Being Black and Gifted? Autoethnographical Experiences in School Contexts in Two Multicultural Societies

The authors present autoethnographic experiences of "being Black and gifted" in selected governmental and private school contexts in two multicultural societies. The presentation shows how the four selected identity intersections of race, national citizenship, cultural belonging and giftedness are experienced by the authors in different school contexts in South Africa and Germany.

Further, the contextual ascriptions - which are interlinked with the above mentioned intersections - are reflected and their impact is discussed. Reflections address the impact of the micro-level of individual interaction, the meso-level of the school contexts and the macro-level of the two societies on the individuals.

Autoethnographical experiences have been gained over a period of 5 years in German and South African school contexts. Methodologically, the authors use an autoethnographic, narrative approach to present, reflect, interprete, and discuss the impact of the above mentioned identity intersections critically in the defined contexts. The authors use themselves as research tools and explore the intersections from an emic, in-depth perspective, using intra- and inter-subjective validation processes.

Findings show the impact of the embeddedness of autoethnographical experiences on micro, meso, and macro levels and how the authors deal with these experiences on individual levels. Findings further on present the differences and similarities of intersectional experiences and their individual strategies to transform challenges on micro-, meso- and macro levels into personal growth.

Conclusions are presented and recommendations on how to deal with the complexity of intersectional experiences on the three levels - and specifically with regard to personal growth - are provided.