No "Post": A Critical Exploration of the Role of Lifelong Racial Trauma in the Experience of Impostor Phenomenon Among Black Women Doctoral Students Enrolled in U.S. Predominantly White Institutions

The Black community is a predominantly minoritized population with a long history of racial trauma/race-based traumatic stress. Within the Black community, in the academic environment, Black students are at a further disadvantage in that they face a major risk to a favorable progression socially and academically due to experience of racism. This study aimed to explore a gap in the literature related to how Black women doctoral students in U.S. Predominantly white institutions (PWIs) experience imposter phenomenon (IP) as a result of lifelong and ongoing exposure to racial trauma/RBTS, reinforcing the experience of having no post in racial trauma/RBTS. The current study examined the experiences of 10 Black women doctoral students–ages 27-50 (M = 32.2)–using a reflexive thematic analysis (RTA). Guided by the critical-ideological paradigm, intersectionality framework, and Critical Race Theory (CRT), this study employed the use of individual 60–90-minute interviews to explore participants’ experience of oppression, inequality, racial trauma, andIP in their PWI environments. The finding of the study indicated that participants experienced perpetual gendered racism, a successive experience of racial trauma and IP, the use of controlling images to dehumanize them, and struggled with otherness, visibility, and belonging. Furthermore, participants also highlighted the ways they worked to reclaim visibility through community and resistance. The results may be used to challenge the status quo and resist hegemonic practices, with the goal of continued advocacy to aid institutions in providing more robust academic support to Black women doctoral students.