Three the hard way: An intersectional approach to understanding narratives of African American women entrepreneurs using Butler's Theory of Performativity

African American woman entrepreneurs are the fastest growing business start-up demographic in the country. They represent 45% of all women minority-owned enterprises (Walker’s Legacy 2016). Many African American women entrepreneurs feel that entrepreneurship can help them achieve holistic success and retain agency that they would not experience in the workplace (Mirchandani 1999). However, much of the literature on African American woman entrepreneurs focuses on discrimination issues. Existing research on African American women entrepreneurs is based on their race, gender, geographical location of their business, and industry sector. Many of the methodologies underlying this research on African American women entrepreneurs are informed by a culture of masculinity and white supremacy (Bruni, Gherardi, and Poggio 2004). In scholarly works, African American woman entrepreneurs are placed in a deficit compared to their white male counterparts. These tendencies cause these entrepreneurs to be steeped in a double otherness, as both women and African Americans. This dissertation uses the discursive anchoring of Butler’s (1990) performativity theory to provide a fresh lens with which to analyze the journey of African American women entrepreneurs. It employs Butler’s theory in conjunction with an intersectional approach to understanding the narratives of 20 African American women entrepreneurs. This study demonstrates how race, class, and gender interact to affect the success of these African American women entrepreneurs.