Women of Color at ACM Colleges

Introduction

     In the Spring of 1993, the ACM Committee on Women's Concerns
released its report, "The Aspirations of Women Students at ACM
Colleges."  The report was composed of three parts:  a
quantitative section, a bibliography of literature on college
women's concerns, and a summary of the findings from focus groups
on each of the ACM campuses and at the ACM Urban Education
Program.  During the Spring, 1993, meeting at Ripon College, as
the committee pondered a new theme for 1993-94, it realized that
the report might better have been titled, "The Aspirations of
White Women Students at ACM Colleges."  Although women of color
had been invited to the focus group interviews, very few had
participated.  The voices of women of color and lesbians had not
been heard.  As all of our predominantly white colleges struggle
to welcome and support minority students, the committee decided
to conduct additional focus groups during 1993-94 so the picture
of women's aspirations could be complete.  Reports were collected
during Winter and Spring of 1994; the following reports were
received:

          African American students:              8 colleges
          Asian American students:                4 colleges
          Latina students:                        4 colleges
          Native American students:               1 college
          Lesbian and Bisexual women students:    5 colleges

     The questions asked during the focus groups were the same as
those used in the previous study and were included in the
appendix to that study.  The two studies revealed similar results
in that aspirations was not a particularly compelling topic to
the student participants.  For the white women, the climate on
campus outside the classroom commanded much more attention than
their experience in the classroom.  For the women of color and
lesbians, this difference was much less marked; the totality of
their experience came through in the interviews.


Six Themes          

     Although the various groups of women had unique realities
and concerns, six themes emerged which were common to all groups: 
spokespersonship, community, visibility, prejudice/harassment,
the overriding importance of race, and aspirations.

Spokespersonship

     Nearly every student reported feeling the expectation to be
a spokesperson for her group when issues identified with that
group arose.  One African American student said, "Sometimes a
professor will look at me like, 'What's your perspective?'  I
swear sometimes I feel like a representative for my race, and
it's just intro to English and I'm lucky if I got the reading
done.  That's a heavy trip to lay on someone."  Although most
students were similarly frustrated with this role, some had come
to see it as an opportunity to educate their white peers.  One
student who said she felt like she was teaching Black People 101
continued, "It's much better now because I've learned how to
cope, and it's not their fault they've never had much exposure." 
Important were the Latina students on one campus who
wanted more opportunities to talk about their culture.

Community

     When the students were asked if they were part of a
community, they invariably cited other students of the same
ethnic group or sexual orientation, not the college community as
a whole.  They made this distinction clear.  Some were in fact
quite unhappy at their colleges but had chosen to stick it out
for the quality of the education they were receiving.

Visibility

     On our predominantly white campuses, some groups of students
are more visible than others.  Both visibility and invisibility
were frustrating:  the most visible women (African Americans)
felt they were always on display, while the most invisible women
(lesbians and bisexual women) struggled with the issue of coming
out.  One Black participant expressed the fact that "blackness
cannot be hidden."  Addressing the Hispanic participants, she
said, "All of you can fit in pretty much, but for us it doesn't
matter what we do. . . .  I'm still going to be Black."  Another
said, "Your color is on you.  First of all, you are African
American, then you are female."  

     While the women of color are more visible, they at least
have identifiable cultures to which they belong and the existence
which is accepted on their campuses.  The lesbians' plight is
more difficult in that they perceived a unique lesbian culture
but realized that society at large did not share that view.  The
lesbians also talked about the difficult decision whether or not
to come out, or to whom to come out.  Their sexual orientation
was seen as an integral part of their identities, but the
invisibility of this essential trait and the heterosexism of
American society in general meant that they had to tell people
they were lesbian or bisexual if they wanted people to know. 
Coming out meant accepting the very real possibility of
harassment, but remaining closeted led to the denial of their
true identities.  Some students solved the problem by becoming
very active in the gay students' organizations on their campuses;
others came out to the members of some classes they were taking
but not to others.

Prejudice/Harassment

     All of the women reported perceptions of prejudice ranging
from stares, inappropriate questions, the suggestion by their
white peers that their academic preparation for college had been
inadequate or that they were at the college to fill a quota, and
the assumption by professors and other students that Asian
American students were not native speakers of English.  African
American students on three campuses told of ignorant questions
about their hair.  A Latina student at one college said, "We
encounter a completely different kind of prejudice than Blacks
encounter, and a lot of people don't know about that."  But the
out lesbians had experienced the most severe harassment,
including obscene phone calls, professors telling derogatory
stories about homosexuals, and even a death threat.  Many of
these students believed that harassment directed at lesbians was
not taken seriously by campus officials or dealt with in the same
way racist actions would have been.

Overriding Importance of Race

     For all of the women of color, ethnic identity was much more
important than female identity.  At one college, African American
students hastened to make that distinction when the interviewer
asked, "What is it like to be a woman in classes here?"  They
exclaimed, "Woman?!  BLACK woman here, BLACK woman in classes
here.  I can't separate them out.  I can't tell you about being a
woman in classes here but I can tell you about being a BLACK
female here."  An important comment was the sentiment expressed
by Latinas at one college: "I don't think about my race unless
I'm talking about my culture or I'm explaining to somebody what I
am, but I'm more focused on being a woman than being Mexican." 
Even on this campus, though, the Hispanic women were quick to ask
each other,  "What are you?" (Mexican, Cuban, etc.).  The women
of color generally were not active in the women's groups on their
campus, nor did they identify themselves as feminists.  Lesbian
and bisexual women, on the other hand, identified strongly as
feminists and were perceived as such on their campuses.  The
enclosed chart shows the relationship between feminism and race
that emerged from these focus group interviews.

Aspirations

     The area of aspirations was the theme which most closely
matched the responses of the white women.  Many students reported
changing their majors and revising their goals toward less
materialistic pursuits.  They were also concentrating on their
careers rather than looking for life partners; their
dissatisfaction with social life on their campuses stemming from
the small number of students of their own group made the
discovery of a suitable partner a lucky accident, not an
expectation or even much of a hope.  A key difference from the
white students was the intention of many students to choose a
career that helped their communities.


Conclusion and Recommendations

     From the focus groups it seems clear that the experiences of
minority women on ACM campuses vary significantly from those of
majority women.  The daily burden of being different makes
college life particularly challenging for women of color and
lesbians, and their experience of difference because of race or
sexual orientation overwhelms their sense of oppression because
of gender.  

[From Jill Gremmels, report compiler:  As just one person, I
don't feel comfortable proposing recommendations.  It seems to me
that recommendations would be better coming from the entire
committee, perhaps at the fall meeting after everyone has read
this report.  I am sending the diskette containing the report to
the 1994-95 coordinators so they can tack on any recommendations
the committee makes.]

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Updated 11/3/99