When Antoinette “Bonnie” Candia-Bailey, the former vice president of student affairs at Lincoln University in Missouri, died by suicide on January 8, 2024, it was a major shock while also bringing attention to the obstacles many Black women in academia experience.
Dr. Candia-Bailey had previously accused the school’s president, John Moseley, of harassment and discrimination and received a termination letter from the historically Black university on January 3. Moseley was reinstated to his position of university president in March, after an investigation found no evidence of bullying. This tragedy shed a shameful light on the fact that if Black women are not listened to, it can have monumental consequences.
What I find just as heartbreaking is that in 2016 Dr. Candia-Bailey wrote a dissertation on the challenges that Black women in academic face. She could speak well on this as she climbed the academic professional ladder for 20 years. Her dissertation is entitled My Sister, Myself: The Identification of Sociocultural Factors that Affect the Advancement of African-American Women into Senior-Level Administrative Positions.
“Attempts need to be addressed to look at how African American women can increase and advance in higher education,” Candia-Bailey wrote in the dissertation. “These factors also link to being treated like the help, the outsider within, keeping them away from the table.”
Reading those words, I felt seen and validated but not in the best way.
Dr. Candia-Bailey’s story made me incredibly sad, knowing that she did not have anyone to stand in the gap for her and that the proper resources were not available to overcome the situation. As an associate professor in higher education for the last 16 years, I have repeated conversations around chronic stress and burnout. For Black women in academia, a level of isolation usually remains throughout our careers.
As one of only a few Black professors at my prior institution, I experienced microaggressions with regard to the intersection of both my race and gender. In 2020, shortly after the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, a white colleague stated that he did not believe Black women had the capacity to learn politics or understand American government. Being that I was the only Black woman in the faculty Zoom meeting, his comment was not only addressed towards me but to all of his Black women students.
This unmitigated audacity and anti-Blackness are not uncommon in higher academia. The racism is served up casually; almost as if you should just settle into it. Meanwhile, I had to determine the best course of action to address the blatant racism, while also not allowing myself to be labeled the angry Black woman.
If you’re lucky to have an ally, they may only exist in private as to protect themselves from backlash. In the 10 years, there was never another Black person above me in a leadership role. I was the only full-time Black faculty in my department.
There is so much happening in our world right now, with concerted efforts from individuals and institutions to attack the credibility of Black women academics and their work. It is definitely traumatic. We’ve invested so much time and money into our credentials and truly have a passion for our students. But I realized attacks didn’t just start within my career. I saw glimpses of it during my college and graduate programs with white advisors and deans. Even in high school, my 9th grade English teacher told me I was a bad writer and I ought to think about doing something else.
As Dr. Candia-Bailey mentioned in her dissertation, Black women are so underrepresented in higher academia to where we are viewed as just the help and kept away from having a defined seat at the table. Trying to create your own table could cause more harm than good.
Due to the underrepresentation, we are more likely to not have a supportive network which is unfortunate. As Black women, there are a myriad of situations that make our experience unique — racism, sexism, and the intersections of those things in academic spaces including misogynoir.
There has been a very conservative attack on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives across the board. In academia, it has affected the ability to recruit and retain Black women in higher education roles. Without DEI initiatives in place, I fear we will slowly be pushed out one by one. We can look at the attacks on former Harvard University President Claudine Gay to professor and Pulitzer prize-winning writer Nikole Hannah-Jones. Black women face detrimental experiences which largely include a lack of institutional support.
Claudine Gay’s congressional testimony on antisemitism was bluntly criticized. The plagiarism allegations, which she’s addressed, also hurt her. It would be thoughtless to discount the extent to which racist and sexist undertones, rooted in antagonism of what her appointment represented, played a role.
These public experiences of Dr. Candia-Bailey and Gay have prompted other Black women in higher education to share their own stories. Social media has no shortage of stories of depression, anxiety, being passed up for tenure, and leaving programs because they were mistreated.
When we talk about faculty tenure, it is the highest status that you can achieve at a university. The truth is that Black women get hired but they are not receiving tenure. They are not even being mentored through that process. The American Association of University Professors reveals that Black women represent about 2 percent of tenured professors in colleges and universities nationwide.
I don’t know how many times I’ve had a Black student, usually a woman, reach out to me to say how important it is for them to have a Black instructor. It reinforces that fact that students need to see themselves, especially in higher education.
It is urgent that we center Black women’s experiences and leave DEI initiatives in place to gain equity in academic spaces. When DEI is a core value and a priority, institutions have the ability to make strategic decisions about their initiatives and everyone wins. Unfortunately, we cannot ignore the story of Dr. Candia-Bailey. It will never be lost on me; it’s a constant reminder that this work is never done.
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