Moving Beyond Survival: Strategy for Challenging Anti-Blackness in Higher Education By: Rachel Roberson and Steven Parker

In the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder, higher education has seen increased conversations around the continued, targeted violence against Black people, as well as supporting our students and community members in the face of tactless media circulation of images of Black death. However, many Black educators find ourselves exhausted and struggling to remain present in our places of work. Much of this struggle stems from daily microaggressions and the consistent erasure of our voices, often by colleagues who claim absolution via positive intent. As current Chief Diversity Officers (CDOs), we reflect on our experiences as administrators navigating institutional politics while grappling with Black identity. We will discuss strategies not only of individual survival, but those that challenge institutional and individual practices that reinforce anti-Black racism in higher education. We ask what strategies of survival and self-sustenance can we employ that allow us to bring our whole selves – our whole, Black selves – into work environments that don’t acknowledge these struggles? How do we navigate institutions that silence us, are we choosing resilience or actively resisting those systems? And what does resistance look like when we still need a job?

Our Experiences

As Black administrators working in multicultural affairs, it is often that we find ourselves striving to get into, “good trouble”, as the late John Lewis once said (Lewis, 2020). The challenges that come with getting into good trouble are multifaceted—we will discuss two of those facets here. First, getting into good trouble may have biological, psychological, and sociological implications for the Black professional.  The charge of advocating for equity, increasing diversity, and promoting inclusivity within colleges and universities is a conundrum. Black professionals are on the job fighting for equity which is also their reality once they leave the institutional environment. This job is not just a job, but a relentless cycle of fighting for equity and inclusion. Black professionals are experiencing unhealthy bio-psycho-social responses while on the job. These unhealthy responses can be summed up by what has been defined as racial battle fatigue (Smith, Hung & Franklin, 2011). Racial battle fatigue is a phenomenon that negatively impacts the whole body (Smith, Hung & Franklin, 2011). Secondly, getting into good trouble consists of challenging and supporting the whole institution at the macro, mezzo, and micro levels. The levels consist of critical parts of the institution such as program and policy development, campus culture, hiring praxis, and infrastructure. To challenge these parts of an institution is to shake their very foundation. Black professionals who do this work are met with microaggressions, “White women tears”, fragility, and passive aggressiveness (Accapadi, 2007). These encounters cause a strained work environment leaving the Black professional in a place of distress and trepidation. As a result of our racial battle fatigue, being a Black professional in higher education may very well be harmful to their whole person.

Critical Strategies and Recommendations

We adopt unapologetic, critical approaches to strategizing pathways toward Black life in higher education. Critical University Studies scholars, Moten and Harney (2004), offer the undercommons as a framework for incubating strategies of resistance. They position the undercommons as a space of radical possibilities, where Black professionals and students are no longer expected to check our humanity at the door for the benefit of those around us, in spaces never built for us. The undercommons is a space of inbetween. In other words, the undercommons cultivates a liberatory space in the margins of the institution; these radicalized counter-spaces are ripe for building collective power, challenging the status quo, and refusing to stop at simply surviving. Another area of possibility of the undercommons is creating a praxis for Black professionals with proximity to institutional power to funnel resources back to the community.

Inspired by this framework we suggest the following recommendations for Black professionals working in higher education:

1. Pay attention to your bio-psycho-social well-being and pivot to ensure your holistic health
2. Black administrators should then leverage our capital to challenge institutional leadership to move beyond rhetoric and commit to allocating material resources for Black life
3. Collectively unify to cultivate supportive, liberatory spaces both in and out of the institution.

It is important that we strategize how to dismantle systems that promote inequity and injustice. Equally as important is the recognition of self. It is crucial that we do not apologize for our existence, and that we embrace our truth in the face of inherently anti-Black institutions.

About the Scholars

Rachel has a PhD in Education Policy & Organizations at the University of California, Berkeley with a specialization in Higher Education Administration. Steven is a EdD candidate in post-secondary education with a specialization in student affairs from the University of Northern Iowa. Rachel and Steven’s scholarship compliments decade-long careers working with education-related non-profits, schools, and colleges in various spaces and places from California to Maine, Colorado and Minnesota.

References

Accapadi, M. M. (2007). When White Women Cry: How White Women’s Tears Oppress Women of Color. College Student Affairs Journal, 26(2), 208-215.

Moten, F., Harney, S. (2004) The University and the Undercommons: Seven theses. Social Text 79, 22(2). 101-115.

Smith, A. S., Hung, M., & Franklin, J. D. (2011). Racial battle fatigue and the miseducation of Black men: Racial microaggressions, societal problems, and environmental stress. The Journal of Negro Education, 80(1), 63–82.