814820
research-article2018
GASXXX10.1177/0891243218814820Gender & SocietyMiles / “Strong Black Women”
“Strong Black Women”:
African American Women with Disabilities,
Intersecting Identities, and Inequality
Angel Love Miles
University of Illinois at Chicago, USA
In a mixed-methods study of the barriers and facilitators to homeownership for African
American women with physical disabilities, self-concept emerged among the primary themes.
This article discusses how participants in the study perceived themselves and negotiated how
they were perceived by others as multiply marginalized women. Using what I call a feminist
intersectional disability framework, I suggest that participants’ relationships to care strongly
contributed to their self-concept. The “Strong Black Woman” trope and associated expecta-
tions had cultural and material relevance for how they interpreted themselves and were
interpreted by others as receivers, managers, and providers of care. The material reality of
owning or not owning a home did not reveal significant differences in the self-concepts of
homeowners versus nonhomeowners. Rather, it was through conversations about homeown-
ership that this data around self-concept in relationship to care was revealed.
Keywords: self-concept; feminism; disability; race; gender; intersectionality
C ompared to their white counterparts, African Americans have higher
rates of poverty, lower rates of educational attainment, and are more
likely to be employed in jobs that put their health and bodies at greatest risk
(Schulz and Mullings 2006; Seabury, Terp, and Boden 2017; Smart and
Author’s note: This article derived from my dissertation research completed at the
University of Maryland College Park and was written during my Postdoctoral Fellowship at
the University of Illinois at Chicago, written with support from a postdoctoral training fellow-
ship, Grant #90AR5023 National Institute on Disability, Independent Living and Rehabilitation
Research (NIDILRR), Department of Health and Human Services. Thank you to everyone who
helped support its development. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed
to Dr. Angel L. Miles, Access Living of Metropolitan Chicago, 115 W. Chicago Ave, Chicago,
IL 60654, USA; e-mail: amiles@accessliving.org
GENDER & SOCIETY, Vol 33 No. 1, February, 2019 41–63
DOI: 10.1177/0891243218814820
© 2018 by The Author(s)
Article reuse guidelines: sagepub.com/journals-permissions
42 GENDER & SOCIETY/February 2019
Smart 1997). All of these factors limit their social and economic opportuni-
ties and make it harder to prevent the onset of a disability and/or manage or
rehabilitate a disability, if acquired. It is therefore not surprising that African
Americans have significantly higher rates of disability and of severe disabil-
ities than the white majority population (Beatty 2003; Drum et al. 2011;
Smart and Smart 1997). Although African Americans have one of the highest
rates of disability, 29 percent of African Americans versus 20 percent of
white Americans, there is a dearth of recent statistical data describing their
social and economic characteristics (Courtney-Long et al. 2015). The
research that does exist suggests significant race and gender disparities
among the disabled population, for example, that African American women
with disabilities particularly face multiple barriers to resources and equitable
treatment in society (Alston and McCowan 1994; Balcazar et al. 2010;
Beatty 2003; Oberoi et al. 2015). Despite this, very little has been written
about the multiple inequalities that African American women with disabili-
ties or other disabled women of color experience.
The limited studies that discuss the implications of having to confront
multiple and compounding systems of racism, ableism, and sexism in the
United States context were written primarily by and for service providers who
aim to document the racial and gender disproportionality in the quantity and
quality of services that women and minorities with disabilities receive (e.g.,
Alston and McCowan 1994; Balcazar et al. 2012; Wilson 2004). This litera-
ture suggests that race, class, and gender biases contribute significantly to
how the needs, capabilities, and desires of clients with disabilities are assessed
and interpreted by disability service providers who are also more likely to be
white, able-bodied, and male (Balcazar et al. 2010). These studies show per-
sistent gender and racialized disparities in the delivery, quality, and outcomes
of disability-related services, resulting in African American women with dis-
abilities benefiting significantly less from disability policy than white disa-
bled males (Balcazar et al. 2010; Oberoi et al. 2015). Still, studies conducted
from a service provider perspective are more likely to focus on impairment
prevention, cure, and expert advice rather than societal change or the lived
experiences of African American women with disabilities (Linton 1998).
Little is known about how African American women with disabilities experi-
ence these barriers, or how their multiple minority identities impact how they
are perceived by themselves and others.
This article addresses these gaps in the literature by presenting findings
from a study of the barriers and facilitators to homeownership for African
American women with physical disabilities. The data provides insight on how
African American women with physical disabilities perceived themselves and
negotiated how they were perceived by others. Through examining social and
Miles / “STRONG BLACK WOMEN” 43
economic opportunities via homeownership, distinct themes related to self-
concept emerged. For the purposes of this study, I draw on Rosalyn Benjamin
Darling’s (2013) use of the term self-concept. For Benjamin Darling, self-
concept refers to how people come to define their personal and social charac-
teristics, such as race and disability, and their self-esteem. Self-esteem is
defined as judgments about the self that are based on personal and social
characteristics and are influenced by interactions between the self and society
(Benjamin Darling 2013). The analysis reveals that the social implications of
being an African American woman with a disability are in many ways differ-
ent from white men and women with or without disabilities and African
American men and women without disabilities. Attention to the multiple
forms of oppression that impact African American women with disabilities in
varying contexts is needed to understand not only their barriers and facilita-
tors to homeownership but their full access to society. Hence, this article
examines the self-concept of African American women with physical disabil-
ities through the lens of the “Strong Black Woman” schema.
