Trump’s America is Making Microagressions an Even Greater Reality for Women Faculty of Color: An African American Faculty Member’s Lived Experiences

Microagressions can oftentimes come in the form of colleagues not wanting to acknowledge your presence as one of four full-time African American women faculty members on campus. It can also come in the form of “saviors” who feel pity for the mistreatment of faculty members of color, who say condescending things, and speak in hushed tones; those who want to show that not all nonblack people feel the way that others do about your presence on campus, yet do nothing about the mistreatment. It may even come from students who want to challenge your credentials and the validity of your teaching material and tell you that white privilege does not exist and that he “wishes you people would just chill because not everything is related to race.” These lived experiences I have faced, as explicated in Zamani’s 2003 seminal work, places the duality of “being female and African American as a confluence of oppression” (7) and continues to be tantamount to the lived experiences of more and more faculty all over this country, especially women of color faculty members. Black women represent large numbers who are studying on these campuses, and these numbers continue to increase. Garibaldi (2014) indicates that there were over 800,000 more black women studying on college campuses in 2012 than black men. While institutions of higher education have often struggled with issues of equity, parity of hiring practices, and the recruitment, retention, and graduation of people of color, there has been a seismic shift in our political landscape that has had tremendous effects on the educational advancement of countless people of color. Simply put, Trump’s America is making microaggressions