Mentoring, Sexual Harassment, and Black Women Academics

ABSTRACT

The #MeToo Movement both within academia and popular culture has largely been seen as an issue for white women (and men). While the phrase Me Too was originally coined by Tarana Burke in 2006 to raise public awareness of sexual harassment, violence and assault experienced by women of color, the Movement has largely been whitewashed by primarily depicting victims and survivors as white women. Black women academics, like myself, also experience sexual harassment. By highlighting the ways that race-based sexual harassment further marginalizes already underrepresented groups in political science, I use my personal story to elucidate how a gender-only lens misses the complexities of Black women’s experiences with power inequities in academia. Throughout this narrative I underscore the importance of mentorship, professional networks, and the ability to harness scholarship as a vehicle to combat the pervasiveness of sexual harassment, violence, and assault for Black women in political science.

KEYWORDS:

• Mentorship
• sexual harassment
• race
• gender
• political science
• Black women

Notes

1. Years later, I attended a Gender and Political Psychology conference, which started with an ice-breaker bingo game. The objective of the game was to find participants to sign your bingo card on a square that corresponded to a fact about themselves. One of the squares asked if you have never been sexually harassed. Sadly, none of the 45 conference participants in the room could sign this square on the bingo card. Sexual harassment is so prevalent and pervasive that women scholars seemingly understand harassment as part and parcel of being in the profession.

2. Lorrie Frasure-Yokley and the political science department at UCLA generously supported this breakfast as well as the political science department at Purdue University. Many senior scholars paid for the breakfast of the junior scholars at their tables. I am grateful for these financial contributions, which helped to ensure that the breakfast would not be a financial deterrent for women of scholars who wanted to participate.