Resilience and Empowerment: The Black Experience

Overcoming barriers. Many attributed Black individuals’ ability to overcome barriers to the previously mentioned characteristics. Said differently, beyond identifying a shared history or characteristic, women recognized how pairing these ideas with societal action is key. For example:

Being Black gives me a great sense of pride when I look at where our people have come from. . . We are a people of great intelligence, skill, courage, braveness, and stamina. . . We must return to our sense of pride and self-reliance. We must once again work together to build our communities, invest in business and services, and educate our youth, fight strategically to battle the injustices in America, and empower and encourage our people (BW164, age 54).

In my opinion, being Black requires strength, self-awareness, and pride, in order to overcome and remain resilient and counteract the many systematic obstacles and cultural marginalization, both of which are residual effects of the underlying racist/White-dominant, American culture. Although since slavery, and after the progressive Civil Rights Movement, there have been major strides towards equality of the races in this country, being Black is still a very unique phenomenology (BW007, age 26).

Womanhood. Many of the themes present in women’s description of Blackness did not differ when women discussed their experiences of womanhood. Similarly to women’s description of Blackness, the following themes emerged when women discussed their womanhood: physical features, shared

An additional novel theme was the contradiction of womanhood. Said differently, many women noted how double standards are applied to their experience--how they are expected to act in one way, yet are perceived in another. BW059 (age 23) describes this best:

I feel like being woman consists of many opposite traits. For example, women have to be caring but not too overbearing; gentle but also make sure people aren't walking over