"THE RACIAL AND GENDERED DYNAMICS OF POWER ON CAMPUS: BLACK WOMEN CREATING COUNTER-SPACES AS RESISTANCE"

This talk will highlight and discuss the importance of intersectionality when examining racism at a HPWI (historically, predominately white institution). Black undergraduate women experience both racism and sexism simultaneously, or what Black feminists call gendered racism. HPWI’s are white-centric spaces but are also sites for patriarchy and male domination. Higher education scholars and race scholars must shift the discourse intersectionality to focus on other systems of oppression within higher education, such as patriarchy. Black undergraduate women must navigate racist patriarchy in white spaces on campus while resisting Black patriarchy in Black spaces and Black Communities on campus. Both racist patriarchy and Black patriarchy marginalize Black undergraduate women within higher education and on college campuses, which forces them to create counter-spaces as a form of resistance and social capital.

Dr. Veronica Newton is a tenure-track Assistant Professor of Race at Georgia State University in downtown Atlanta, GA. She joined the Department of Sociology in 2018, as a race scholar who researchers and teaches intersectionality and black feminisms. Dr. Newton’s ethnographic and qualitative work

focuses specifically on how Black undergraduate women navigate both racism and patriarchy simultaneously at HPWIs. Her research serves to highlight the importance of examining interlocking systems of oppression within higher education and how they impact women of color’s college experiences. Her current projects include a forthcoming co-authored book with her Black feminist colleagues, titled: The Sociology of Cardi B.: A Trap Feminist Approach set to be released with Routledge Press. Dr. Newton was also a Co- PI for an NIH RADxUP grant in collaboration with GSU’s School of Public Health, where she served as a Co-PI and qualitative, race scholar to help uncover challenges and barriers among COVID-19 testing for Black Americans from an

intersectional perspective. Her current project examines how classrooms can become Black womanist spaces.