UI study analyzes ‘strong black women’ and friend groups

IOWA CITY - There is this notion of the 'strong black woman.”

She perseveres. She's invulnerable. She doesn't cry. And many of these women find their strength in numbers, said University of Iowa doctoral student Sharde Davis.

'When they come together, they regulate strength in each other,” Davis said. 'It allows them to help each other out, and it creates a safe place for them.”

But by regulating strength in each other, they perpetuate strength in each other. And Davis said that can be both good and harmful in that strong black women feel they can't emote.

'Which is physically and psychologically damaging,” she said. 'Strength is so prized, they are going to want to regulate and maintain that in one another. But it comes with simultaneous costs and benefits.”

Davis wants to know more about those pros and cons and the inner workings of 'black women friend groups,” which she said are especially relevant right now with issues of race and discrimination flaring nationally and members of the black community uniting against injustices.

'There is a coming together,” Davis said. 'And there is something really beautiful about that community.”

Davis, a dean's graduate research fellow in the UI Communication Studies Department, is in the midst of conducting a nationwide study on the communication practices of black women friend groups using volunteers across Iowa, Illinois, California and possibly Missouri and Kansas.

Eligible participants - black women, ages 18 to 65 - are asked to engage in pseudo-guided group discussions about common life problems and participate in related surveys and debriefings. Davis is hoping to analyze about 75 groups of three or more people by asking interested black women to invite two close black female friends to participate.

The discussions, which Davis began facilitating in May and will continue until November or December, take place in a group member's home. One of them randomly is assigned to seek support from the others on a tangible 'life-stressor” common among black women, Davis said.

'But I don't want to give them too much direction because I don't want to skew their ideas of what support looks like,” she said. 'I just give them a general topic of conversation, start the recording, and leave the room.”

Davis' hypothesis is that black women regulate strength in one another and that black women friend groups perpetuate the notion of the 'strong black woman.”

'There is a function to it,” she said. 'I'm looking at some of the ways in which they are interacting. How are they behaving? I'm interested in what are the deeper roots here.”

Davis said she hopes to know whether her hypothesis is on target by January and eventually use the results to support the black female experience.

'I really want to be able to validate and put into words what many black women go through and experience,” she said. 'And I hope that by doing this research we can identify real outcomes and mental health outcomes.”

Some of the debriefing questions will focus on benefits gained from the supportive conversation and the creation of a safe space.

'I think it will be really cool to show that these are some things you can get when you connect with other black women and have concrete evidence to demonstrate that,” Davis said.

This type of support, she said, is becoming ever more relevant and - in some cases - necessary as racial injustices increasingly are coming to light nationally. Davis said she has this image in her mind of being backed into a corner and then looking around seeing others in the same position.

'These entities are pushing our backs against something and we end up creating a circle where our backs are to each other and we are facing outward,” Davis said. 'We end up creating this group where we all are experiencing something similar. It's forced, but there is something really beautiful about that community.”

It also can bring pain and challenges, she said.

'Black women and people feel there are a lot of difficulties with our identities and cultural experiences, and we somehow find ourselves coming together,” Davis said. 'So I want to look at what that does for us. How can that help?”