstract

Entering academia as the youngest academic in my department, I encountered my blackness in ways that mirrored my days as a university student. Joining a university department with few Black¹ academics was psychologically scarring. One of those scars had been constantly wondering whether my employment had been to fulfil demographic obligations or rightfully based on merit and suitability for the job. This evoked a recollection of past experiences: my experiences as a Black student in classes with very few Black bodies to engage with and/or look up to. The burden of constantly needing to prove my worth and intellectual capability became an artificial barrier to belonging in those spaces. Reflecting on transformation in South African Institutions of Higher Education, I utilise an autoethnographic method to reveal my experiences of (un)belonging and exclusions in academia as a way of revealing the psychological cost of being a ‘body out of place’.

Keywords

Autoethnography gender higher education race transformation

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