Jayne Sommers
It is a mind blowing idea. It feels so paradoxical. The distance between us is the thing that could allow us to remain in relationship. It is absolutely not how we’ve been conditioned.

Christina Holmgren

Black, black women do not want you to feel overly familiar with them, and I think that is really important, because they they don’t trust you. So they wouldn’t want someone who they don’t trust to feel overly familiar with them, right, right? And instead, they really want time to assess whether or not a white woman is actually educating themselves about their racial identity and the role of whiteness in the workplace. So they want time to assess whether or not a white woman is self reflective enough to recognize how they can leverage their whiteness and elevate the experience of black women, right?

Heather Shea
Welcome to Student Affairs NOW the online learning community for Student Affairs educators. I’m Heather Shea, and I’m joined today by my colleague and friend, Rachelle Pope. Together, we are co hosting this conversation.

Raechele Pope
Thanks. Great to be doing this together. Heather, always me and you. Today, we’re going to be talking about an emerging research on the complex, often painful but deeply necessary relationship between black and white women in higher education, from defining misogynoir to sharing a new model for reciprocal relationships, we’ll explore what it means to work across racial differences with honesty, accountability and care. Student Affairs NOW is the premier podcast and learning community for 1000s of us who work in alongside or adjacent to the field of higher education and student affairs. We hope that you find these conversations make contribution to the field and restorative to the profession. We release new episodes every week on Wednesdays, and find us at studentaffairsnow.com. YouTube, or anywhere that you listen to podcasts. We’ve recently joined blue sky. So please, please find us at Student Affairs NOW blue sky.social

Heather Shea
All right. This episode today is sponsored by Evolve. Evolve help senior leaders release fear, gain core courage and take action for transformational leadership through personalized cohort based virtual learning experiences. Today’s episode is also sponsored by Huron. Huron education and research experts help institutions transform their strategy, operations, technology and culture to foster innovation, financial, health and student success, as I mentioned at the top, I’m co hosting this episode today. My name is Heather Shea. My pronouns are she, her and hers, and I’m broadcasting from the ancestral, traditional and contemporary lands of Anishinaabe, three fires, confederacy of Ojibwe, Ottawa and Potawatomi peoples, otherwise known as East Lansing, Michigan, home to Michigan State University where I work.

Raechele Pope
And I’m Raechele Pope. My pronouns are she her, and I’m a professor in the higher education and student affairs program at the University of Buffalo. I’m recording today near the University of Buffalo’s campus on the unceded homeland of the Haudenosaunee people. So let’s get to today’s conversation. We’re excited to have DRS Christina, Holmgren, Leah Fulton and Jayne Somers with us here today to unpack this topic. So let’s do a brief round of introductions. We’d like each of you to just give a brief intro. What’s your title, your campus? What campus Do you work at? And the other things that you think it’s important for us to know about you, then you can each share your personal professional experiences that sparked your interest in researching relationships between black and white women in higher education. So Christina, if we could start with you.

Christina Holmgren
Yeah, thank you. My name is Dr. Christina Holmgren. My pronouns are she, her, hers. I am a black, neuro divergent, cisgender woman, scholar and educator, and I often lead off my bio with those identities because they greatly influence the way I move from space to space, as well as the reasonings behind why I work in higher education, but also why my research has kind of revolved around trauma informed practice, as well as identity development and relationships between black and white women. So I’ve worked in higher ed for a little over a decade, and my roles have changed throughout that time. I started off as a in recruitment, so really working to recruit historically excluded student populations, and then had a bit of a movement into retention efforts, because I felt like we are recruiting students into a really harmful, violent place. And so what are the ways that we can actually support students from historically excluded communities in ways that they feel are really affirming and lead to what they consider to be success? So right now, I work in the Twin Cities at the University of St Thomas as a staff member in the Graduate School of Professional Psychology, which is kind of within this College of Health. And then I also work as an adjunct faculty member at St Thomas. So I teach in the leadership and student affairs program, and I teach courses like student development theory, Intro to Student Affairs, trauma, informed education, social justice and higher ed. And then my research, as I mentioned, is really, or maybe I should say, the things that I really get excited about like to spend my time thinking about and writing about and having conversations about. Really. I.

Christina Holmgren
So what does it mean for our students of color, clearly, our black students to develop in their identity. What does it mean for them to develop in their identity as they think about the structures that are in place, the the classrooms, pedagogical practice? What are we doing to ensure that they they develop these positive psychologies, and so I spend a lot of time thinking about that. But this research, particularly the dynamics between black and white women, is from personal experience, right? So this feeling so long like this was an isolated incident, the the the experiences that I was having with white women at multiple levels, right? So white women as peers, white women that I’ve supervised, white women that are just in the institution with me. Harm, consistent harm happening in those dynamics and feeling really alone in that, before recognizing that this is actually a phenomenon that many, many black women are experiencing and feeling like we need more information, we need more data in the empirical world, I think right now, black women just kind of think about it as black women think about it interpersonally. So we talk to each other about this experience, and so needing it to be on paper felt really important. So that’s what kind of led me to this work.

Heather Shea
Thanks, Christina.

Leah Fulton
And my name is Leah Fulton. I am also a scholar, researcher, cisgender, black woman. She her, her pronouns. I’m a mother, and that’s a really important part of my identity. Also. I’m a follower of Jesus. My faith, I think, really shapes and informs the ways I think about this work, why this work is important to me. I currently work as Vice President for Student Life at a small faith based institution, Fortune higher ed for about 15 years, primarily at faith based institutions. And I think a lot of my interest in this topic probably does stem from my faith. Most of my work has been in Multicultural Student Affairs. And so really thinking about questions of diversity, equity, inclusion, justice, oftentimes in theological terms. And I think part of what really, I think drives my work in higher education, maybe my educational philosophy, so to speak, I think for me, it’s really grounded in these my beliefs, that I think that God loves justice, that justice is God’s idea, and that as a follower of Jesus, that I have a responsibility to pursue justice, and the education is a justice issue. And so the experiences that people are having in educational spaces are deeply important for lots and lots of reasons for health, reasons for economic realities, but also that I believe that God cares about those experiences. So I think all of my educational experience, bachelor’s through doctorate, were in predominantly white institutions, and I have found myself always, I think, pulling in between the narratives that white evangelicalism would have me buy into, and the black community, faith community and otherwise that has deeply shaped me that really challenges a lot of those ideas so supervisors, supervisees, colleagues, I think all of those experiences really come to bear on why I think about this work with Jayne and Christina in particular.