Controlling Images And African American Women
With Disabilities
Black feminists have documented the significant role that the controlling
image or trope of the Strong Black Woman (also called “Super Woman”) has
played in the social construction of African American womanhood (Collins
2000; Wallace 1999; Woods-Giscombe 2010). This image grew out of the
history of African American women’s exploitation as unpaid laborers during
slavery, and later as underpaid workers and service providers. Their position-
ality as laborers both inside and outside the home conflicted with the tradi-
tional white American family ideal that suggested that women’s roles should
be restricted primarily to wife and mother. Because their positionality did not
allow them to conform to white standards of womanhood and femininity,
African American women were ridiculed and objectified through stereotypi-
cal images such as mammies and jezebels. These images dehumanized
African American women and constructed them as hypersexual and as simple
minded; the images also often connected their worth to their physical and
emotional labor (Collins 1990).
The Strong Black Woman ideal acts as a counternarrative that cele-
brates characteristics in African American women who demonstrate their
devotion to African American men and families, and to the African
American community. These celebrated traits include being selfless, nur-
turing, resilient, independent, and exemplifying a physical and emotional
44 GENDER & SOCIETY/February 2019
will to endure great difficulties. More specifically, Strong Black Women
are glorified in the African American community for their ability to per-
severe in a racist and sexist society. Research suggests that for African
American women, aspiring to conform to the Strong Black Woman image
can be simultaneously empowering and detrimental to their health and
self-concept (Collins 1990; Wallace 1999; Woods-Giscombe 2010).
In the pivotal text Women and Disability, Fine and Asch (1985) argued that
women with disabilities particularly experience a type of gender “roleless-
ness.” This “rolelessness” results from a society that tends to construct
women with disabilities “as inadequate for economically productive roles
(traditionally considered appropriate for males) and for the nurturant [sic],
reproductive roles considered appropriate for females” (1985, 6). On account
of their gender and disability, women with disabilities are socially constructed
as weak, dependent, and unfit as providers, and they are considered unable to
fulfill their gender expectations as mothers. Therefore, if the characteristics of
a Strong Black Woman include being hardworking, independent, and caregiv-
ing, then the presence of a disability is in direct conflict with traditional ideals
of African American womanhood. In addition, while there is growing litera-
ture that identifies the impact of the Strong Black Woman schema on African
American women’s health (Woods-Giscombe 2010), this research does not
recognize that the schema itself is embedded in an ableist ideology that values
independence over interdependence and caregiving over self-care. Moreover,
this literature tends to include a narrow conception of strength and resilience
that devalues and pathologizes those that are perceived as weak.
Feminist, Intersectional, And Disability Studies
The analytic framework of this paper is informed by multiple bodies of lit-
erature: disability studies, feminist disability studies, and intersectional scholar-
ship. Dominant perspectives about disability in Western society construct
disability as a deficit, impairment, and individual tragedy rather than as a system
of oppression or as an identity and variant of human diversity. Deficit models
of disability primarily focus on rehabilitation and cure of the body to alleviate
negative social, physical, and economic outcomes thought to be caused by
impairment. However, the social model of disability, which grew out of the dis-
ability rights movements of the 1960s and since, strongly critiques traditional
deficit model approaches to disability inquiry. This study draws on the social
model perspective first developed out of Great Britain that interprets impair-
ment as the physiological outcome, and disability as the social outcome, which
are culturally, historically, and geographically contextual (Shakespeare 2006).
Miles / “STRONG BLACK WOMEN” 45
This distinction is parallel to the assigned sex/gender distinction and the pheno-
type–race distinction made in feminist and critical race theories of power and
difference. Disability studies is an interdisciplinary field that examines how this
social construct is treated and interpreted in society as a minority identity, a
system of inequality, and a lived experience (Linton 1998; Siebers 2008;
Garland-Thomson 1997). It posits ability and disability as relational constructs
that are products of a system of oppression called ableism. Ableism, as a system
of beliefs and social practices, assigns value to humans based on embodied
characteristics associated with one’s actual or assumed ability (Linton 1998).
Feminist disability studies later emerged, critiquing the male-dominated
focus of the disability rights movement and the exclusion of women with dis-
abilities in the feminist movement. Informed by the lived experiences of
women with disabilities, feminist disability studies critically analyzes the
gendered aspects of disability, the relationality of ableism and misogyny, and
their implications for society (Fine and Asch 1985; Garland-Thomson 1997).
Feminist disability studies, however, is limited in its ability to inform any
analysis about the lives of African American women with disabilities because
it is a field dominated by white women, with and without disabilities, from
Western nations, who tend to exclude the lived experiences of women of color
with disabilities and remain largely disengaged with critical race theory.
Intersectional scholarship provides an entry point where the multiple
structures of identity and inequality affecting African American women
with disabilities can be better understood. Intersectionality is an analytical
framework that is specifically derived from the intellectual and activist
contributions of women of color; it analyzes, resists, and critiques multiple
systems of oppression in the United States. Intersectional scholarship’s pri-
mary focus traditionally has been on the examination of the complex rela-
tionships of race, class, gender, ethnicity, sexuality, and other dimensions of
difference. Founders of this scholarship critiqued the essentialist and iso-
lated approaches to the study of these areas of social difference. They also
challenged additive frameworks that suggested the accumulation of disad-
vantage or the primacy of one identity over another. Instead, intersectional-
ity argues that multiple axes of power and difference shape each other, and
that people with multiple subordinate identities experience oppression sin-
gularly and simultaneously, depending on the context (Collins 2000; Schulz
and Mullings 2006; Thornton Dill and Zambrana 2009).
