Racial context, currency and connections: Black doctoral student and white advisor perspectives on cross-race advising

Abstract

In the higher education context of the United States, in which Blacks have had the most significant increase among other ethnic minority groups, this article explores the cross-race advising relationship between Black doctoral students and their White advisors. Through examining congruence in faculty advisors’ and their student protégés’ perspectives on race, we find: (1) the role of race in context; (2) race as leverage and/or liability; and (3) the importance of same-race connections emerged as important issues: each has implications for doctoral student persistence and retention, faculty development, and graduate advising and mentoring. The implications of these findings extend beyond the US to other international systems of higher education where there is a growing interest in the increased diversity of doctoral students and the cross-cultural or cross-ethnic relationship between student and advisor/supervisor.

Keywords:

• cross-race advising
• doctoral education
• US graduate education

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank editors and anonymous reviewers of / Innovations in Education and Teaching International with a special thanks to Dr. Barbara Grant for her mentorship.

Notes

1. In this article, I use African American and Black and Caucasian and White interchangeably. Given the unique history of slavery and race relations in the US, the socially constructed terms Black and White are accepted racial labels (Smith, 1992). Furthermore, all previously mentioned terms are categories adopted by the US Census (2010), and referenced in the American Psychological Association (APA) Publication Manual (2010).

2. This data is part of a larger study (Barker, 2010).