Jayne Sommers
Well, it’s so amazing to be here with two of my favorite people and two of two people that I have long admired and appreciated. So I’m grateful to be here. My name is Jayne summers. I also use she her pronouns. I am a white, cisgender queer woman. I currently am an associate professor and serve as the chair of the Department of Educational Leadership at the University of St Thomas, which has campuses both in St Paul and Minneapolis, Minnesota, both of which are the rightful home of the Ojibwe and Anishinaabe people. I also direct the leadership and Student Affairs masters program, so the program that Dr Holmgren and teaches in and that Dr Fulton has taught in for a long time. And then I also have an additional role at the university. I serve as the Faculty Director for Inclusive teaching. Prior to becoming a faculty member, I worked in student affairs for a decade. Primary I started in Residence Life and then moved into orientation and New Student Programs. Coming and really, really found my calling in student affairs, and now just feel so fortunate to get to prepare the next generation of folks who feel called to do this work in terms of my relationship to this research. I mean, it really starts, I think, with our relationship to each other and and sort of you know, who, who, who we, who we are, coming into these, this work together. So I absolutely have identified as a feminist for most of my life. I grew up with a mom who was feminist, and I’ve always been drawn to feminist scholarship and narratives, and my scholarly journey has has, has been informed by that. But I think what allows us to be involved in this research, and sort of how it came together, like really is, was influenced by my own engagement with critical whiteness and my my willingness to not just identify as a white woman, but to get really, really clear about how I’ve been socialized to show up as a white woman and and then also to dig into the history of how white women have shown up in relation, in interpersonal relationships with black women, As well as, of course, within you know, feminist movements and the repeated failures of white women to acknowledge intersectionality and to to align ourselves with black women, as opposed to align ourselves with whiteness. And so Leah and Christina and I were in two separate sort of conversation threads about our our relationships with each other, and and then, and we each have engaged in some scholarship. Leah and I have written a piece, and Christina and I have also written a piece. And so I think, as often happens, or at least has happened for me and my career, my interest in this topic has deepened as I think we’ve become more deeply aware of its importance. And you know, sort of what it what our findings can the impact that our findings can have, and we’ll talk a lot more about this. But for me, our findings are really important for white women to figure out ways to operationalize into how they show up into relationships. So I just feel really, really lucky.

Heather Shea
Sure, wow, this project sounds amazing, and I can’t wait to hear all about it. So, Leah, why don’t you start with a little bit more. Jayne’s kind of talked a little bit about what brought you all together, but I’d love for you to talk about like, how your identities and shape the have shaped the project, and then also potentially any tensions or differences within the team that you also had to navigate through the process,

Leah Fulton
yeah, yeah. So I’m currently in the Chicago area, but lived in the Twin Cities for almost 10 years, and so the three of us, at one point, all worked at the same university together, and so Christina and I have met just in passing at the black employee resource group on campus, and then I had begun teaching in the program where Jayne directs, and as she mentioned, these two kind of separate interactions were happening. And Jayne said, Hey, I think the three of us should get together. And it was like, I remember Christina, why didn’t we talk more when we worked on the same campus and lived in the same city, so, or at least in the same metro area, so, but I think really kind of Jayne initiating that text thread, and she can say more about, well, they can both say more about how they experience that, but that’s really how the three of us really started to work together. And then from there, the separate projects that were happening, really, I think, merged in different ways, still function independently as well, but really took on a life of their own. I will say, I actually think part of what helped build that connection for us was our experiences in the Twin Cities in the middle of COVID and the murder of George Floyd in particular, some of the kinds of experiences that I had, I believe Christina had, and that I know other black women had, which was white women reaching out, offering to to help, to give money to babysit my children. And it was, it was very uncomfortable.

Christina Holmgren
And can I just say, Leah, white women that we didn’t know like white women that we knew in passing offering to babysit our children and and give us money. So these were not white women that we had cultivated any sort of relationship with, yes.

Leah Fulton
So part of my criteria was like, my You don’t know my children’s No. Names, and you don’t have my address, and this isn’t the time where you’re going to get it. But I think that part of that really stoked a lot of of how this got started. I imagine they’ve got other insights too, but I’ll just name it. I think one of the tensions that I have had to navigate on my own and not attention with the with Jayne or with Christina. But really, I think reconciling what it means for me as a black, hetero, CIS, highly educated, married Protestant Christian, what it means for me to hold privilege and oppression in one body. And I think we do a really poor job in our social context of helping people wrestle with those things together. And so it’s something that I feel like it’s really important for me to steward well in these relationships with Jayne and Christina and and does shape spaces where it’s like, oh, I think I probably think differently about this aspect of what we’re discussing right because of my faith and how I do that in a way that maintains integrity and and contributes to to advancing our work together. So I think those are are tensions that I have to to manage all the time. I also believe, though, that there is quite a bit of trust in our relationships which part of our model that we experienced before we were able to qualify it actually through the participants in our study. And so that allows us to be really transparent when we don’t see things the same way.

Heather Shea
Christina, or Jayne. Do you want to add anything more to this question about what brought you together, or how you have navigated any tensions? I have some thoughts. Yeah, go ahead.