Still, traditionally intersectional scholarship has not included disability
as one of its examined axes of domination. Perhaps the primacy of deficit
and medical models of disability in research have created barriers to
examining disability as an identity and socially constructed system
of power. While intersectional scholarship in the study of disability is
46 GENDER & SOCIETY/February 2019
growing, this literature is primarily located in special education, health
sciences, and rehabilitation fields (Balcazar et al. 2010; Conner 2008;
Schulz and Mullings 2006) and through literary, historical, and theoretical
approaches in the humanities (Bell 2011; Boster 2013; Logue and Blanck
2010; Pickens 2017; Schalk 2018). Arguably, special education has the
largest body of intersectional scholarship on disability. However, this
work is limited by its focus on children and young adults with learning
and behavioral disabilities. This study adds to the literature by highlight-
ing lived experiences of adults: African American women with physical
disabilities.
Feminist Intersectional Disability Framework
To address these gaps, for this study I draw from the previous frame-
works to utilize a feminist intersectional disability framework.
Intersectional research requires recognition of the distinct aspects of iden-
tity and systems of inequality, such as race, class, gender, and ability, and
how they mutually constitute one another. In this way, it demands of its
practitioners integrative thinking throughout theory development and
research production (Conner 2008; Schulz and Mullings 2006). Feminist
intersectional disability framework is grounded in the following assump-
tions: First, race, class, gender, and other markers of difference, and the
associated systems of oppression, collectively contribute to how disability
is acquired, experienced, and socially constructed. Second, the intersec-
tion of race, class, gender, and ability oppression contribute to disabled
women of color’s differential access to resources, opportunities, and treat-
ment in society. Third, disabled women of color experience marginaliza-
tion within dominant majority communities (i.e., white, able-bodied,
middle-class communities), as well as within their minority communities
(i.e., black, disabled, poor communities). Finally, ableism is commonly an
unaccounted predictor of structural inequality. Because many social prob-
lems examined by researchers exclude disability inquiry and its intersec-
tions, the conclusions developed to rectify these problems are often
incomplete and inadequate.
Thus, in applying a feminist intersectional disability analysis to the
housing experiences of African American women with physical disabili-
ties, this study examines how these women discuss their self-concept as
multiple minorities and its meaning for their lives. In addition, their inter-
views illustrate some of the ways that systems based on race, class, gen-
der, and ability interact to produce deleterious outcomes.
Miles / “STRONG BLACK WOMEN” 47
Methods
The major research question guiding the impetus for this study was,
“What are the barriers and facilitators to homeownership for African
American women with physical disabilities?” However, this article only
focuses on a portion of the study based on a subresearch question: “What is
the self-concept of participants in a study on the barriers and facilitators to
homeownership for African American women with physical disabilities?”
The results shared in this article are based on the participant responses to the
follow-up interview portion of the larger mixed methods study, and the quan-
titative sample description is based on the self-administered questionnaire.
To examine the major research question, the study used a two-phase
exploratory mixed-methods design. A detailed self-administered question-
naire was distributed in phase one to capture demographic markers. Phase two
included qualitative, in-depth follow-up interviews to capture participants’
attitudes towards homeownership and housing experiences. A mixed quantita-
tive and qualitative research approach was chosen to allow for an examination
of the research question by collecting and analyzing multiple forms of data to
compare and validate results from different perspectives (Creswell and Plano
Clark 2007). It also enabled the African American women participants with
disabilities (n=32) to share perspectives about the barriers and facilitators to
homeownership by using different mediums (i.e., questionnaire and inter-
view). This strategy was especially useful for people with disabilities, some
of whom may not have been able to express themselves as well verbally as
through written text, or vice versa. The qualitative data analysis procedures
utilized a grounded theory approach. Grounded theory is a set of systematic
research procedures used to develop theory directly out of the analysis of
qualitative data (Charmaz 2006; Corbin and Straus 2008).
Data collection began in August 2011 and ended in February 2013. Phase
one included the collection and analysis of quantitative data through the dis-
tribution of a self-administered questionnaire. This self-administered ques-
tionnaire was a 58-item cross-sectional survey; it included data collection
from participants about social characteristics (i.e., age, race, education, gender
identity, marital and parental status); economic information (i.e., employment,
income, debt, housing, transportation, and health-related costs); and health
characteristics (i.e., physical disability, functional limitations, and emotional
well-being). Participants were recruited for phase one through a purposive
sampling technique that included both homeowners and nonhomeowners
who were African American women with physical disabilities from Maryland,
Washington, DC, Pennsylvania, or Virginia (the mid-Atlantic region).
Disability rights organizations, disability-related service providers, local
48 GENDER & SOCIETY/February 2019
disability advocacy communities, and personal networks were contacted to
help identify participants who met the following selection criteria: African
American women, ages 25-55, and living in the mid-Atlantic region. Once
identified, potential participants received a cover letter explaining the study,
an Institutional Review Board consent form, and the self-administered ques-
tionnaire. Forty-two people were recruited to participate using these methods
in phase one of the study. Thirty-two questionnaires were returned during this
time, resulting in a total phase one response rate of 76 percent.
Phase two in-depth interviews of participants were drawn from a sub-
sample of 30 of the 32 participants who also completed the self-adminis-
tered questionnaire. The subsample included all eight homeowners and 22
nonhomeowners. Follow-up interview participants were recruited through
an item at the end of the self-administered questionnaire asking for a fol-
low-up interview. As a thank you, questionnaire participants were entered
into a raffle for a gift card. In addition, each follow-up interview partici-
pant received a $10 gift card.
