Studying Black Student Life on Campus: Toward a Theory of Black Placemaking in Higher Education

Abstract

This essay outlines how Black placemaking, a sociological framework used to study Black residents in urban contexts, might be used to study Black students’ experiences at historically White institutions (HWIs) of higher education. Black placemaking engages with the intersection of Blackness, place, structure, and agency. The author argues that this framework has the potential to more expansively study Black students’ lives, experiences, and mechanisms of engagement without discounting realities of oppression. Drawing from research on Black students attending HWIs and data from an ethnography conducted by the author, this essay conceptualizes a Black placemaking approach for higher education.

Coming Back Home to Live and Not Die: A Human Geography of a Working-Class Black Gay Male Navigating the Local Higher Education Pipeline

“…Such foci make clear at least two realities often under examined in research on student experiences in higher education literature. First, an attention to space-place-geography makes explicit the ways contexts beyond the material enclosures and presumably impenetrable boundaries of postsecondary institutions still matter in students' educational trajectories (Tichavakunda, 2020). Second, by tracing one student's journey from high school through graduate education we are able to appreciate the non-linear and plural pathways many students-particularly those who must navigate various marginalizing environments-take along their journey to college completion (Lee & Ransom, 2011).…”

“…Research on the colonial relics of race, gender and sexual binaries in the United States rarely investigates how Black students with interlocking identities navigate their particular local and regional communities while navigating their educational environments. Furthermore, even less research has been conducted on the human geographies of Black residents in urban communities (Tichavakunda, 2020) and how urban labor market influences students' experiences with colleges and universities (Reyes et al, 2019). Human geography is a study of the relationships between humans and their interactions with the natural or built environment (McKittrick & Woods, 2007).…”

“…The history of U.S. higher education and Black oppression cannot be separated from interlocking class, gender, and sexual politics of oppression (Hooks, 2014). Specifically, in race-sexuality politics and critiques, since the 1970s, gay and lesbian antiracist scholars have argued that there has been a silencing of overlapping identities (Hutchinson, 2000) which include spatial factors (Tichavakunda, 2020). This silence can be understood as a disjunction, as a short circuit in the unique narratives of Black people in urban America.…”

“…Though the social and academic experiences of Black men in higher education have been captured and explained (McGuire et al, 2020a(McGuire et al, , 2020bMajors & Billson, 1992;Strayhorn, 2008b), how Black men who are gay and working class navigate local/regional college environments is comparatively under-researched. The social locations and identities of Black men in the United States are complex and often shaped by both racist and masculinist social norms (Hooks, 1981(Hooks, , 2014 embedded in residential and campus communities (Tichavakunda, 2020). In light of this, little literature exists about working-class Black gay men within the U.S. educational pipeline and how they navigate their urban and post-industrial geographies while entering and existing in higher education institutions.…”

A Critical Race Analysis of University Acts of Racial “Redress”: The Limited Potential of Racial Symbols

“…While examples of Racial Symbols likely exist across institutional types for different racially marginalized groups, I specifically use Black students’ experiences at predominantly White institutions (PWIs) of higher education as a conceptual case grounding this essay. Studying Black students’ experiences at PWIs is uniquely important given the enduring legacies and manifestations of anti-Black racism at PWIs (Dancy et al, 2018; Tichavakunda, 2020). University policies or acts that may seem like a positive step in a more racially-just direction—such as removing a Confederate monument from a campus—but neglect to engage with the structural and material reality of Black collegians, I argue, are Racial Symbols.…”