Jayne Sommers
Okay, all right, so I think early on so Leah and I co taught in fall 2020 and so we navigated, we were in each other’s homes, literally teaching over zoom in fall of 2020 and that was that was really sort of the start of us getting a little bit closer, which we’ll talk about that in a minute. But I think also very early on when Leah and I started writing together about that CO interracial co teaching experience, she explicitly named the risk that she was taking in co authoring a piece with me about our working relationship as a white woman, and so I’ve been keenly aware of the risk that Christina and Leah are making by CO signing in, in on these, on any of the things that we’ve done together, because of all the things that we’re going to talk about in terms of historical contributions of white women to racism and these contemporary transgressions that we’re going to get into today. And so all that’s going to become more clear and is just something that is absolutely continues to be true about our relationship, that I have to be keenly aware of. The need to maintain integrity between what I say and what I do and in our relationship, even though, as you said, Leah, we’ve established trust, it’s always conditional for all the reasons that that our findings make clear, and so I often acknowledge in the text thread or otherwise that they might wonder, like, how they find themselves in such frequent conversations about white women with a white woman, it’s a lot. And I try to, sort of, you know, say, like, if Now’s not the time, that’s okay. But again, I think we really feel like this is really important. And so also within these conversations, our text thread that we tried to find the start of yesterday and couldn’t because it goes so far back, but they Christina and Leah, have you know, when I when I will be like, OMG, I can’t believe this thing, whatever it is that we’re sharing, they’ve both challenged again, the trust and the accountability that we have in our relationship means that they challenge me to reflect on why white women show up in the ways that we do, not just to go, oh my god, I can’t believe that she would do that, but instead, to really try to reflect on what’s behind our actions and The ways with that we show up. And for me, I think it’s a lot around shame and our desire for comfort and then our past down, propensity to deny our own racism and that, and we pass it down in much more implicit ways than black women pass down their explicit cautionary tales about white women. So that allows us to continue to deny it, because we don’t say it out loud, because we just model it for each other. And so we often use the phrase I would never you know, to sort of be like, Oh no, not me. And our research shows that white women actually do all the time, transgress in the ways that we’re going to talk about. And then I just want to say one more thing about, like, critical whiteness. I named that earlier, but I want to be clear about what that is. So I often think about what I call, like the one two punch of patriarchy and white supremacy. So as a white woman, I understand that patriarchy has socialized me to question myself and the truths of my own worth and worthiness. And then white supremacy culture, in both implicit and explicit ways, capitalizes, ha, so to speak, and truly on the socialization to convince me that my primary assigned role is to protect white supremacy. And so it’s this, like, you know, I’m down because patriarchy convinces me that I don’t have agency, and then white supremacy capitalizes on that, and I’m right where these systems want me to be in order to maintain them. And so my consciousness around that has been really, really key in recognizing the agency that I have to show up differently in relationships with black women, and frankly, in any space that I’m in when there are opportunities to advocate for for social justice and change.

Raechele Pope
Wow, what you folks have laid out so far has been so intense, and it’s so level. I’m thinking, if I were just a listener, if I hadn’t had a chance to work with some of your stuff before I would. I feel as if I’m starting in the middle of a conversation, a very deep, important conversation, and I’m so pulled to that conversation, and yet, at the same time, I think we need to back up and give some context. What is it that you’re talking about? What is the study that you keep mentioning, so that we can then talk about the the lessons and how this all gets pulled on, because we’re hearing two things. One is this relationship, and how this study is actually acting out in your own relationship with each other, and then the findings that you have. But let’s pull it back just a step or two to say, what is it we’re talking about right now? What is this study? What have, and how have your own personal experiences led you? You know, you talked about how your experiences led you to the to this work again, but then what was the work?

Christina Holmgren
Yeah, I’m so happy you said, Raechele, this idea of starting in the middle, I or like we’re showing up in the middle, because I think that’s often how white women feel when they when they come into this like recognition of dynamics between black and white women. Black and black women have historical context. And what I mean by that is we have every single relationship, or through proximity to white women, as well as every story our our black moms have told us every story our aunties have told us every story our grandma has has told us Medea has told us about the ways that white women show up and we bring that historical understanding to every single new interaction with a white woman, right? Whereas white women are throwing up in the middle of the story, right? They’re showing up thinking this is a brand new relationship that they can just there’s assume trust, and we’re really we use this analogy. I have an auntie. I swear this story is going somewhere, but I have an auntie who is my favorite auntie, who often falls we watch movies together, and she often falls asleep in the middle of the movie, and then she wakes up exactly, yes, so she’ll she’ll fall asleep when the movie starts. She’ll be asleep for a good 45 minutes, right? And we’ll let her sleep. Look she’s tired. She looks tired. She’ll sleep. She’ll wake up at 45 minutes to an hour in, and they’ll be like, Who’s that? Why are they running? What’s going on? What happens? Why are you so excited? Right? She’ll ask these questions that everyone else that’s been watching the movie already knows. And so black women have already seen this movie so many times, over and over again, and white women show up in the middle and say, What do you mean? Who’s that? Why can’t you just trust me? You’ve never met me before, and it’s so exhausting. And so that’s a part of why we we came into this study, and the study that we’re talking about is we did a study where we interviewed 15 black women to talk to us. The question that we asked them was like, tell us about your relationships with white women in higher education, and quite literally, that is it. And we gained so much data, one about the ways that white women show up in relationships with black women, meaning the ways that they treat black women, the ways that they dispose of black women, the ways that they exploit black women. But we also ask this question of, what what are your conditions black women that you require in order to even begin to engage in a relationship with white women? And that’s where this model comes from. So we ask kind of these two questions, how do I what. What are your relationships with white women look like? And then we ask like, what could they look like? What do you require in order for you to even begin to engage in a relationship with white women? And through those questions, we’ve got kind of two sets of data, and the model was born, and we’ll talk about kind of some of the models that we call the conditions of reciprocity. So what we mean is the conditions that black women hold dear that are required in order for them to engage in a reciprocal relationship with a white woman. Because often they’re not reciprocal. Often white women use black women in this really disposable way. And we know that right research tells us that’s called misogynoir. And misogynoir is really just this idea that black women historically have been seen as with no agency, with no autonomy, right. Their bodies, quite literally, belong to white people, and so it’s this kind of experience of invisibility, of disposability and dehumanization, and that happens both inside and outside of academia and higher education. And it’s this site, this experience black women have, of anti blackness and gender brutality, that really ensures their continued oppression and and domination at the individual, interpersonal and institutional levels, and what we found to be.

Leah Fulton
I would just say to what you’re describing, that black women have talked about this for generations, for centuries, but the term massage noir was only coined 17 years ago. Yes, that’s right. So it’s been happening. We’ve been describing it. But again, to Christina’s original point about the empirical data, yes, choosing to enter into those spaces, to name these things that black women have been naming amongst ourselves for centuries is part of the work that we’re doing.