The semi-structured interview posed a series of 28 open-ended interview
questions. The questions focused on participants’ past and current housing
experiences, attitudes and desires towards homeownership, perceived ability
to own a home, knowledge about homeownership, housing goals, and how
these relate to their race, class, gender and other identities. The interviews
were used to enhance and extend the meaning of the quantitative findings by
providing experiential details about individual participants, expressed both in
their own words and systematically organized by themes within the data using
a grounded theory analysis of transcripts (Charmaz 2006; Corbin and Straus
2008). I conducted thematic coding of the data; the first round was grounded
coding, based on themes informed by the literature and guided by the results
of a 2008 pilot study of the housing experiences of three African American
women nonhomeowners with physical disabilities. Self-concept was among
the themes generated during the pilot study. This theme emerged out of
analysis of the responses participants shared when asked about their past and
present housing history and related experiences. While the theme of self-
concept was articulated in multiple ways throughout most of the 30 inter-
views, this article focuses on the experiences of a small portion of participants
to provide detailed examples of how the subtheme of care work and its rela-
tionship to the Strong Black Woman schema was expressed throughout the
study.
Because participants took part in a study about homeownership, they
may have had certain personal characteristics and topics in mind before
the survey and interview phase of the study. For instance, this study’s
focus on homeownership attracted participants with higher educational
Miles / “STRONG BLACK WOMEN” 49
Table 1: Social Characteristics of Sample
Total Total % of Homeowners Nonhomeowners
Characteristic (n=32) Cases (n=8) (n=24)
Age
Mean 37.8 – 46 35
Range 25-58 – 37-58 25-55
Physical disability
Cerebral palsy 12 37.5 2 10
Muscular dystrophy 5 15.6 0 5
Multiple sclerosis 3 9.3 2 1
Spina bifida 2 6.2 1 1
Spinal cord injury 6 18.7 2 4
Other 4 12.5 1 3
Disability onset
At birth (yes only) 18 56.0 3 15
Birth to 3 21 65.0 4 17
4 to 18 2 6.0 1 1
19 to 30 5 15.0 1 4
31+ 4 12.0 2 2
At birth (yes only) 18 56.0 3 15
Employment
Part-time 6 18.7 1 5
Full-time 13 40.6 5 8
Unemployed 12 37.5 1 11
Other: retired 1 3.1 1 0
Education level
Less than high school 1 3.1 0 1
High school 3 9.4 0 3
Some college 11 34.4 2 9
College degree 10 31.2 3 7
Graduate degree 7 21.9 3 4
Marital status
Never married 17 53.1 3 14
Married 9 28.1 1 5
Separated 3 9.4 1 2
Divorced 4 12.5 2 2
Widowed 1 3.1 1 0
Other: single 1 3.1 0 1
Has children 12 37.5 3 9
attainment and employment rates than people with disabilities in the gen-
eral population (see Table 1). Hence, most participants had characteristics
associated with the Strong Black Woman trope. Topics related to
50 GENDER & SOCIETY/February 2019
housing—such as independence, economics, care taking, and personal
relationships—also may have been prompted in the interviews by the
phase one questionnaire, influencing the context in which they discussed
issues related to their self-concepts. The majority of participants also had
early-onset disabilities (see Table 1). This may have impacted their self-
concept, especially as it relates to how they identify with and interpret
their disabilities. Pseudonyms were assigned to protect the privacy of the
interviewees. Finally, because the author of this study is also an African
American woman with an apparent physical disability, participants often
expressed an identification with the researcher and a vested interest in the
success of the study.
Care Work And African American Women With
Disabilities
These African American women with disabilities internalized, resisted,
and negotiated multiple intersecting structural and attitudinal barriers and
expectations related to care work as part of their self-concept. Participants
described some of the constraints they encountered in participating in care
work as African American women with disabilities, and the ways in which
those constraints impacted how they understood themselves and their posi-
tion in society. I define “care work” as participating in the social, emo-
tional, intellectual, and physical labor associated with identifying,
requesting, denying, and managing the people, services, and resources that
enable individuals to advance and maintain their health, well-being, and
overall way of life. This care work includes participating in labor associ-
ated with providing and receiving care not only for self but also for others.
The participants’ experiences suggest that the intersectional barriers asso-
ciated with the care work these women confront require them to exemplify
Strong Black Woman characteristics (i.e., resilience, independence, sacri-
fice, endurance, etc.) because of having to go beyond what is generally
required of more privileged others to access equitable resources, opportu-
nities, and treatment. In this way, the Strong Black Woman trope has a
material reality that is perpetuated not only through Black cultural expecta-
tions, but also through institutional structures that affect one’s access to
resources and life chances. While most of the interviews discussed self-
concept, the stories highlighted here best exemplify the theme of how self-
concept was expressed in relationship to care throughout the study.
The participants juggled multiple responsibilities related to care for self
and others. Their relationship to care work was both a contributor to and
Miles / “STRONG BLACK WOMEN” 51
outcome of their self-concept. For instance, Monica, a homeowner with
arthritis, lymphedema, and a heart condition, described herself as some-
one who had based her self-concept on her ability to help others and be
financially and socially independent throughout her life. Becoming a
homeowner was among the achievements in her life in which she took
great pride. However, in addition to having childhood-onset arthritis, she
also was diagnosed with lymphedema and a heart condition three years
prior to this study. During her interview, she suggested that she struggled
with coping with her new limitations and accepting help from others at
work or at home, both places that had become increasingly less accessible
to her. For example, when asked why she resisted asking family or friends
for assistance with minor chores and maintenance she had difficulty
completing around the house, she responded:
I like helping other people physically, spiritually, and financially. And so,
you know, I like being able to pay people to do things for me. You know?
