White supremacy's impact on Black bodies is well-known. Starting with the enslavement of millions of Africans and their descendants, to Reconstruction, Jim Crow laws, the race-based War on Drugs, mass incarceration, police murders--and now, through fat phobia. Fat phobia--the hatred of and discrimination against fatness--is problematic for all bodies because it limits basic opportunities and privileges. However, it becomes particularly dangerous at the intersection of structural racism and misogyny. Francis Beale argues that as both Black people and women+, Black women+ carry a "double strike" against them; consequently, they experience both racism and misogyny, termed "misogynoir" by Moya Bailey. Language in recent medical publications indicates the severity of fat phobia in America around the Black woman+'s body: fatness is something Black women+ have a "high recidivism rate" with after weight loss (Small). This rhetoric affirms the criminalization of the Black body; fatness is something a Black woman+ has "recidivism" with--a term used almost exclusively for incarcerated people. Thus, the medical community's discourse affirms the"legitimacy" of fat phobia and of fatness' adverse effects on health, inviting discrimination against Black fat bodies. Specifically, it suggests that Black women+ need supervision over their bodies--by white people. This thesis considers the work contemporary Black fat women+ (Sonya Renee Taylor, Sesali Bowen, and Tressie McMillan Cottom) are doing through essays and memoirs against fat phobia; that is, it seeks to amplify their voices as they name, critique, and suggest changes for the institutions that uniquely harm fat Black women+--namely medical racism, beauty, and capitalism. The naming, or making visible, of otherwise-invisible institutions affirms bell hooks' assertion that "groups of women who feel excluded from feminist discourse and praxis can make a place for themselves only if they first create, via critiques, an awareness of the factors that alienate them" (276). Fat phobia perpetuates the narrative that Black women+--especially in larger bodies--are undeserving of love. It posits that women+ are only as valuable as their bodies. But Taylor, Bowen, and Cottom literally rewrite that narrative; instead, these women+ write the fat Black body as inherently worthy and capable of bringing joy--deserving, as we all do, "radical self-love."

Thesis advisor: Kyrah Daniels / Thesis advisor: Gustavo Morello / In many ways, college campuses represent a microcosm of the world where standards of whiteness are upheld and larger societal issues are recreated. Though American Muslim populations expand each year in the United States, few college campuses provide space for African Muslim women to fully express their spirituality and other aspects of their identities without compromise. This thesis examines how African Muslim women navigate belonging and dis-belonging in college. Additionally, it explores how African Muslim women use their triple consciousness to negotiate between their racial, cultural, religious, and gendered identities. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2022. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Departmental Honors. / Discipline: Sociology. / Discipline: African & African Diaspora Studies.

In the age of social media, many Black women use online platforms and social networks as a means of connecting with other Black women and to share their experiences of social oppression and misogynoir, anti-Black misogyny. Examining the ways that Black women use technology as a tool to actively wage resistance to racial, gender and class oppression is critical for understanding their role in the human struggle for greater peace, beauty, freedom and justice. This study explored the experiences of 12 Black women in the United States and Britain who use social media for storytelling and testimony about their lives as racial and gendered minorities. The research questions were: How do Black women in the United States and Britain use social media for storytelling and testimony about their lives as Black women? What is the lived experience of using social media for this purpose? How does the experience affect them and what meaning do they find in using social media for this purpose? Using an interpretative phenomenological approach, the researcher developed findings which show that Black women experience social media as an affirming, safe space for counter storytelling, education and transformation, negotiating identity and for connection to a larger, African diasporic identity. This research serves to increase the knowledge and scholarship about how Black women challenge damaging stereotypes and restrictive social narratives and how they use social media to challenge structural and ideological violence directed at them in an effort to promote dialogue and healing.

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Cette thèse se concentre sur les expériences des personnages féminins qui représentent les jeunes mères Afro-Américaines, dans le film biographique, Roxanne Roxanne, basé sur l’artiste de rap Lolita Shante Gooden; et dans le roman Push, de Sapphire, nom de plume de Ramona Lofton. Contrairement aux générations précédentes, aujourd’hui les féministes noires de la quatrième vague du féminisme analysent ce que les féministes hip-hop ont essayé de développer depuis la deuxième vague de féminisme. Le féminisme hip-hop permet d’examiner des questions liées à la misogynie de la culture hip-hop et parmi d’autres points concernent les femmes noires dans cet espace. Quel rôle jouent les hommes? Et qu’est-ce que cela représente dans un cadre culturel plus large? Comment les mères et les filles sont-elles représentées et affectées? Comment les enfants de ces femmes sont-ils touchés, et quelle dynamique se déroule alors dans la relation mère-fille? Mes questions servent à approfondir des sujets qui sont sous-explorées dans les études de hip-hop. Le livre The New Jim Crow par l’activiste des droits civiques et avocate Michelle Alexander est fondamental dans le contexte de ce mémoire. Les informations historiques de l’enquête d’Alexander sur la campagne américaine, « The War on Drugs », dévoilent le système de criminalisation raciale aux États-Unis et ses infrastructures sociopolitique et économique. Ce système est conçu pour contrôler la population noire depuis l’époque de la traite transatlantique des esclaves. Les œuvres hip-hop féministes ne contribuent pas seulement à augmenter la sensibilisation sur les sujets intimes pour les Afro-Américaines; mais elles aident aussi à exposer les idéologies sexistes et raciales qui privent le corps féminin noir de ses droits dans la culture populaire. / This thesis focuses on the lives of female characters that left young mothers fending for survival in two works: the biopic, Roxanne Roxanne, based on rap artist Lolita Shante Gooden; and, the novel Push, by Sapphire—pen name of Ramona Lofton. Unlike previous generations, today’s fourth-wave black feminists analyze what hip-hop feminists have been trying to develop since the second wave of feminism. Hip-hop feminism enables the examination of issues related to the misogynoir of hip-hop culture, and the struggles black females encounter in this space. What role do men perform? And what does this represent within a larger cultural framework? How are mothers and daughters portrayed, and affected by hip-hop culture? How are the children of such females impacted, and what dynamic then takes place in the mother-daughter relationship? My questions serve to dig deeper into topics that are underexplored in hip-hop gender studies—specifically in working-class urban communities. Fundamental to my exploring hip-hop feminist issues is my reliance on The New Jim Crow, by civil rights activist and lawyer, Michelle Alexander. Using historical insight from Alexander’s investigation on the War on Drugs, my thesis unveils the racial criminalization system in the United States, and the larger socio-political and economical infrastructure designed to control the black population since the transatlantic slave trade. The conditions of impoverished black communities, in turn, sabotage the development of black females. Feminist hip-hop works not only contribute to creating awareness about intimate, gendered issues; but also, they help further challenge racialized ideologies that disenfranchise the black female body in popular culture.