Christina Holmgren
And the risk of naming it in mixed company is high, right? So the risk of naming it to white women, which is elevated by our data, is dangerous, quite literally, emotionally, psychologically, you could lose your job. Like it is dangerous to name misogynoir as a truth in mixed company, what we call mixed company. And so that’s why I think we came to this study, that’s Well, I think that’s the importance for us, is to have white women specifically recognize the movie, the historical context that we are bringing into each new relationship, and then what they need to divest from, and the ways that they need To recognize how they’ve been socialized as white women to treat black women. It’s not a coincidence, right?

Heather Shea
Yeah, that’s fascinating. And I appreciate the metaphor of the movie, because I think that really resonates somebody who often falls asleep in movies. So can totally see, yeah, I’m curious about you, so you put out a call to see if you could get black women to respond or to engage with you. Tell us a little bit about the response that you got and what, why do you think that that was Christina? I’ll start with you. Stay with you.

Christina Holmgren
Yeah, right. Well, it’s kind of funny, if you are someone who does research, often with different populations, who knows it can be quite challenging sometimes to get participants for a study right. And so we were like, you know, we knew we wanted to center black women and their experiences with white women. So we knew black women were going to be our participants. And we were just like, well, we’ll create a nice looking flyer, and we’ll put it on LinkedIn, and we’ll just like, wait and see, and maybe we’ll get up to 15 participants. And this was grant funded, so we can only have 15 participants total, so that they could get the funding. Well, within 24 hours of me kind of putting out this call on LinkedIn, we had over 100 Black women who had completed the survey to participate in this study. Wow. And then within 48 hours, we had over 225 black women who wanted to participate in this study. And so these are, these are black women that currently work or have worked in higher education, with the majority of them working in student affairs, and they also had a wide variety of positions in higher ed. So we had some folks that were faculty, some of whom were tenured faculty. We had some folks that were administrators, like Dean of Students, and then we had a wide variety of staff, and they, they each reached out to us because they were like, I have, I have a story to top the stories that you will hear about the experiences between black and white women. Like, I know this is so good that that you will want it in your study. Over 225 black women have that same thought. And I just think that is.

Heather Shea
So powerful

Christina Holmgren
and important, I will also say one of the things that we did tell participants beforehand is that Leah and I would be conducting the interviews, and then we would de identify that information, that data, their personal demographic information, before Jayne got a chance to look at that data,

Jayne Sommers
purposeful for reasons that’ll become clear, but also so any black women that I had worked with could potentially feel like they could participate in the study. That’s right. We

Christina Holmgren
wanted black we knew that while Leah and I had a relationship with Jayne, black women don’t trust white women, so we needed them to know that that a white woman would not see their information as it connects to the data. We were really intentional about telling black women that. And also, during interviews, black women asked us, like, Are you sure about this Jayne, person that you’re doing research with? Like, they were like, You seem cool. You seem cool. You seem okay. Hey, Blake, twice. So, so that was also a tension in the interviews. This like, Okay, well, I know you’re going to de identify, but like, Are you safe? Do you trust that that your work won’t be exploited in in some way? So yeah, black women had our backs too, as we were trying to have theirs.

Heather Shea
Leah, do you want to add any more and talk maybe about what you think the response means? I mean, I think we can, we can obviously see it’s like there is a very clear need for this topic to be unpacked and discussed and researched. But yeah, what would what else would you say about that response and the interview process?

Leah Fulton
Yeah, I think that it reinforces that these are conversations that black women want to have. In some of our other work, we cite Francis Ellen Watkins, who 19th century thinker. I’m looking at y’all said, 19th century black woman in white feminist spaces. And she says that, you know, you are here to speak of rights of of women’s rights, of white women’s rights. And she says, But I’m here to speak of wrongs. And so we are doing work together on this idea of speaking of wrongs. And I think there is a deep desire to name that to speak of the wrongs that black women have experienced, oftentimes without a sense of having a pathway for recourse or redress. Also think that it really reflects what we see more broadly when Jayne and I first started writing together, there were a sprinkling of of academic pieces that got at some of the work that we’re talking about. But as the three of us are working together, as we looked a bit more broadly, a lot of the writing that’s out there is not academic writing that talks about these particular sorts of dynamics, but they also tend to talk about the places where black and white women interact because of necessity, because of proximity, the compulsion you happen to live in my neighborhood, our kids happen to go to school together. We happen to work at the same place so so much of it is about survival. That we’re talking about, that we’re thinking about is, how do I survive in this place that is necessary for my livelihood? How do I survive these interactions that otherwise are compromising my well being, that are contributing to my weathering to just like stress related racism that literally constrain the life expectancy. Yes, so I think that’s part of what this response is saying to us, that we want to be able to release this where the outlets where we feel safe enough to do it,

Christina Holmgren
yeah? And participants name that at at the end of interviews, they said it was like a weight had been lifted on their shoulders. They said, wow, like, I really needed to get that out, and I think that’s really important, yeah. And there aren’t a lot

Raechele Pope
of spaces to get that out or in these professional spaces, for sure, so let’s start learning from your participants. So Jayne, let’s start with you. What did you learn from your participants? What were those key insights or themes that emerged from these conversations with these courageous black women in higher ed? What were the moments of pain or joy or contradiction that stood out to you? We’ll start with you and move around.