I’m not a person that always has to have something done for you for free.
I would love to have the money so that anytime anything was broken in my
home I could have it fixed.
While Monica took pride in her ability to provide care, she resisted
receiving the same type of assistance from others without compensating
them. Instead, Monica emphasized throughout her interview that she
feared becoming a burden on the ones she loved, and she expressed that
feelings of shame and embarrassment often prevented her from requesting
help from others. This interpretation of her disability affected her personal
relationships and ability to advocate for herself at home and work. For
example, she had not requested work accommodations that she believed
could help alleviate some of her physical pain and work stress because she
feared that her coworkers and employer would then view her as a less
productive and less valuable employee. However, in reflecting during the
interview upon her patterns of resistance to requesting help, she suggested
that this was an attitude that she may need to change. She said, “[I]n talk-
ing to you and actually talking to a few friends lately, I do think I need to
become more open to let people come in and help me . . . Even though
you try to portray yourself as a strong person, sometimes you do have lit-
tle insecurities that you suppress.” Monica’s interview suggests that she
associated strength with not needing or requesting care while simultane-
ously being freely available and able to provide care to others. Like
Monica, other participants shared moments where they had to discern
when they believed it was in their best interests to request, receive, and
52 GENDER & SOCIETY/February 2019
refuse care, and how to manage the care and help they did receive.
After receiving personal care assistance from her grandmother most of
her life, Mary, a homeowner with a spinal cord injury, became aware in
her adulthood that she could be eligible for personal care assistant services
funded through the state and her medical insurance and decided to apply.
After applying for these services, she waited quite some time to find out
if her requests for supports were approved, only to learn that her grand-
mother had been intercepting her phone calls:
I didn’t know my grandma was sabotaging the phone calls. ’Cause I was
calling every day; ’cause there wasn’t nobody callin’ me back. And then I
finally got a call, and she was tellin’ me how she’d been callin’ me, but my
grandma been tellin’ her, “We ain’t need no services, I take care of her very
well!”
Mary’s grandmother was initially very resistant to Mary accepting
personal care assistance from anyone other than herself. Mary argued
that her grandmother initially interpreted her attempts to gain independ-
ence as a personal attack on the quality of care she provided. She did not
trust others to provide Mary the same level of care, believing strongly
that her care could only be provided by trusted loved ones. Mary further
argued:
[B]elieve it or not, the people that take care of you, especially if they a
relative, like, they got a system. That’s something they had to do, so they
more dependent on us than we are on them! ’Cause she upset if she can’t
do something for me. And if I go out, she stay up until I get there. And I
know that’s a mom thing, but, it’s like, they get so used to doin’ it. And then
if you try to get your freedom and independence a little bit, they lookin’
like, “Well what’s gonna happen to me if you go?” . . . I’m like, “You’re
supposed to have your own identity.” . . . I told her I can’t be responsible
for that, ’cause everybody in charge for themselves.
Although Mary’s grandmother was initially resistant to her receiving
outside care, after Mary applied for and received funding, for the first time
her grandmother began receiving financial compensation for the personal
care she had been providing Mary for most of her life. In addition, Mary
was able to hire a close friend to assist her more regularly, relieving her
grandmother of the workload.
Indeed, the women interviewed frequently argued that the cost of
managing care for self and others was a major barrier to their ability to
own a home. Carol, a nonhomeowner with muscular dystrophy, spe-
cifically highlighted the intersecting barriers to economic advancement
Miles / “STRONG BLACK WOMEN” 53
she believed she confronted as an African American woman with a
disability:
I’m not, as a female, as an African American, making as much money as
my white male counterpart. Even still, disability-wise, I think—and when
it comes to things like care, those are things that—they are extra expenses
that I have to pay for. So even something as simple as my shower chair or
showerhead or Depends underwear or anything like that, that are extra
expenses of a disability, they’re still extra expenses . . . and then paying a
caregiver out of my pocket; those are all things that are taking my money
in other ways. So that makes it less available for things like, you know,
paying a mortgage.
Camille, a nonhomeowner with cerebral palsy and low vision, also
argued that she had fewer opportunities for economic advancement as an
African American woman with a disability. Camille is a retired worker
from a government agency whose mission is to advance the full inclusion
of people with disabilities through employment, education, and independ-
ent living. As such, there were many people who identified as having a
disability who worked in Camille’s office. Nevertheless, Camille argued
that she observed significant race-, gender-, and disability-related differ-
ences in the way employee positions were organized and advanced in her
department:
The white women that I’ve known on the job with disabilities have a much
easier time accessing housing, employment in general. They have higher
incomes. . . . African American women with disabilities on the job—we
sometimes felt we were way at the bottom of the totem—of the pole—way
at the bottom because you’re black, you’re female, you have a disability.
So, everybody was on top of you. That’s the way it pretty much worked;
you weren’t able to get promoted. The African American women without
disabilities were promoted before you, even if you went back to school and
got a degree. They were promoted before you. Then, the women that were
non–African American—not just Caucasian—any ethnicity that was not
African American—were promoted before you. So, it got to be kind of
discouraging for a lot of women. They would just leave the job, and go out
on disability.
According to Camille, her African American women coworkers with
disabilities tended to be in low-level positions with little chance of career
advancement. Despite being employed, they still struggled to pay their
bills because of the added disability-related costs they experienced. Yet,
they were not qualified to benefit from government assistance such as
54 GENDER & SOCIETY/February 2019
food stamps or Medicaid because of their employment earnings. With no
perceived job advancement opportunities, some choose to leave work and
go back on government assistance where they could cover their medical
bills and have rent control. Throughout the study, the most frequently
stated barrier to homeownership that participants gave was economics.
