Broadway Goes to War

The American theater was not ignorant of the developments brought on by World War II, and actively addressed and debated timely, controversial topics for the duration of the war, including neutrality and isolationism, racism and genocide, and heroism and battle fatigue. Productions such as Watch on the Rhine (1941), The Moon is Down (1942), Tomorrow the World (1943), and A Bell for Adano (1944) encouraged public discussion of the war's impact on daily life and raised critical questions about the conflict well before other forms of popular media. American drama of the 1940s is frequently overlooked, but the plays performed during this eventful decade provide a picture of the rich and complex experience of living in the United States during the war years. McLaughlin and Parry's work fills a significant gap in the history of theater and popular culture, showing that American society was more divided and less idealistic than the received histories of the WWII home front and the entertainment industry recognize.

Racial Battle Fatigue: The Experiences of Black/African American, Biracial Black, and Multiracial Black Identified Graduate Students

Black students attending historically White institutions of higher education experience racism, racial microaggressions, racial stress, and consequent racial battle fatigue (RBF; Franklin et al., 2014). We examined Black counseling and clinical graduate students’ (BGS) experiences of psychological, physiological, and behavioral RBF across their roles as students in class, advisees, and supervisees and differences in RBF experiences by gender and race. Participants were 57 counseling and clinical graduate students who identified as Monoracial, Biracial, or Multiracial Black. One-way, repeated measures analysis of variance results showed that BGS experienced the highest levels of RBF in their student-in-class role, and those experiences differed for women and men. Results suggest that the RBF framework has utility for measuring and further understanding how BGS’ student role and learning contexts influence their postsecondary experiences and how institutions can develop better supports for this student population.

Paying Professional Taxes for Promotion and Tenure: The Costs of Justice Work for Black Faculty

This article examines the costs faculty pay to gain status and security in the academy. Academics receive salaries for their work, but also “pay taxes” in order to maintain a positive trajectory toward the ultimate “prize”—promotion and tenure (PT). The psychology of narrative method is used to examine the articulation of the PT process for two Black faculty in educational leadership. Findings offer that the taxes assessed are: credibility tax, leading edge tax, group status tax, and retaliation tax. Narratives culminate in a discussion of the academic labor costs and racial battle fatigue of justice work for Black faculty.

Racial Inclusion and Justice at Catholic Colleges and Universities: From Tokenism to Participation

The chapter considers various elements of the discussion concerning racial equity and inclusion on college campuses today. It presents some statistics showing persistence of racism on college campuses today, higher education’s historical ties to slavery and white supremacy, the prevalence of micro-aggressions and racial battle fatigue, and some recent resistance to diversity and inclusivity on Catholic campuses. The author argues that Catholic social teaching requires moving beyond tokenism to promoting the equality and right to participation of people of color in all facets of campus life and offers some practical suggestions for achieving this goal. As in the case of U.S. higher education as a whole, some progress has been made at Catholic colleges and universities to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion of racially minoritized students, faculty, and staff. However, the author contends much work remains to be done.

Racial Battle Fatigue and Mental Health in Black Men

The experiences of Black men in the United States are significantly different from men of other racial and ethnic backgrounds. Black men have to deal with racism on a daily basis. Understanding of the effects of daily racism and its implications is limited. Racial battle fatigue is a relatively new concept in the field of mental health. The current chapter discusses the concept of racial battle fatigue and its effects on Black men. The authors discuss both the physical and psychological effects of daily racism on the health of Black men.

The Emergence of Racialized Labor and Racial Battle Fatigue in the African American Student Network (AFAM)

Although little may be new with respect to the lived experience of racialized labor for People of Color navigating whiteness and white spaces, this study is the first to identify racialized labor in everyday life. Adapting consensual qualitative research methods to a phenomenological frame, we examined 277 notes summarizing weekly discussions in the African American Student Network (AFAM) over a 13-year time period. Co-facilitated by Black faculty and graduate students, AFAM was a space for Black undergraduates to make meaning of their experiences and find community on campus. We defined racialized labor as the ongoing process of navigating hostile environments steeped in a white racial frame and identified six categories: (1) self-monitoring/self-policing; (2) flexing/making adjustments; (3) questioning; (4) affirming; (5) avoiding; and, (6) being the change or standing up for justice. Racial battle fatigue was one outcome of all the racialized labor—primarily anger, stress, frustration, hypervigilance, pressure, and exhaustion along with numbness, shock, sadness and disappointment. Both racialized labor and racial battle fatigue also occurred at the intersections of students’ lives in structural, political, and representational ways. Future studies that capture the ways in which racialized labor in everyday life is enacted by People of Color are needed. The ability to name racialized labor provides an important analytical tool for distinguishing the ongoing process of navigating racism from negative consequences such as racial battle fatigue. This line of research also has implications for creating spaces that facilitate racialized labor and wellbeing for Black people and People of Color.