Christina Holmgren
Yeah, thanks, Raechele. We we ended up analyzing our data and found six really, really persistent themes in all of the interviews at. Particularly around experience, what are your relationships with white women look like? And so that’s sort of essentially like two thirds of our data. And so we’re each going to talk about two of those six themes. So the two that I’ve been assigned that are the easiest for I could talk about all of them, but these are really important for white women to understand the two themes that I’ll talk about are assumed trust and blowing through boundaries, and they are tied right like when, when we assume trust in relationships, then we enter these relationships without a clear sense of of boundaries, which maybe Heather you, I don’t know. It’s just it’s fun to be in this space with you as a white woman, and yeah, sort of be able to reflect on the ways that we’ve been conditioned to show up in relationships relating to trust and boundaries. Yeah, so this theme of a theme assumed trust, is because of what Christina has named, our failure as white women to recognize the historical context of relationships between black and white women, and that is always between us, always at play when we enter relationships, and then, as Christina’s named, every single other experience that black women have had with white women are also at play, and they’re all present. And this is hard for us as white women, because of, you know what Robin D’Angelo calls the good bad binary and our desire, our our conditioning within white supremacy culture to see ourselves as individuals, right? And so we, we, we don’t understand that the ways we’ve been conditioned to show up in relationships and have them feel successful and feel like we’re vibing, those are not universal. Those experiences are not universal, and So trust is not a given. And all of the data really suggested that black women experienced white women assuming trust by often blowing through boundaries, which gets us there, oversharing, you know, really seeking a personal connection, a friendship from the beginning. And so because white women and I, I can say this has been my experience, I have thought that relational closeness, being close in a relationship, equates to not having good boundaries, and just being closer is the desire. And so we in that regard, we’re inclined to overshare, and then we expect black women to do the same. Because if, when we’re in relationships with white women, that’s that’s what’s happening, because we think that’s what friends do. Mm, hmm. And I’ll just say the moment at ACPA, when we shared our findings that I said, when I’m about to say completely shifted everything in the room, which is this, we don’t recognize that black women do not want to be our friends. There was a huge reaction in the space when I said that, and black women said, That’s right. That is correct. We are not looking for friendship, and it’s a really key part of the way that we talk about relationships, perpetually in in our research, and not friendships. So in addition to this, like these relational boundaries that we’re not good at, we’re also not good with physical boundaries. And we had participants share stories about white women following them into their office space spaces after a conversation had concluded. You know, really, truly seeking to continue a conversation that a black woman had made clear was over. We also in the year 2024, heard many participants talk about white women touching their hair in both public and private spaces, of course, without invitation or consent, and just generally disregarding the need for physical space. So this idea of boundaries is not just relational, which is, is is so deep for white women, but also physical, according to our participants, and

Christina Holmgren
one of our participants also like to elevate what you’re naming Jayne about like the physical piece of blowing through boundaries a participant named a white woman showing up to her home and leaving, like coming with bread, like banana bread, and showing up to her house without the black woman having ever given her her address. Like there is a true disconnect between what black women have kind of named as a boundary and and white women’s need or hope or goal to have closeness, right? And so it’s just just some of the things that the participants said. I was like, Yep, I could see that. And so one of the other themes that arose to others that I think also are really connected to each other is this lack of racial awareness, both the white women’s and the black women’s, as well as this kind of self centered self serving response to any sort of critical feedback. So black, black women really named generally, white women have no understanding about the ways that. They are socialized in whiteness and the ways that their race intersects with their gender identity, right? So they also talked about this, like weaponization of intersectionality, misuse co opting of intersectionality, right? Like using it when it when to talk about their experiences as women, but disregarding it when it comes to talking about the experience of black women, and so this really meant that there was no criticality to the things that they say about and to black women and the participants in this study a kind of name that white women rarely saw. The double standard, which was this idea that black women were working twice as hard for little to no recognition of their work. And instead, white women kind of generalize their experience as women. Women really dismissing some of the stereotypical tropes, particularly that specifically were given to black women in professional spaces. So angry black women, mammy, mammy, black women, right? This idea of a caterer to aggressive black women, and so this also meant that they perpetuated and elevated those tropes of black women, and if they were called out for doing so this really showed up in their kind of self centered responses to feedback. So I’m sure many of you have heard at this point, and if you’re not, if you haven’t, welcome but this this experience of white women tears. So participants kind of named that on the occasion in which they kind of provided white women critical feedback, they were often met with what they named as tears of manipulation. So when white women cry, they center. The center of the narrative is no longer placed on their harmful interaction or dynamic with this black woman, but instead on their feelings, on the on the white woman’s feelings, right? And so participants found themselves either a in the position to have to offer the white woman comfort, or be being told by their colleagues or supervisors that they were the aggressor. And it was really important. Participants named it as really important to say that this is a socialization. White women cry because that is how they have been socialized. In their whiteness, they recognize that something positive will happen for them if they cry in this scenario, it’s not just a kind of instinct. It is an instinctive reaction, because they’ve always gotten, gotten this response. And so black women really name this as manipulation versus this kind of honest, honest reaction from or fragility,

Jayne Sommers
like the idea of fragility also, also does not align with black women’s experiences. It’s not because we’re fragile. That’s not how it’s received. It’s received as manipulation. That’s right,

Leah Fulton
well, and I think that’s important, because I think about some of the like, T shirts and apparel, you see women who are, I think it’s Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and it’s like, oh, I’m fragile, not like a flower, like a bomb. And so it’s like, like, you can embrace it there and then in these spaces. And it’s like, Oh no, I would never. But I also think the other part of that is this, like feigning ignorance. I didn’t I didn’t know. I wasn’t trying. I’m thinking about a few years ago, this bird watcher who asked this white woman to put her dog back on the leash, and she Yeah. And remember, that plays into that manipulation. And while he wasn’t a white woman or wasn’t a black woman, I think it read his the sense of this is not always about ignorance. That’s right, about socialization, manipulation, and the tools that white women have been have been taught to use, and an understanding of the ways that their positionality allows us to be effective.

Christina Holmgren
That’s great. Leah, do you want to talk about the last two themes as well? Yeah,

Leah Fulton
I’ll talk about the last two themes that came up from participants the first or the fifth of that of those was anxious entitlement, and the sixth was idea of protecting power in terms of anxious entitlement, it really just went back to this idea of hierarchy. And I like to say to students, people like to use both sides language, and maybe when we’re talking about politics, we can talk about both sides, but we’re talking about racism as a system built as a hierarchy, not as a spectrum. And so there, there is no sense of both sides. And when we’re talking about racism, we’re talking about power and hierarchy. And so the sense of anxious entitlement really went back to these assumed trust, assumed lots of things, assumed expectations. And this sense of entitlement that it should be this way, that’s right, and not a recognition to be honest enough about not just what it maybe, maybe it should be, but it isn’t

Raechele Pope
the first word you’re using before anxious and. Anxious, okay, thank you. Yeah, that word I was, and I knew it was important. So thank you, yeah,

Leah Fulton
yeah, yes, anxious entitlement. So this general sense of at, at any moment, if, if trust is a question mark on the table, if you respond in some way that sets a boundary, or you would suggest that this isn’t a friendship, or you would compromise the sense of closeness that I thought we had, the ways that that breeds anxiety and, you know, creates what Jayne talks about as a shame spiral. That was another theme that showed up, and then this last was protecting power. But there’s something else that Jayne was saying that I don’t want to lose this sense of being threatened and show up in in a way that is anxious of how, of how that that can happen. I’ll name that. It was really tricky. Christina and I, both at different points during interviews, felt this resonance, like, oh, that’s happened to me. And as interviewer, we opted not to go down that path. But later in debriefing together, then being able to say, here’s how I’ve experienced what she was talking about. I absolutely know not just what that looks like, but what it feels like in my body.