Without economic parity, African American women with disabilities are
less able to do the care work they need to maintain their way of life and
fully participate in society.
In addition to tending to have to manage the cost and logistics of their
care with fewer economic resources, multiple participants had children or
other loved ones that they provided care for. These participants frequently
discussed the structural and attitudinal barriers they confronted in being
acknowledged and respected as not only receivers but also providers of
care. These barriers hindered their access to the resources and opportuni-
ties that would enable them to receive and provide the best care.
In addition to being a retired government worker, Camille was also a
mother of two adult children, including an 18-year-old daughter with
mental health disabilities who had just started college, and her oldest, a
son who had been incarcerated multiple times in the past for drug dealing
and was a recovering drug and alcohol addict. As a consequence of her
son’s difficulties, Camille also had custody of his 11-year-old daughter,
whom she had been raising since she was two years old. At the time of the
study, Camille was also in love and busy managing the medical care of her
fiancé, who had multiple disabilities and was in the hospital. Despite the
multiple ways in which Camille successfully provided care to her loved
ones, she argued that her competence and ability to take care of herself
and others was constantly questioned by service providers and others in
her community. When discussing her experience with assisting with the
management of her fiancé’s care, she shared:
My fiancé’s been in the hospital for a while, so I’ve just spent a lot of time
running back and forth trying to deal with the physicians with him, and
that’s difficult because they see a wheelchair and they assume ignorance . .
. what gets me is the prevailing feeling that people with disabilities are not
cognizant, they don’t know anything, and “What can you do?” You don’t
talk to them, you talk over them. In fact, I went once when he was in one
nursing home with my granddaughter. They were talking to my grand-
daughter, and I said, “Why are you talking to her?”
When managing care, services or business of any kind, participants
frequently shared that that they confronted a pervasive attitude from oth-
ers that they did not belong, were not competent, and that their presence
Miles / “STRONG BLACK WOMEN” 55
and contributions were consistently unacknowledged and/or treated as
inconsequential. When discussing the barriers to getting the social ser-
vices, care, and supports African American women with disabilities need,
Mary exclaimed, “Being disabled, you got to fight harder. ’Cause you’re
female, I’m thinking matters what color and you’re disabled, so you got
to go that extra mile for them to even pay attention to you.” Jessica, a
homeowner with multiple sclerosis similarly discussed having to confront
assumptions that she was incompetent in the context of advocating for the
modifications she needed in her home and negotiating the terms for clos-
ing the purchase of her condo. However, she attributed the attitudinal
barriers she faced in this process to her race and gender. She said:
It’s always the perception, in my opinion, that as African American female,
I’m not knowledgeable. So I play along . . . because it typically works in
my favor . . . They think I don’t know. I let them think I don’t know.
Jessica argued that she was able to use to her advantage the low expec-
tations of the lawyers, realtors, and contractors she interacted with in the
building and around the purchasing of her condo. Because they were
underprepared for how knowledgeable she was about the home purchas-
ing process, and the American with Disabilities Act (ADA) regulations for
builders, she strategically used their ignorance as leverage during price
and construction negotiations.
Multiple participants expressed concern that assumptions about their
capabilities to care for and/or worthiness to have access to the housing they
desired may lead to discrimination against them. Tameeka, who was born
with arthrogryposis and lived in an apartment of her own with her son,
explained, “Most people, when they see me by myself, they probably think
that I couldn’t keep up a house and keep it clean, keep it modified to my
needs, or to their expectations.” African American women with disabilities
have to contend with racial, gendered, and ability biases that may deter
people from renting or selling a home to them. These intersecting biases
include a lack of acknowledgment that African American women with dis-
abilities can and do care for themselves and others and that the care they
provide is laborious and valuable. Furthermore, intersecting biases con-
struct African American women with disabilities as unfit, inadequate, devi-
ant, and otherwise undesirable and incapable providers, managers, and
receivers of care. These biases also impact the policies and practices of the
institutions that serve them and the resources that they are able to access.
When Donna, a nonhomeowner with cerebral palsy learned that her daugh-
ter’s kindergarten class was assigned to a third floor classroom in a
56 GENDER & SOCIETY/February 2019
building with no elevator, she experienced significant resistance from
school administrators to her request for accommodation. However, because
of Donna’s persistent advocacy on behalf of herself and her daughter, her
daughter’s class was eventually moved to the first floor. She explained:
I want to see her teacher; want to see her classroom. So on the first floor . . .
that’s where they do have accessible things. So I just roll up there and drop
her off or pick her up from her class and see how she’s doing, see how she
interacts with the other kids and that’s it.
The interviewees confronted intersecting systemic burdens and social
cultural expectations that produced a heavier demand for them to care for
themselves and others. They managed these multiple and competing tasks
with typically fewer resources and less acknowledgment of their needs
and labor compared to their more privileged counterparts. The ability to
discern when it is in one’s best interests to ask for assistance and care, and
to advocate for the right to give and receive care, are skills that partici-
pants displayed various degrees of mastery regardless of homeownership
status. However, homeowners especially suggested that they had to dis-
play a command for these skills in the context of gaining and maintaining
an owned home. Having a command for assessing their needs, and the
ability to identify the people, resources, and networks that can help meet
them, was shown to be a strong facilitator of homeownership.
Do african american women with disabilities
“care”?
