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Since 1976, while the total numerical enrollments of Black female undergraduates exceeded their male counterparts by a factor of nearly 2 to 1, the enrollment growth rate among Black males exceeded that of Black females, 60% as compared to 40% (NCES, 2008). The heightened enrollment growth among Black males may be attributable to increased attention to their comparative diminishing numbers in both scholarly and popular forums. However, as reflected by Cole and Guy-Sheftall (2003), it is fallacious to assume “improving the status of black men will single-handedly solve all the complex problems facing African American communities” (p. XXIX). As such, the purpose of this empirical collection of works is to identify both successes and challenges faced by Black female students accessing and matriculating through institutions of higher education. Special attention is paid to women pursuing careers in the high-demand fields of teacher education and STEM.

More than identity politics, intersectionality regards the inability of institutional structures to remedy discrimination because of the intersection between social dynamics, which are often conceived of discretely (Crenshaw & Dill, 2009). For a set of black women workers in the manufacturing context, the court found that they were not discriminated against on the basis of their race, because black male workers were hired for manufacturing positions. They were not discriminated against because of their gender, but because there were white women hired for the front office. This set of black women workers was caught at the intersections of race and gender discrimination law and left without an effective remedy (Crenshaw, 1989). This intersection metaphor is worth examining in the higher education context as we consider that the majority of students on most campuses are women (Allen, Dean, & Bracken, 2008), an increasing number of these women are not white; yet, most campuses have support services targeted at African-American or multicultural student affairs and women's services. Comparatively, few campuses assess and address the needs of black women students at the intersection of their multiplicative identities (Wing, 2003).

Michelle, a first-generation college student from a predominantly Black urban area, was a senior health and recreation major at Midwest University. Although successful in her health and recreation coursework and an engaged campus student leader, Michelle “often talked about her time on campus as ‘painful’” (Winkle-Wagner, 2009, p. 99):You might get the one person who's like, “Well I don't like Black people,” but, then you have a bunch of other people ganging up on him saying, “That is so old, nobody does that anymore.” And I feel like I am more accepted by White people than I am [by] the Black people. Because they're like, well she doesn't dress a certain way, or … “Why are you listening to that type of music?” (Winkle-Wagner, p. 99)

Gender differences in self-actualization among a sample of Black university students was assessed using the Short Index of Self-Actualization. The eta square index indicated that a medium amount of the variance of the self-actualization variable in Black university students was accounted for by gender. Specifically, Black female university students reported more self-actualization than Black males. However, greater relative self-actualization achievement to their same-raced male peers does not address relative achievement to other peers or abolish the need for challenges and concerns of Black women college students to be considered.