Christina Holmgren
Moments happen. Yeah, they also talked it too, like when they talked about this anxiety that arose, they also, I’m thinking about a couple participants that said there was once they got past that anxiety. Watch out. Watch out. How dare you think that you can set a boundary with me? How dare you you are here to cater to me? I mean, the massage, the way that massage and water, just like show up as soon as you, as a black woman, place some agent or practice, agency and autonomy, it was truly like warfare. I think doctor, Probst kind of titled, she’s doing some similar work, entitled her, titled her dissertation out here, fighting for our lives. And that was really this embodiment of, like, what would happen when black women kind of were were critical or offered that real firm boundary, like, truly Watch out emotionally, psychologically. I hope you keep your job energy. Yeah, right,

Raechele Pope
especially when it happens to someone who sees themselves as committed to these issues.

Leah Fulton
That’s right, right? Yes, yes, yes. It reminded me a lot of the dynamic in in the help the the bully 1950 late 1950s Jackson, Mississippi, black domestics working with in homes with white women and writing about their stories. And I think that resonated for me, because my my dad’s family is from Jackson, left during the Great Migration at that time, and and his sisters were domestics, and so obviously I did a higher ed space. But I think part of anxious entitlement and then protecting power is the sense of never having been taught what it looks like to experience reciprocal relationships with black women, because that is the social context. There’s never been a model for that. So I think that that that switch to warfare then does become about protecting power, and it is a zero sum game, and there’s this fear of tokenism, because, as Jayne talked about, the socialization of white supremacy, says that it’s always a zero sum game. There’s going to be winners and there’s going to be losers, and I need to be the winner. That’s right. History of higher ed and who gained access to right to what we consider like a college level education, that the gentleman’s course, not the ladies course, who gained access to doctoral education in in that trajectory, white women always preceded black women in that and black men that preceded black women. And so the ways that the sense of protecting power has been I got to the top first, and if I let you wrap it up here too, then how did that may compromise my power? So here’s how I’m going to maneuver to make sure that stays in place, and that, again, it may not be spoken explicitly, but it is. It shows up in black women’s experiences, and that showed up with our participants. So who gets to the a suite, who gets to the board, who gets to the dean level, who gets the director level opportunities, and then who gets some amount of feedback that allows them even the way that information is shared, in part, is a bit about the way that power is or is not shared.

Christina Holmgren
That’s right, one of our Oh, go ahead. Yeah, go ahead. I

Raechele Pope
just want to ask you to label those for me say, say the yes again, so yeah, here just the label that,

Jayne Sommers
yeah, assumed trust, yep, blowing through boundaries, lack of racial self awareness, self centered responses to feedback, anxious entitlement and protecting power. Yeah,

Raechele Pope
seems like your participants hit every single you know, like they named. It’s my experience. I’m hearing that it’s your experience that it was just named so clearly, yes,

Jayne Sommers
yeah, the analysis, the analysis was oh so easy. The themes were there from Yes, pretty clear,

Heather Shea
pretty clear. So I know you said the beginning that you shared your findings at ACPA, I’d love to hear really quickly, how have both white women reacted, and how are they responding? And then also, how are other black women who maybe weren’t part of the study. Reacting to your findings, Jayne, do you want to kick that off?

Jayne Sommers
Yeah, happy to we. I’ll just say our, our ACPA session in in visually appeared to be about two thirds black women, 1/3 white women. And as as usual, I was surprised that there weren’t more white women in the session. My co presenters, Dr Holmgren and Dr Fulton, were not surprised. And so who knows, Yeah, who knows what it was about our title or description, but we knew it was obviously appealing for black women in terms of who showed up, but I’ll talk a little bit about what we what we’ve seen and heard from white women since then. So when we finished up our session, one of the questions that black a black part, a black woman, asked was, how can the white women in my life get access to this information? Because, as you’ve named, it’s risky for me to be the one to say, Hey, I think you might benefit from a little bit of feedback, right? And so I’ve been purposeful about offering spaces for white women specifically to learn about our findings, without burdening black women as we ask questions and as we process and a lot of white women have shared identification with the themes, meaning that they recognize that they’ve committed at least some, if not all, of the transgressions that our participants have described. And I, I identify as well for that same reason. And the theme of assumed I mean, all of our themes are really, really important, but I think the theme of assumed trust is like the biggest paradigm shift, one of the biggest paradigm shifts for white women, and is so key because it’s at the sort of the beginning of our relationship. And again, as we’ve named we’re accustomed to thinking of trust as a given. So it’s a huge shift to recognize trust as needing to be earned and then always remaining conditional. And so as as Christina and Leah have discussed, like this, wariness, this, this, I’m not sure if we’re going to continue to be in relationship with each other continues, no matter how long we’ve known each other. And that piece, that idea of conditional trust, especially when say, we’re in a leadership position, and we’ve read things about the importance of trust on teams. And so we really want to figure out what that looks like on our team. It’s just so important to realize that it has to be it has to be maintained. It has to be established and then maintained. So White women are eager, I think, to hear what we have to say, and black women are eager for white women to hear it too.

