The second ID: critical race counterstories of campus police interactions with Black men at Historically White Institutions (original) (raw)

'You make me wanna holler and throw up both my hands!': campus culture, Black misandric microaggressions, and racial battle fatigue

Black males are scarce on White campuses. Still, they experience hypervisibility and are targets of hypersurveillance. This study used focus groups and semi-structured interviews to examine the experiences of 36 Black male students attending seven ‘elite’ historically White Research I institutions. Two themes emerged: (a) anti-Black male stereotyping and marginality and (b) hypersurveillance and control directed at Black men by Whites. Participants reported stereotyping and increased surveillance by police on and off campus. They also reported being defined as ‘out of place’ and ‘fitting the description’ of illegitimate members of the campus community. As a result, students reported psychological stress responses symptomatic of racial battle fatigue (e.g. frustration, shock, anger, disappointment, resentment, anxiety, helplessness, hopelessness, and fear). The study finds the college environment was more hostile toward Black men than other groups, exemplifying Black racial misandry.

Racial arrested development: A Critical Whiteness analysis of the campus ecology

This paper analyzes the campus ecology (Renn, 2003, 2004) literature from the perspective of Critical Whiteness specifically problematizing perceptions of safety and inclusion on the college campus. Relying upon Sullivan’s (2006) ontological expansiveness, Mills’s (1997) epistemology of ignorance, and Leonardo and Porter’s (2010) Fanonian interpretation of racial safety, we argue that there is too high a premium placed on social comfort during the undergraduate experience which actually leaves White students at predominantly White institutions in perpetual states of racial arrested development. We conclude that intentional, targeted racial dissonance is necessary for both White students to develop their racial selves while concurrently being aware of the ugly realities of contemporary racism.

Brooms, D. R., & Druery, J. E. (2023). Between the world and us: Black men navigating antiblackness at historically white institutions. Educational Studies, 59(4) 382-402.

Educational Studies, 2023

This article focuses on the college experiences of 19 Black men who attended historically white institutions (HWIs). Using a hermeneutic phenomenological approach, we explore how these students articulate, make sense of, and are confronted by antiblackness during their college years. We find and detail three specific forms of anti-Black racism that challenge their higher education endeavors, which include dislocating Black men as outsiders on campus, dismissing Black men’s intellect and abilities, and manufacturing Black men’s invisibilities. Additionally, given the barrage of anti-Black racial logics that confront Black men at HWIs, we also discuss internalizing antiblackness as a fourth finding that illuminates Black men’s struggles and dilemmas within these white educational contexts. These four frames reveal how collegiate Black men can be rendered as insignificant at HWIs, which not only negatively impacts their college experiences but also can contribute to their nonbelonging and produce additional academic and personal stressors.

Exposing whiteness in higher education: White male college students minimizing racism, claiming victimization, and recreating white supremacy

This research critically examines racial views and experiences of 12 white men in a single higher education institution via semi-structured interviews. Participants tended to utilize individualized definitions of racism and experience high levels of racial segregation in both their pre-college and college environments. This corresponded to participants seeing little evidence of racism, minimizing the power of contemporary racism, and framing whites as the true victims of multiculturalism (i.e. ‘reverse racism’). This sense of racial victimization corresponded to the participants blaming racial minorities for racial antagonism (both on campus and society as a whole), which cyclically served to rationalize the persistence of segregated, white campus subenvironments. Within these ethnic enclaves, the participants reported minimal changes in their racial views since entering college with the exception of an enhanced sense of ‘reverse racism,’ and this cycle of racial privilege begetting racial privilege was especially pronounced within the fraternity system.

Black Minds Matter: Repression of Critical Race Theory and Racial Violence Against Black Students

Journal of Critical Race Inquiry , 2022

This essay argues that our conversations about Critical Race Theory (CRT) must move beyond criticism of conservative interpretations of CRT and instead advocate for Black youth, as they are the most vulnerable to these attacks. Moreover, I illuminate how conservatives strive to construct, and therefore repress, Black critiques of America as a threat to the national order. This essay is grounded in Derrick Bell's theory of racial realism.