One of the primary characteristics of the Strong Black Woman schema
is being a caregiver. Most participants shared multiple ways in which they
managed and negotiated their care, and many shared multiple ways in
which they were caregivers. This care work was a primary aspect of their
self-concepts. Despite this reality, they described encountering a society
that does not acknowledge or accommodate the ways they received, pro-
vided, and managed care. This lack of recognition and accommodation
created greater social and structural barriers for them. Feminists have suc-
cessfully brought to light the many ways in which women’s labor is not
valued as much as men’s or even recognized as work (Kemp 1994).
Similarly, the intensive labor often involved in people with disabilities
receiving and/or managing care, and the ways in which the care received
is an interdependent process, tends to go unrecognized. These excerpts
Miles / “STRONG BLACK WOMEN” 57
highlight that for African American women with disabilities, this is also a
racialized, classed, and gendered experience, with social and material
consequences.
Monica’s interpretation of her disability and its meaning for her life
threatened her self-concept. It led her to question if others would perceive
her as a competent, valuable, and desirable employee and individual. This
internalization led her to resist assistance and support from others in ways
that she described made her daily life more difficult to manage at home, at
work and in her community. Given the strong messages of worthiness
being connected to labor, it is not surprising that Monica would interpret
her disability as making her a less desirable employee and person in soci-
ety. The high unemployment rate of people with disabilities alone suggests
that her fears were not unfounded. Still, her story suggests that she inter-
preted her disability as a limitation that interfered with her ability to perform
in ways consistent with her ideal—someone who is strong, physically and
economically independent, hardworking, and helpful to others. These char-
acteristics are associated with the Strong Black Woman ideal. As can be
understood from the Strong Black Woman trope, associating strength with
not needing or requesting help can be detrimental to one’s well-being. For
African American women with disabilities, it may be especially damaging
because of the social, economic, and health disparities they are more likely
to experience. The consequences of the type of internalized ableism, rac-
ism, and sexism that Monica described can be loss of work or home, exac-
erbation of illness and/or impairment, and isolation. Internalized oppression
is more than a bad or negative “feeling” about oneself or one’s identity, but
it has social and material consequences for the people affected by it
because it also affects the decisions people make.
Mary’s experience with her grandmother highlights the multiple com-
plexities and interdependent nature of the relationship between people
with disabilities and their caregivers, especially when a caregiver is a
family member. Caregivers can be both an asset and hindrance to people
with disabilities asserting their autonomy, and to the type of care they
would like to receive. However, Mary resisted internalizing her grand-
mother’s desires and expectations for her care. Instead, Mary argued that
her grandmother also depended on her for her identity and sense of pur-
pose in ways that also resemble the Strong Black Woman schema. As
previously discussed, Strong Black Women are revered for being caregiv-
ers or accomplishing in other ways while enduring great difficulties.
While this identity is developed to help cope with scarce and inequitable
resources, it also becomes a barrier when resources do become available
58 GENDER & SOCIETY/February 2019
and fear and mistrust of systems that have historically failed marginalized
people drive present decision making. Persistent and repeated experiences
of oppression can lead to identifying with struggle in such a way that once
relief becomes available, it is not recognizable or desirable for fear it will
change or threaten one’s current way of life, however difficult. While
Mary’s grandmother was likely participating in protective practices that
African Americans have unfortunately found necessary in a racist world,
she also was participating in ableist practices by not informing Mary of
the phone calls and making decisions for Mary without her input or con-
sent. Mary suggested that her grandmother’s self-concept as caregiver
was threatened when Mary worked to gain more independence. After all,
how could she be a Strong Black Woman without someone to rescue and
care for? Although Mary’s grandmother may not have viewed her as com-
petent enough to decide the type of care she wanted, Mary’s persistence
to follow through with the application for services despite her grand-
mother’s opposition suggests that she perceived herself as capable of
making the best decision for her life.
In addition to experiencing constraints from caregivers to accessing the
type of care they need and desire, the women in this study experienced
significant financial constraints to funding that care. Carol stressed the
ways in which African American women with disabilities confront multi-
ple axis of wage inequality based on race, gender, and disability, while
simultaneously experiencing higher economic cost. Similarly, Camille
clearly delineated that she observed that others had social and economic
advantages over African American women with disabilities in her work-
place based on their race, class, gender and ability privilege. Camille’s
interview also reveals the ways in which the presence of a disability does
not absolve African American women with disabilities from being
impacted by the same social problems affecting the rest of the African
American community, such as the prison industrial complex. In this way,
participants consistently demonstrated that, compared to their counter-
parts, African American women with disabilities tend to have greater need
and demand to manage and provide care for self and others, with fewer
resources, accommodations, or acknowledgment of their needs and capa-
bilities. These disparities, as Carol and Camille pointed out, reduce access
to housing, homeownership, and other resources and create barriers to
care work.
Camille, Jessica, Tameeka, and Donna’s excerpts demonstrate how
institutions and their policies reflect attitudinal biases about African
American women with disabilities’ capabilities and worthiness for access
Miles / “STRONG BLACK WOMEN” 59
to resources and opportunities. Medical, housing, and educational policies
are constructed to meet the needs and expectations of dominant groups.
They were created in a context that assumes male, white, able-bodied,
heterosexual, cisgender competence and marginalizes the existence of
others. When this happens, other perspectives and bodies are literally left
outside of institutions and unable to enter, such as the case with Donna
and her daughter’s inaccessible public school. Or they may be left com-
pletely ignored and excluded, such as with Camille’s experience with
medical providers. Or they may be underestimated, such as with Jessica
and Tameeka.
