Just because it don't look heavy, don't mean it ain't: An intersectional analysis of Black women's labor as faculty during COVID

The purpose of our scholarly personal narrative was to examine how COVID‐19 and an increased awareness of anti‐Blackness in the United States have exacerbated our labor as Black women faculty, with particular focus on teaching and service responsibilities. Dill and Zambrana's (2009) four theoretical interventions of intersectionality guided our study, and we situated our composite narratives within structural, disciplinary, hegemonic, and interpersonal power domains. Our four composite narratives included (1) Interest convergence, there is no real true investment in change;(2) Institutional intent versus impact, I don't know how it will be incorporated;(3) Perpetuation of Black women's labor, just because it don't look heavy, don't mean it ain't;and (4) Reclaiming my time, and it's not because I don't like them, but it's because I love me. Implications for practice and policy are discussed.

Black Women in White Institutional Spaces: The Invisible Labor Clause and The Inclusion Tax: PROD

The dual pandemics brought on by COVID-19 and racial violence has played a significant role in uncovering how systemic racism is deeply entrenched within white spaces in America. This article examines the experiences of Black women lawyers in elite law firms to demonstrate how white institutional spaces are racially organized with embedded colorblind racist practices that work to obscure the insidious perpetuation of white supremacy. Black women are required to perform added, unrecognized, and uncompensated labor to maintain their positions. This invisible labor manifests in the form of an inclusion tax that they must pay to be included in white spaces. This article discusses how being one of very few Black people in white spaces creates a myriad of issues that require significant invisible labor including navigating white narratives of affirmative action, negotiating how dominant white culture functions to normalize the white experience, and adherence to white normative standards.

Imagined Communities and Imaginary Plots: Nationalisms, Conspiracies, and Pandemics in the Longue Durée

The outbreaks of major pandemics have historically been associated with the proliferation of conspiracy theories. This article explores what role conspiratorial narratives have played in the development of different “imagined communities” in the premodern, modern, and contemporary worlds. I argue that premodern conspiratorial narratives were mostly focused on eschatological and theological images, aiming to blame and delegitimise the religious Other. In these imaginary plots, spread of disease was interpreted as an attack on one’s religious beliefs. The prevalence of religious conspiracies helped reinforce religiously based, yet temporary, “imagined communities.” With the rise of nation-states and the decline of empires and patrimonial kingdoms, the periodic outbursts of epidemics gradually attained more nationalist interpretations. Hence in the modern era, pandemics often triggered the growth of nationalist conspiracies. In these narratives the threatening Other was usually nationalised, and even traditional religious groups became reinterpreted as a threat to one’s national security. In recent times, new technologies and modes of communication have created space for the emergence of global conspiracy theories. The onset of Covid-19 has been associated with the dramatic expansion of such conspiracies. Some scholars have interpreted this as a reliable sign that nation-states and nationalisms have lost their dominance. However, this article shows that many global conspiracies in fact reinforce nationalist ideas and practices and, in this process, foster the perpetuation of national imagined communities.