Black Students On White Campuses

The Agony of Education is about the life experience of African American students attending a historically white university. Based on seventy-seven interviews conducted with black students and parents concerning their experiences with one state university, as well as published and unpublished studies of the black experience at state universities at large, this study captures the painful choices and agonizing dilemmas at the heart of the decisions African Americans must make about higher education.

An in-depth ethnography of Black engineering students at a historically White institution, Black Campus Life examines the intersection of two crises, up close: the limited number of college graduates in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields, and the state of race relations in higher education. Antar Tichavakunda takes readers across campus, from study groups to parties and beyond as these students work hard, have fun, skip class, fundraise, and, at times, find themselves in tense racialized encounters. By consistently centering their perspectives and demonstrating how different campus communities, or social worlds, shape their experiences, Tichavakunda challenges assumptions about not only Black STEM majors but also Black students and the “racial climate” on college campuses more generally. Most fundamentally, Black Campus Life argues that Black collegians are more than the racism they endure. By studying and appreciating the everyday richness and complexity of their experiences, we all—faculty, administrators, parents, policymakers, and the broader public—might learn how to better support them. This book is freely available in an open access edition thanks to TOME (Toward an Open Monograph Ecosystem)—a collaboration of the Association of American Universities, the Association of University Presses, and the Association of Research Libraries. Learn more at the TOME website, available at: openmonographs.org, and access the book online through the SUNY Open Access Repository at http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12648/7009

This book reports findings from the National Study of Black College Students, a comprehensive study of Black college students’ characteristics, experiences, and achievements as related to student background, institutional context, and interpersonal relationships. Over 4,000 undergraduates and graduate/professional students on sixteen campuses (eight historically Black and eight predominantly White) participated in this mail survey. Using these and other data, this book systematically examines the current state of Black students in U.S. higher education. Until now, our understanding has been limited by inadequate data, misguided theories, and failure to properly interpret the Black American reality. This volume challenges our assumptions and contributes to the growing body of knowledge about Black student experiences and outcomes in higher education.

This book provides the first national study of this intense and challenging struggle which disrupted and refashioned institutions in almost every state. It also illuminates the context for one of the most transformative educational movements in American history through a history of black higher education and black student activism before 1965.

Frustrated with the flood of news articles and opinion pieces that were skeptical of minority students' "imagined" campus microaggressions, Micere Keels, a professor of comparative human development, set out to provide a detailed account of how racial-ethnic identity structures Black and Latinx students' college transition experiences. Tracking a cohort of more than five hundred Black and Latinx students since they enrolled at five historically white colleges and universities in the fall of 2013 Campus Counterspaces finds that these students were not asking to be protected from new ideas. Instead, they relished exposure to new ideas, wanted to be intellectually challenged, and wanted to grow. However, Keels argues, they were asking for access to counterspaces—safe spaces that enable radical growth. They wanted counterspaces where they could go beyond basic conversations about whether racism and discrimination still exist. They wanted time in counterspaces with likeminded others where they could simultaneously validate and challenge stereotypical representations of their marginalized identities and develop new counter narratives of those identities. In this critique of how universities have responded to the challenges these students face, Keels offers a way forward that goes beyond making diversity statements to taking diversity actions.

Depicts the racism and discrimination at American colleges and universities