Print

Intersectionality in Therapy for African American and Black Women 9 Ability Broadly, disabilities may be physical, learning oriented, or psychiat- ric, and visible or hidden. According to DuMonthier, Childers, and Milli (2017), Black women are the second-largest group of women reporting disabilities. Black women experience many consequences due to dis- ability. Consequences may include additional discrimination due to dis- ability, earning less money than Black women without a disability, and physical and mental consequences such as drug-related symptoms (Perry, Harp, & Oser, 2013 Stuart, 1992). A lesser acknowledged contribution to Black women’s perceptions of ability are the subtle distinctions between weakness and strength preva- lent among Black women (Hobson, 2019). Black women with disabilities may be perceived as incapable due to their inabilities to endorse or main- tain stereotypical abilities. Disability is often stigmatized and hidden, resulting in further erasure of Black women. Size Sizeism, or weightism, refers to discrimination based on a person’s size or weight. Sizeism is an understudied area among Black women (Smith, 2019). This form of oppression may be understudied for two reasons. First, the current literature on Black women and body size is on Black women’s comparison to other racial/ethnic groups of women. This pattern in the literature may mask curvy Black women’s experi- ences of size discrimination and separate Black women from sociocul- tural factors related to body image (Watson, Lewis, & Moody, 2019). Alternatively, sizeism may be understudied due to greater social accep- tance of higher body weight and body satisfaction among Black women (Watson, Lewis, & Moody, 2019). Still, the disproportionate prevalence of obesity among Black women (Marinos et al., 2017) may result in fat stigma and prejudice. Taken together, various aspects of Black women’s identities, starting with race and gender, but including other potential marginalized identi- ties such as socioeconomic status, sexual identity, spirituality, age, ability, and size, must be considered throughout the therapy process. Therapists should understand the cumulative impact of the stress associated with each point of marginalization as they conceptualize the case and plan treatment. However, the intersection of both privileged and marginal- ized identities allows therapists to recognize what unearned benefits and resources some Black women may have access to based on the way their privileges operate in their specific contexts. Therapy attending to the strengths emerging from both marginalized and privileged identities, as well as the vulnerabilities, is better set up to affirm, heal, and empower Black women clients.