Black Women’s Critical and Racial Literacy Practices in Higher Education

The problem addressed through this study was the limited understanding of how Black female college students experienced critical and racial literacy practices within college-level reading and writing courses, particularly within dominant literacy frameworks that privileged White, Eurocentric norms of language, knowledge, expression, and representation. Grounded in Luke’s critical literacy and Sealey-Ruiz’s racial literacy frameworks, the purpose of this qualitative study was to examine how Black female college students described their experiences in reading and writing courses, including how dominant literacy frameworks influenced their engagement in ways that limited expression, created barriers to participation, and shaped their academic experiences and personal relationships to literacy. Using a basic qualitative design, semistructured interviews were conducted with 10 Black female students at accredited colleges. Data were analyzed using thematic analysis, yielding several themes, including cultural marginalization, intersectionality, and specific literacy practices, with critical and racial literacy serving as guiding conceptual frameworks. Findings indicated that participants experienced systemic issues, including linguistic racism, curricular exclusion, and restrictive norms of academic expression. Participants shared that their personal literacies served as sites for agency, identity formation, and resistance, which highlighted the need for inclusive and culturally responsive pedagogies that validate their linguistic and cultural knowledge. These findings may promote positive social change by encouraging educational practices that center marginalized voices, acknowledges students as co-collaborators in developing practices that address their experiences, and supports successful learning across many different contexts and disciplines.