What Black Cyberfeminism Teaches us about Black Women on College Campuses

The bodies of Black women are politicized, evidence of systemic, hegemonic modes of oppression pervasive in predominantly white systems. Digital technologies provide Black women with the capacity to “engage in new forms of contestation and in proactive endeavors in…different realms, from political to economic.” Black feminist scholarship has disrupted several themes related to Black womanhood, including respectability, strength, the performance of gender or femininity in popular culture, and the hypersexualization of Black women. Still, the ways Black women are presented in sociopolitical contexts lead to a recollection of visuals that are unrealistic and connected to the assumed value of their (gendered and racialized) flesh. This chapter juxtaposes Black Cyberfeminism’s active resistance to the media’s assault on Black womanhood with narratives of Black women on college campuses who seek to frame their own realities.