(WITHDRAWN) Voices of Injury and Well-Being: Black Professional Womanist Are Talking Back

Background and Purpose: In an era of intersecting racial and ethnic discrimination and gender

movements—Black lives matter, MeToo, and Mute R. Kelly protest against troupe images

of Black women that have returned from the historical Jim Crow past to dominate

contemporaneous public spaces. Still, Black women, who are among a class of individuals

protected by U.S. federal anti-discrimination statues, but have been muted in scholarly

discussions, particularly as it relates to giving voice to their perceptions of the trauma continuum

and well-being. Drawing on DeGury’s (2005) Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome (PTSS) the

purpose of this study is to analyze articulations of (1) historical trauma through the lens of PTSS

(2) contemporary race-based stereotypes (i.e., Angry Black Women, Strong Black Women

ideologies; Harris-Perry, 2011; Hill-Collins, 2000), and (3) posttraumatic growth (Tedeschi,

Calhoun, & Groleau, 2015) in seven (7) professional Black women (ages 42-72) living in

United States eastern hemisphere. To date, these three themes have been researched extensively

separately, but not studied together.

Methods: Qualitative interviews were conducted in order to account for the nuanced differences.

Specifically, areas of inquiry focused on the voices of participants using their direct quotes from

transcriptions. Participants were recruited from a larger national/international study who met the inclusion

criteria (self-identified as Professional Black or African American women, age 21 and over, experience or

exposure to contemporary and/or historical trauma). Participants are seven (7) Black professional women.

The sample were recorded individually in a private location with no one else present. Each interview

ranged from 60 to 90 minutes. The PI adhered to all ethical guidelines during all phases of the study.

Institutional Review Board (IRB) was obtained and participants gave audio-recorded verbal consent prior

to the start of the study. Fictitious names were used to ensure confidentiality. The study was funded by

the Professional Staff Congress-City University of New York Research Foundation. Following each interview,

audiotapes were uploaded to principal investigator’s (PI’s) secure research program, transcribed verbatim,

and reviewed by PI for consistency. Initial open coding was conducted by PI and research team, interrater

reliability and validity procedures, i.e., triangulation of data was conducted (Creswell & Creswell, 2018).

Selective coding is based on emerging themes and supported by direct quotes from participants. To

analyze the data in a way that affirms the purpose of the study, Brown and Gillian’s (1992) Voice-Centered

Relational Method (VCRM), was used to ensure Black women participants’ voices were heard.

Results: Through the results, we heard professional Black women voice vacant esteem, ever

present anger, racist socialization, race-based stereotypes, concomitant with inherited legacies

of adaptive behaviors gained from post slave atrocities, including, strength, spirituality, and

posttraumatic growth.

Conclusions and Implications: Aimed at leveraging results to repair effects of the trauma

and prevent the continuation of harmful social and psychological behaviors from the era of

enslavement to subsequent generations, results from this study draw from the voices of Black

women, who offer the best responses about how to assess their experiences of injury and well-

being culturally specific interventions.