Practicing wholeness: how Black women in academia defy devaluation and claim their worth

Purpose We set out to understand workplace events that contribute to processes of devaluation. We make a case for exploring these questions in the context of academia and the lives of Black women faculty within it. Design/methodology/approach We engaged in a multi-source archival data collection from accounts of Black women faculty, and we drew upon inductive analysis to analyze our data. Findings Findings suggest that organizational actors encounter intersectional devaluation through three primary experiences: dehumanization, surveillance and erasure. Findings also put forth the notion of practicing wholeness to describe how actors recover and reclaim their worth via acts of self-preservation, solidarity and amplification. Originality/value We contribute to the broad field of diversity and equity (specifically to stigma literature) and positive organizational scholarship by drawing upon Black feminist theory. We hope our work sheds light on the agentic practices by Black employees in academia (thereby contributing to literature on not only stigma but positive organizational scholarship) but also the ways in which academia is an important context for studying – and eliminating-race-based stigma.