Psychological Heuristics and Faculty of Color: Racial Battle Fatigue and Tenure/Promotion

2016/11/01 by Noelle Witherspoon Arnold, Emily R. Crawford, Muhammad Khalifa · 99 citations
Psychology · Social Sciences · #Art #Battle #Construct (python library) #Critical Race Theory in Education #Gender studies #Heuristics #Higher Education Research Studies #Higher education #History #Law #Mentoring and Academic Development #Narrative #Political science #Power (physics) #Process (computing) #Promotion (chess) #Psychology #Racial bias #Racism #Social psychology #Sociology

paper · doi:10.1080/00221546.2016.11780891

published in The Journal of Higher Education 87(6), 890-919 (Taylor & Francis)

openalex publication_date 2016/11/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/30

Abstract

Faculty who have been historically excluded from participating in academia present a unique quandary for those who have traditionally held power at the university. This article explores the promotion and tenure (P&T) process of Black faculty using a psychological construct to examine how racial micro-aggressions manifest and articulate themselves through individual and organizational phenomena such as Racial Battle Fatigue (RBF). We applied a psychological approach to narrative inquiry to examine how two faculty of color experienced the P&T process. Participant narratives highlighted how much of the P&T process, and even engagement in academia in general, is articulated by likability or congeniality—two constructs absent from P&T policies.

Citations

• Racial microaggressions in everyday life: Implications for clinical practice.

Cited by

• Subverting and Minding Boundaries: The Intellectual Work of Women
• Perhaps You Should Use a Colon: Predicting Citation Counts of U.S. Higher Education Journal Articles
• Epistemic Exclusion of Women Faculty and Faculty of Color: Understanding Scholar(ly) Devaluation as a Predictor of Turnover Intentions
• Diversity and Inclusion or Tokens? A Qualitative Study of Black Women Academic Nurse Leaders in the United States. [europepmc]
• Power to the People: Measuring Social Media and Mass Media Impact for Promotion and Tenure in Social and Applied Sciences. [europepmc]
• From Bedside to Classroom: An Autoethnography of the Mentoring Experiences of BIPOC Nurse Faculty from Transition to Tenure and Promotion. [europepmc]

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• Fostering Inclusion for Black Faculty
• Epistemic Exclusion of Women Faculty and Faculty of Color: Understanding Scholar(ly) Devaluation as a Predictor of Turnover Intentions
• “I’m a Needed Commodityin the Academy”: RacialCapitalism and the Positioningof Race as Capital in the FacultyJob Market
• “I’ll still continue to rise:” Black women’s experiences in academia
• Racial conflict in a higher education policy vacuum