“It’s Not Easy”: A Qualitative Study Conceptualizing What It Means to Be a Black Middle-Class Woman in the United States

Black women and Black womanhood have been constructed through externally imposed, racialized gender stereotypes rather than through Black women’s self-definition. To date, few studies have investigated how middle-class Black women in the United States define what it means to be a middle-class Black woman in their own terms. This qualitative study examined what it means to be a middle-class Black woman in the United States among 46 middle-class Black women. The women’s descriptions included the following themes: (a) Navigating Persistent and Compounded Strain; (b) Strength as Obligation, Not Choice; (c) High Effort, Diminishing Returns; and (d) Resisting Misrecognition and Stereotyped Judgments. The findings emphasize the importance of middle-class Black women using their voices to highlight their resistance to others defining them and empowering them to tell their own stories. Implications for research and practice are discussed.