Browsing by Subject "Black Women"
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Item Hooperchicks: Black Women, College Basketball and Identity Negotiation(2014-08-14) Clay, CharityThis project used in depth interviews with Black women who played Division I college basketball from1997-2007 to elucidate how they developed their racial, gender and athletic identities during adolescence, and how those identities are performed within the role of student athlete. My research shows that there are specific factors attributed the cultural significance basketball has in the black community and the increased visibility of women?s basketball during my participants? adolescence that position basketball as a reference group of Black women?s empowerment. I call my participants ?Black woman hoopers? to represent the conflation of race, gender and athletic identity. The qualities of Black woman hoopers include but are not limited to: strong work ethic, perseverance, value of teamwork/sisterhood, and self-confidence. Investigating my participants? college experiences at predominately white institutions revealed the following themes: the importance of having Black teammates and coaches to provide mentoring; exacerbated racial battle fatigue for participants with primarily white teammates and coaches; the development of a community of support extending beyond their teammates and coaches; and how the larger community of Black woman hoopers transcends individual teams and exists as a space for a wide array of representations of Black womanhood not constrained by Eurocentric standards of beauty and femininity. Framing inquiries into my participants? experiences after their college careers with the 2007 Don Imus incident in which he called women on the predominately Black Rutgers University women?s basketball team, ?Nappy headed hoes? revealed the extent to which my participants understood the negative perceptions of Black woman hoopers. It also allowed them to reflect on ways that their experiences as Black woman hoopers have equipped them to deal with similar stereotypes that exist in their current career fields. This research combats the silence of Black women athletes? voices and presents Basketball as a unique space where Black women, because they comprise a majority at elite levels, can celebrate and build solidarity that include the spectrum of representations of Black womanhood that extend beyond athletics.Item The Prancing J-Settes: Race, Gender, and Class Politics and the Movements of Black Women in the African Diaspora(2013-07-03) Wicks, AmberFor years Black women?s subjectivity in the use of their bodies and movements has been overshadowed or completely erased by dominant hegemonic systems that created its own narrative of Black women, their bodies, and their movement. This thesis works to acknowledge and analyze the dialogic relationship among the narratives of Black women, Black women?s performances of their ?theories of the flesh? through dance as well as their everyday activities, and the race, gender, and class conditions that inform said ?theories of the flesh.? During football season, everyone in the African-American community of Jackson, Mississippi is looking at and talking about the dance company, the Prancing JSettes. There are audience members who critique their movements and costumes and there are those who view the group as a vital part of the community. Either way every audience member is captivated by the J-Settes because their cultural history is depicted by the women?s performance. How does this work? How is the Prancing J-Sette image constructed and by whom, and why and how does it persist? These are the questions I ask to examine the gender, class, and racial relations that are inscribed upon the movements of Black women in the African Diaspora. For a group whose African ancestors viewed dance as very spiritual, with such activities as the ring shout, it is interesting to note the ambivalence that surrounds the public dancing body in Jackson, Mississippi. While some Jacksonians view the female body in the public sphere with a Protestant Christian lens, they also enjoy the Africana aesthetics and aggressive energy of the J-Settes? performances. Also, while the J-Settes buck their society?s hegemonic system of propriety, they also comply with some of these standards in their performance. I examine this ambivalence through the discourses of critical race theory, Black feminism, the social significance of African Diaspora dance conventions and HBCUs, and the classed, racial, and gendered power relations in the African Diaspora. I argue that the stories about the Prancing J-Settes can be expanded to present a genealogy and present state of contradictory values and issues of visibility affecting all Black women.Item ?What Don?t Kill Me Makes Me Stronger?: Black Women?s Narratives Concerning Their Low Rates of Suicide(2009-07-28) Spates, Kamesha SThe black-white suicide paradox explored in the current study explores black women's notions of suicide. In its most basic form, a fundamental question of this project is why have black women's suicide rates remained consistently low? This project seeks to explore specific internal and external adaptations that black women have come to rely on for long term survival. A great deal of attention will be given to black women's perspectives of suicide inside and outside of the black community. This qualitative study by way of narratives provides insight into the entities that black women perceive to contribute to their virtually non-existent suicide rates. This approach is particularly appropriate for this study because black women's accounts on suicide will provide rich detailed data typically unseen in current suicide literature. In my work, I assume that black women's multifaceted oppressive conditions have compelled them to use subtle forms of resistance, i.e. coping mechanisms that act as protective barriers against suicide. This study also re-examines notions of social integration and religious beliefs in lessening chances of suicide among black women. Research findings were presented by way of four themes that emerged from the dominant narratives of twenty-two in-depth interviews. Respondents perceived family and communal obligations, faith based beliefs, a sense of long suffering, and declaration of strength to be the primary grounds for black women's low rates of suicide. Recurring themes were consistent despite the women's income or education levels. The study concludes that black women employ and perceive these strategies to be significant in coping or resisting trivial and significant stressors of life. Additionally, black women's perception of suicide as a weakness played a significant role in the way they defined themselves as well as the act. For literature on suicide, I engaged the works of Durkheim, Prudomme, Hendin, and Lester among others as a theoretical framework for this study.