Exploring the likelihood of Black women self-actualizing

148 Pages·2012·0.51 MB·English

BLANFORD, WINSORA, Ph.D. Exploring the Likelihood of Black Women Self-
Actualizing: The Struggle to Recover from Racial Trauma. (2012)
Directed by Dr. Carol Mullen. 140 pp.

This paper examines how black women who have experienced trauma make
meaning of lived experiences. The informants’ autobiographies provide data for a team
approach to psychological phenomenology, a psychological autopsy. The inner lives are
traced from pre trauma to self-actualization. Anger, shame and fear, as well as, love
belonging, running and relationships with other women are considered.
EXPLORING THE LIKELIHOOD OF BLACK WOMEN SELF-ACTUALIZING:

THE STRUGGLE TO RECOVER FROM RACIAL TRAUMA

by

Winsora Blanford

A Dissertation Submitted to
the Faculty of The Graduate School at
The University of North Carolina at Greensboro
in Partial Fulfillment
of the Requirements for the Degree
Doctor of Philosophy

Greensboro
2012

Approved by

Committee Chair
APPROVAL PAGE

This dissertation has been approved by the following committee of the Faculty of
The Graduate School at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

Committee Chair

Committee Members

Date of Acceptance by Committee

Date of Final Oral Examination
ii
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I am grateful for the support of my family and my dissertation committee. I am
deeply grateful to my dissertation advisor, Carol A. Mullen for her guidance, listening
and reflecting. Special thanks for your enthusiasm for writing and mentoring. I owe my
understanding of qualitative research to the encouragement of Ulrich Reitzug. Sabrina N.
Ross’s extraordinary insight, encouragement and advice were vital to my completion. I
am appreciative of Leila Villaverde’s thoughtful questions and recommendations. These
contributions to this process urge me to say more of what I need to say about the lived
experiences of Black women in the United States.
iii
TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

LIST OF TABLES ............................................................................................................. vi

LIST OF FIGURES .......................................................................................................... vii

CHAPTER

I. INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................1

An Invitation to Readers ..............................................................................1
Purpose of the Study ....................................................................................2
Focus of the Study: Focus on the Traces ...................................................11
Autobiography: The Scene of the Crime ...................................................13
Researcher’s Personal Autobiographical Perspective ................................18

II. REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE ....................................................................21

The Psychic Nature of Trauma ..................................................................21
Racial Trauma ............................................................................................26
Self-actualization .......................................................................................40
Black Feminist Theory ...............................................................................44
Critical Race Theory in Post-racial America .............................................53
Critical Race Testimony ............................................................................56
Summary ....................................................................................................59

III. METHODOLOGY .............................................................................................60

Psychological Autopsy...............................................................................62
Recruiting Informants ................................................................................67
A Team of Professionals ............................................................................69
Evidence Collection ...................................................................................73
Summary ....................................................................................................76

IV. DISCUSSION .....................................................................................................77

Key Informants ..........................................................................................78
Team of Experts .........................................................................................80
Daniel: Belonging ......................................................................................81
Daniel: Love...............................................................................................86
Anderson: Recognition and Self-actualization ..........................................88
iv
Beaubouef-Lafontant: Strength ..................................................................94
Chambers: Community ..............................................................................95
Between Black Women..............................................................................98
Garfield: Self-knowledge .........................................................................100
Myles: Wherever You Run, There You Are ............................................109
Rutledge: Motivation ...............................................................................114
Summary ..................................................................................................124

V. CONCLUSION .................................................................................................126

Outcomes .................................................................................................126
New Directions for Study ........................................................................129

REFERENCES ................................................................................................................131
v
LIST OF TABLES

Page

Table 1. List of Key Informants: Black Women Authors Whose
Autobiographies Fit the Criteria for Living Experiences of
Racial Trauma .................................................................................................68
vi
LIST OF FIGURES

Page

Figure 1. Evidence Coding ..............................................................................................75

vii
1
CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

An Invitation to Readers
The United States has changed so much that it is common that we all associate
with at least one Black woman.1 Readers here could be any of the 313 million people
living in the U.S. (U.S. Census 2010) who work with Black women, teach them, and
share memberships in professional organizations with them. For too long the scholarship
foci of humanities, social sciences, and behavioral sciences have concentrated on the
physiological existence of Black women: strong, hypersexual, or asexual. New
generations of academics need a better understanding of the more than 20 million Black
women of the U.S. (U.S. Census, 2010). Maslow (1970) hypothesized that people’s
external lives reflect inner lives. Studying the inner lives of the autobiographers provides
an opportunity to expand perspectives through examination of personal motives, needs,
and understandings. Doing so, may better enable the next generation of academics to
improve the world.

1
My personal preference is to use the term Black woman to refer to those African American women
whose ancestry includes American slaves. The term African insinuates a destroyed heritage that cannot be
repaired. I cannot return to Africa and hope that someone will tell me where in an entire continent I can
search for ancestors. I suspect that the use of African slave women for breeding and or the pleasure of slave
owners coupled with distorted records tangled family histories beyond recovery. As Black women write,
some resist participation in our labeling. I would disrespect myself as well as them by writing (sic) if they
do not capitalize Black.
2
Purpose of the Study
The purpose of this study is to explore whether and how Black women self-
actualize and recover from experiences of trauma. More specifically, this study looks at
psychic and racial trauma as described through the words Black women autobiographers
provide. In their non-fiction autobiographies, the women describe their survival of
violence. I probe their texts for clues to the thoughts that guided them from devastation to
self-actualization. This work takes the reader on a journey destined to increase
understanding of the inner lives of specific Black women. These specific lives affect all
who live in the U.S., whether teaching, collaborating with, or learning from Black
women. The words of Black women affect Black men or White men, as well as Black
women or White women. The U.S. outlaw of overt oppression makes covert oppression
more difficult to locate and manage.
Getting at the psychosocial dimensions of the experiences the women describe,
requires moving beyond empirical satisfaction with verifiable and reliable data to
relevant data. To stress relevance in this study, the idea of psychological autopsy is used.
The psychological autopsy refers to a mode of examining the lived experiences. While an
autopsy, or postmortem, searches for the cause of death in a corpse, psychological
autopsy examines the lived experiences in the case of equivocal death. Relevant
professionals collaborate over the interviews of family and acquaintances, documents,
and other personal documents. While an autopsy resembles the dissection of a high
school biology class, there are no body parts in psychological autopsy. This study is more
intrinsic. In this study the data are arranged around the themes of a team of academic