Despite these constraints, most participants demonstrated a certain
amount of self-efficacy, self-awareness, and confidence, which may not
have always reduced but at least helped them manage the inequities they
encountered. Because the participants were recruited through a snowball
sample of members associated with disability rights and advocacy organ-
izations, they were more likely to have been exposed to disability and
civil rights empowerment principles and connected to other disabled com-
munities of color. Their proximity to other African American women with
disabilities may have enabled them to identify how multiple and intersec-
tional areas of marginalization impact their life. Having access to this
community can help reveal common experiences and social patterns
associated with their identities which are harder to identify in isolation. In
this way, issues that might otherwise be ascribed solely to the individual
can be understood as larger social problems.
However, most people with disabilities do not identify with other peo-
ple with disabilities as a social political group or minority identity (Linton
1998) and African Americans even less so (Bell 2011). Thus, one of the
primary barriers to integrating a positive self-concept is the limited access
to other African American women with disabilities in contexts that pro-
vide opportunities to learn from shared experiences. It is not enough to be
near other African American women with disabilities, as may be the case
in a nursing home serving predominately African American women.
Purposeful opportunities created for community building, empowerment,
affirmation, and exchange are important for marginalized people because
these can enable the sharing of resources, coping strategies, and collective
resistance to oppressive systems and ideologies.
Unfortunately, however, African American women with disabilities are
underrepresented and/or misrepresented in research and in U.S. culture, and
this creates barriers for them to identify shared interests and develop com-
munity. Lack of representation or community leads to experiencing oppres-
60 GENDER & SOCIETY/February 2019
sion in isolation and enables the internalization of oppression, just as
Monica’s experience suggests. Imani, a homeowner with cerebral palsy,
argued, “More white women with disabilities are, uh, they get more atten-
tion than we do . . . when they put a face on a disability it’s typically not a
black face, it’s typically a white one.” When asked how she thought this
exclusion affected African American women with disabilities, she responded,
Adversely, because we don’t get as much help. What’s that saying? . . . The
squeaky . . . wheel gets the oil, gets the grease? If you don’t know we exist
and you don’t know what it is we need, how can you help us?
This study demonstrates the ways African American women with disa-
bilities exhibit and identify with Strong Black Women characteristics of
resilience, independence, sacrifice, endurance and more. It shows how
characteristics and social expectations associated with the Strong Black
Woman schema can be both an asset and hindrance to their empowerment.
It demonstrates how even when African American women with disabilities
perceive themselves as capable of managing, providing, and receiving
care, they constantly confront a society that does not view them the same.
This lack of recognition and accommodation creates greater social and
structural barriers for them to confront. Hence, the Strong Black Woman
ideal and expectation had cultural and material relevance for how partici-
pants interpreted themselves, were perceived by others, and accessed
resources. In addition, exploring how African American women with dis-
abilities experience the Strong Black Women schema makes evident that it
is embedded in an ableist ideology that values independence over interde-
pendence, and caregiving over self-care, and includes a narrow conception
of strength and resilience that devalues and pathologizes those who are
perceived as weak (i.e., African American women with disabilities). Not
only are ableist structures not conducive to people with disabilities, but
they tend to exacerbate and/or produce impairment. It is not surprising then
that research is increasingly linking the Strong Black Women schema to
health disparities for African American women (Woods-Giscombe 2010).
More research is needed to learn about the social construction of disa-
bility in the African American community, especially as it relates to gen-
der, care work, and women with disabilities. Through using a feminist
intersectional disability framework, this study offers a model for how to
explore these intersections. African American women with disabilities’
self-concept and relationships to their stigma management strategies,
access to resources, and integration in society also need to be further
explored. While participants expressed that housing and ability to live
Miles / “STRONG BLACK WOMEN” 61
independently affected their self-concepts, the material reality of owning
or not owning a home did not reveal significant differences between
homeowners and nonhomeowners. Rather, it was through conversations
about homeownership that this data around self-concept was revealed.
The fields that have the most advanced theoretical and methodological
tools to further speak to the positionalities of African American women
with disabilities, that is, women’s studies, disability studies, African
American studies, and other areas in the social sciences and humanities,
have failed to significantly recognize the need for inquiry about their
lives. As suggested by Balcazar et al. (2010), the dominance of medical,
rehabilitation, and other deficit models of disability, the limited acknowl-
edgment of disability as a social, political, and minority identity, and the
large absence of minorities with disabilities as researchers and scholars,
are likely primary barriers to this subject of inquiry. This article intends to
help spark the interests of future studies to come. It is clear that the par-
ticular configuration of ableism, white supremacy, and misogyny in soci-
ety has created barriers to inquiring about certain marginalized bodies.
These structures of power render African American women with disabili-
ties as unknowable and unrecognized as a marginalized group worthy of
exploration. One must wonder, who else is our scholarship and activism
forgetting or ignoring? More importantly, what will we do about it?
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Angel Love Miles’ scholarship and advocacy focuses on the intersections of race,
class, gender and ability, especially as they pertain to disparate social, health and
economic outcomes for women and minorities with disabilities. She completed this
article during her Postdoctoral Fellowship in Translational and Community-
Engaged Scholarship to Improve Community Living and Participation of People
with Disabilities at the University of Illinois at Chicago, Department of Disability
and Human Development and Department of Occupational Therapy. She is cur-
rently working on multiple collaborative projects as a healthcare/home and commu-
nity-based services policy analyst at Access Living of Metropolitan Chicago, an
independent living and cross disability rights nonprofit organization.
