The ‘angry Black woman’ as intellectual bondage : being strategically emotional on the academic plantation

Using a doctoral examination question as a starting point, this paper explores the specific race-gendered challenges Black women academics face when doing research on race. I argue that the stereotypical, racialised controlling images regarding Black women are not exclusive to African-American women and this has led some, in education, to draw on epistemologies such as Critical Race Theory (CRT) because of its usefulness in illuminating patterns of racial discrimination and structural disadvantage. The paper builds on this work by exploring the impact on the researcher who might too have faced similar inequalities they are now researching. Consequently, I offer the concept strategic emotionality to pay specific attention to the conscious decisions Black women academics might make about engaging with their emotions as part of the research and analytical process and the potential impact on epistemology.