Christina Holmgren
Yeah. And as far as you know how black women who were not participants of the study, how they are receiving the data. I will just say, after the ACPA presentation we had, we stayed after, and we have black women stay after with us for at least 45 minutes to talk about how they how and it really wasn’t even about the data so much as it was about a trauma response. It was very clear that black women have established some coping mechanisms to survive the emotional and psychological violence that white women, white women, perpetuate against them. And so I found at least the black women that that stopped to talk with me that it wasn’t even about naming the data as true. They already knew it was true. It was them giving me really specific examples of their experiences with white women and having to get it out. It was, it’s, it’s like, I mean, we know, and I talked about this in the session, the way trauma happens, the way our brains work. When we get a cut on our body, like a actual physical cut on our bodies, right, our body will start to heal itself, meaning that it’ll start to scab over. You might be left with the scar, but it the body starts. Working to heal itself when we are traumatized and we are experiencing violence in that way, our brains don’t heal on their own. That we have to actively engage with that trauma in order to heal that and so many black women have not had space to actively engage with the trauma of interacting with white women on a consistent basis. Higher Education and Student Affairs is chock full of white women. Yeah, right. And so I saw the response really being this opportunity for them to try to engage with healing, versus trying to engage with the data itself or the study itself. They already knew that to be true?

Leah Fulton
Yeah, my experience was what Christina is naming like it was naming the experiences without apology, without scrutiny, without a is, are you sure that’s what happened? But a sense of, I can tell my story and I will be believed, but it was also then. But what do I do? And so I think part of that is then also it’s the the socialization, I think that black women have also experienced and understanding that if you don’t acquiesce in particular moments, if you show up in ways that perpetuate the Patricia l Collins controlling images the angry black woman, whatever you will become the aggressor. You won’t be able to keep a job. So you do need to play the game in some way. And I think that contributes to its own sense of stress to then figure out, how do I use alternative strategies, then to let go of that. And so hearing people trying to move away from the rationalization that’s happened around well, I thought I was friends with this white woman, but now these things are happening, and I don’t want know what to do. I really care about her. We’ve been friends a long time, but actually I don’t want to be around her, spend time with her anymore. And so having to figure out, how do I, how do I divest from that was part of what I heard from participants. Yes, the other thing that I heard actually from some white women, participants were like, Hey, I’m a follower of Jesus, and I don’t have outlets to talk about this in my faith circles. And so I know that these things are true, but I’m not sure what to do with or about that. And so I think for lots of people, it’s how do I how do I reconcile, yeah, and I think this was true of some of our participants who named faith as a salient identity. How do I reconcile the these faith ID, these theological ideas that I’ve been given around grace and kindness and things like that, with the source of related forgiveness, with these sorts of relationship,

Raechele Pope
you know, I, my mind is going in about 15 different directions, because there are so many places, so many other things to talk about, but we are rapidly running at a time, and I know there’s a whole other part that we want to talk about, and that is this model that you’ve built for reciprocal relationships with or between black and white women. So why don’t we just see if we can cover that as as as we end, you know, what are the core competencies, or core components of these reciprocal relationships? What can we build?

Christina Holmgren
Yeah, thanks for naming that. Raechele. It’s ironic, because that’s also how the interviews went. Like, most of the time was like, this is the white women have been doing to me. And then I, you know, and then we spend the last five minutes of like, what could reciprocity look like? And they’d be like, I don’t know, but like, this has to happen, so it’s all aligning. So, so yeah, based on the data collection, we created a model that we really felt represented the conditions for reciprocity right within the relationships between black and white women. And we say conditions, because we literally mean that black women named these as action items for white women and things that they needed to engage in before they were even willing to enter this dynamic or enter this relationship, before there could even be any type of cultivation of trust. And that’s this model has five components, so respect for boundaries, self reflection and education, leveraging power, integrity between words and actions, and recognition of the centrality of race in the relationship. And it’s important for us to name that this model exists within what we know to be true about anti blackness and oppression outside of these relationships, right? So that is always going to be at play, and white women have to recognize that that is always at play, and also that it is happening in true so, so we we made this model kind of permeate. So that folks can recognize that anti blackness is always kind of in and out of these dynamics, these relationships. So some of the components, I think, hold

Jayne Sommers
on Christina, what shape is the model in and why

Christina Holmgren
am I holding up? How can people not see the circle? Well, not people who are just listening,

Christina Holmgren
yes. Yes, the model is actually in a circle, and it’s also got a little circle inside that represents the conditions of reciprocity. It’s also permeable, meaning that the lines are dotted. To recognize that each of these are very deeply connected. But also, if you take one away, the model collapses. So you cannot have any conditions for reciprocity without every single component of this model. If one is missing then, then it is not reciprocal relationship, right? And, and in fact, I will go so far as to say, not only is it not reciprocal, but if a if you are engaging with a black woman, and all of these components are not at play, that black woman is probably masking, which to Dr Fulton’s point earlier, that means that we are actively making black women sick because they are having to mask their true emotions, their true experiences, their true realities, for the comfort of white people.

Leah Fulton
And we know that’s true from so much that we can all that that’s true.

Christina Holmgren
Yes, absolutely, we know that is true. So if you are engaging in a relationship with a black woman, and you’re a white woman, and you know you haven’t done all these things, you are making a black woman sick, and so you need to go back and reevaluate. So when we think about these five components of this model, I will say that some of these components participants kind of named outright, right? So, for example, this, this idea of respect for boundaries and self reflection and education participants basically said that white women need to recognize their limits within this dynamic, right? And Jayne and Leah and I have kind of talked about the ways that white women disrespect or blow past boundaries, and so black women need to feel like they have agency and autonomy. Can set a limit with you as a white woman, and that you’ll respect what they’ve said. And also this recognition that in fact, when you respect boundaries and there’s more distance between us in this relationship, there’s actually a higher opportunity, a higher ability, for us to cultivate trust, because you are respecting my boundaries, and I just you will respect my boundaries, which I think is, is it’s a total 180 from the ways white women think about it’s,

Jayne Sommers
it is a mind blowing idea. It feels so paradoxical. The distance between us is the thing that could allow us to remain in relationship.

