Experiences of Black Women Understanding Racial Microaggressions and Identifying Replenishing Healing Practices: A Phenomenological Study
Abstract
The habitual nature of racial microaggressions (subtle, frequent, and negative slights that communicate messages of inferiority) have harmful psychological impacts for people of color. These impacts are deepened for Black women whose intersecting racial and gendered identities expose them to a unique oppressive reality, requiring healing interventions and strategies. In this phenomenological study, grounded in indigenous and critical consciousness perspectives, cisgender Black women participated in a two-part focus group exploring the experience of having a better understanding of racial microaggressions and healing specific to Black women. The first session was psychoeducational, learning to name racial microaggression experiences and underlying perpetuated myths and messages. In the final session, participants explored their own meanings of healing and shared perceptions of emerging healing in recent literature and online spaces. The first session elicited perceptions and impacts of the psychoeducational exploration and insight into participants’ critical conscious reflections, racial microaggression processing experiences, and unique gendered racial microaggression experiences. From the final session of exploring the meaning of replenishing healing in the face of constant racial microaggressions, descriptions evolved of healing and perceptions of strategies to experience replenishing healing in spite of racial microaggression wounds. Implications from this study advance our conceptual understanding of healing, by definition of transcending suffering and actualizing wholeness, to be inclusive of Black women who experience constant and harmful gendered racial assaults. Black women participants contributed to the phenomenological understanding of how Black women cultivate and engage in healing strategies and define replenishing healing.
Subject Area
Psychology|Mental health|Womens studies|Therapy|Clinical psychology
Recommended Citation
Wong, Kayla L, "Experiences of Black Women Understanding Racial Microaggressions and Identifying Replenishing Healing Practices: A Phenomenological Study" (2021). ETD Collection for Fordham University. AAI28497258.
https://research.library.fordham.edu/dissertations/AAI28497258
