Featured Scholar:
Abigail Sewell
2004 - 2005 University Scholar
Mentor: Kendal Broad
Honors Program
Abigail Sewell has always wanted to obtain her doctoral degree and the sociology senior has already been admitted into nine of the country’s best sociology graduate programs. But, the young researcher has looked up the death rates of black female professors and found they are extremely high in her demographic. For her USP project, Abigail examined anger suppression in the workplace among black Americans and the ramifications it has on mental and physical health.
“Among blacks there are consequences and boundaries to expressing anger and getting type-cast as the ‘angry black man’ or ‘angry black woman’,” she says. “There is no benefit to expressing your anger, but in the meantime, the anger suppressed is having an effect on the body that is detrimental over a long period of time.”
Under the guidance of mentor Kendal Broad, an assistant professor of sociology and women’s studies, Abigail developed an IRB-approved questionnaire and interviewed 24 subjects of lower and middle classes in various cities around the south, including Gainesville, Florida; Atlanta, Augusta and Rome, Georgia; and Greensboro, South Carolina. Participants worked in a variety of fields—ranging from custodians to lawyers—and they were asked a series of 45 questions about their work experiences.
“I started with professors and administrators, but I decided to branch out and look at persons of lower classes, since the black middle class has already been heavily studied,” she says. Abigail also talked to teachers, business owners and waiters. No matter their job status, participants reported workplace isolation, disproportionate amounts of occupational stress due to being under-valued and overworked, and anxiety resulting from negative stereotypes of black Americans.
“Anger is a result of unjustified and unavoidable injustices,” Abigail says. “It is not just the blatant discrimination based on race, but also being asked to do the work of lower status workers or not getting leave time that can be perceived as discrimination, even if it is not necessarily what is happening.” Abigail adds that black employees often don’t talk to their co-workers outside of work or come from the same background and this lack of kinship and collegiality causes stress and prevents them from asking for workplace advancement or expressing frustrations. “There are segmentations in the workplace, where everyone kind of stays in their own groups and, in some ways, it is self-inflicted. You are going to feel a kinship and be more friendly to people who are similar to you.”
Abigail has a lot of personal experience in the job market, working in a variety of jobs including serving as a cashier at Burger King, a waitress at Ruby Tuesdays and a sales and stock associate at The Gap. “The anger, for me personally, wasn’t about discrimination. But if I didn’t get enough hours, didn’t get paid, or there was an issue with job responsibilities, others thought I should say something and I wouldn’t. I suppressed it.”
Graduating in April, Abigail has expanded her USP research and written an honors thesis on the project. In addition to being a University Scholar, she is also a McNair Scholar and National Achievement Scholar. She is a Minority Ambassador, Outreach Ambassador, and a member of the Children’s Health Self-Empowerment Research Team in the psychology department. For fun, she enjoys playing intramural flag football and her team was the UF Intramural Flag Football Champions in 2002 and 2003.
"I applied to the USP because I enjoy doing research and I came to UF because it was one of the few places that I could pursue research even as a freshman,” Abigail says. “Upon completing graduate school, I plan to become a professor at a research-based institution.”
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