ABSTRACT
N ever has it been more important to invest in the education of Black women and girls. Despite evidence of increases in education and credential attainment for Black women, these rates of credential attainment are deceptively positive when not properly contextualized. Recent data from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) indicate that Black women constitute the majority of Black people awarded either an associate’s, bachelor’s, master’s, or doctorate in 2016–2017 (NCES, 2020). However, when rates of degree attainment for Black women are compared to the total number of degrees awarded overall, we see that Black women comprise only 7% of awarded credentials (NCES, 2020). Further, when observing data around career trajectories from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Black girls and women, aged 16 and older, are less represented in management, professional, and business fields but more represented in service-related fields than their white counterparts (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2019).
