Racial Battle Fatigue

The Experiences of Black/African American, Biracial Black, and Multiracial Black Identified Graduate Students

Ragland Woods, Catherine C.
Chronister, Krista M.
Perez Grabow, Aleksandria
Woods, William E.
Woodlee, Kyndl

¹West Los Angeles VA Medical Center, Los Angeles, CA, USA
²University of Oregon, Eugene, OR, USA
³California State University San Marcos, San Marcos, CA, USA
⁴University of Nevada, Las Vegas, NV, USA

Catherine C. Ragland Woods, Psychology Department (116B), West Lost Angeles VA Medical Center, 11301 Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90073, USA. Email: [email protected]

Journal of Black Psychology 47(4-5):p 219-243, May-July 2021. | DOI: 10.1177/00957984211002615

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.