Christina Holmgren
It is absolutely not how we’ve been conditioned. Black, black women do not want you to feel overly familiar with them, and I think that is really important, because they they don’t trust you. So they wouldn’t want someone who they don’t trust to feel overly familiar with them, right, right? And instead, they really want time to assess whether or not a white woman is actually educating themselves about their racial identity and the role of whiteness in the workplace. So they want time to assess whether or not a white woman is self reflective enough to recognize how they can leverage their whiteness and elevate the experience of black women, right? Or they want to see if white women are going to leverage their whiteness and take a risk that would be at a greater detriment to a black woman. There’s no trust, right? So, so black women need not only time to assess the ways that white women are engaging in their own self reflection, but they also have to talk with other black women to make sure that their data collection and analysis of that white woman is true, right? And so that is all happening while white women are working actively on their own or with other white women to reflect, and do, you know, develop a cultural literacy and a cultural humility. So that is really, really important, I think, to this model and it all, they all you see that they’re all so connected, right? Integrity between words and actions means that white women can see you, or, excuse me, black women can see you, kind of advocating in ways that you should be without burdening them, right? And so all of these models kind of rely on this centrality, or, excuse me, all of these components rely on the centrality of race at the center,

Heather Shea
right? Yeah, wow. This model sounds like it has so much potential to really help us both that discuss it into personal but also the systemic. And I’m really curious, and I think we are right at the end of our time. So I think really briefly, I’d love to hear each of your final thoughts, and I’ll just name we are recording this episode in April of 2025 our current political landscape is a.

Raechele Pope
Um, is a mess,

Heather Shea
but the mess, it’s a fucking mess. So I feel like the findings from this research have have has so much salience at this moment, but I’d love to hear final thoughts on where you want this to go from here, maybe we need to have you all back for another episode to just talk about, like, what is the moment be like, how do we, how do we address this right now? So Jayne, I’ll start with you, and then we’ll go, Jayne Leah, Christina, yeah, thanks.

Jayne Sommers
I mean, we, as we thought about this question, we kept coming back to the idea that the model, so the last thing that we aligned as well as really truly our findings This is most useful for white women. So of course, we’ve of course, we found that it offers catharsis and affirmation for black women, but white women are really the ones who can operationalize our model to transform as you named Heather, not just how we show up in these relationships, but also how we show up in our work in Student Affairs and our work in higher education in spaces outside of work. And so we really have an opportunity to show up in ways that aren’t harmful and aren’t performative, and particularly that performative piece comes in so profoundly in higher education. So for white women, I want to reiterate that this model gives us an opportunity to recognize the centrality of our race in these relationships, as well as the race of the black woman, we also have to figure out how to how to push through our shame spiral and figure out how to embrace humility in in moments where that’s really the most appropriate response, and recognize our contributions, historically and contemporarily to massage noir, all of this has to be done without burdening black women in the process. And as we’ve named, this conversation is happening more often in scholarship now, but is actually happening in so many other spaces. So we share a lot of like Instagram posts, or, you know what we’re seeing on LinkedIn like it’s happening everywhere, and what black women have been saying throughout history when is when white women are put in a position to embrace intersectionality and be really clear about about the ways that we’re bound up together, but our lives and realities are influenced by our race or so it’s either that. It’s either intersectionality or protecting our proximity to power. We’ll choose whiteness over womanhood every single time and so again, this is the paradox, paradoxical piece of our model where we have to realize that that limitations are actually key to staying in relationship. Boundaries and limits are key. And actually friendship isn’t the end goal, right? Yeah, but reciprocity is, and that is, that is what our model is attempting to to make real, is the idea of reciprocity.

Heather Shea
That’s great. Leah, your final thoughts, yeah,

Leah Fulton
well, I think one to what Jayne just described is that black women don’t have the luxury of choosing either blackness or womanhood. Both are always at work and in the structures that we live within, we lose in either way. And so I think part of the opportunity and how I see us. How I see this model being used is that I think oftentimes individualism is one way that white supremacy operates. We need to be thinking about collective professional development. Sometimes we’ll talk about that as leadership development or team formation. But this is a tool that really needs to be used with teams with student leadership, teams, with professional teams that are really helping them think about the ways that race and racism show up in the spaces that we occupy together, again, without burdening black women, but we don’t mind in higher ed talking about race or racism as ideas or that exist elsewhere, but we need to talk about how they’re actually materializing in the spaces that we occupy together, in the within our own team dynamics, and then to do the work to address that be a tool in conflict management and employee resource groups, I got to work with affinity groups for Students at one point, and we did have a an affinity group for white students who were trying to understand whiteness and recover ethnic identities. This is the kind of tool that could be incredibly useful as people are, as white professionals and students are doing work around examination diversity 101 is understanding me, and if I jump straight to trying to understand and analyze you and your cultural context, and I haven’t done my own work or your racial ethnicity, that’s a problem. So I think this really presents an opportunity to start with self for white folks to to do that work and then hold one another accountable.

Heather Shea
Mm. Thank you. Christina,

Christina Holmgren
oh yeah, right. Like I’m gonna follow up Leah’s, yeah, no mic drop, not an outstand, not an out. No way. That was exactly right. That was it

Raechele Pope
perfect. Well, let me say Dr Fulton, Dr Holmgren, Doctor summers, thank you, thank you. This was such an important conversation, and we realized that we have just scratched the surface of this important work, and we thank you for spending time with us today. Don’t be surprised if we come knocking again to say, Yeah, this discussion part two on another episode. Yeah, as always, we also want to take a moment to to express our gratitude to the great, great net ambrosey, our incredible producer, your efforts don’t go unnoticed, net and we thank you wholeheartedly for all that you do. We also want to thank our sponsors today, evolve and Huron.

Heather Shea
Evolve is an organization that helps senior leaders who value, aspire to lead on and want to unleash their potential for transformational leadership. Our own, Keith Edwards, along with doctors, Brian rau and Don Lee, offer personalized experience with high impact value the asynchronous content and six individual and six group coaching sessions, maximize your learning and growth with a focused time investment, greatly enhancing your ability to lead powerfully for social change. And Huron is our other sponsor. They collaborate with colleges and universities to create sound strategies, optimize operations and accelerate digital transformation by embracing diverse perspectives, encouraging new ideas and challenging the status quo. Here on promotes institutional resilience in higher education. For more information, please go to go.hcg.com/now.

Raechele Pope
All of our listeners, if you’re tuning in today and you haven’t already subscribe to our weekly newsletter, you’ll find pieces of the of the conversations that we have in that newsletter that really sends you to other resources. Take a moment to enter your email on our website, www dot student affairs now.com Stay in the loop with the latest episodes delivered to your inbox on Wednesdays, and while you’re there, visit our archives.

Heather Shea
Once again. I’m Heather Shea and

Raechele Pope
I’m Raechele Pope. Thanks to everyone who’s watching or listening, and let’s finish this week strong.

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