Seeking sanctuary: (re)claiming the power of historically Black colleges and universities as places of Black refuge

Abstract

Historically, Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) have consistently functioned as engines of social change and racial uplift and are among the few places where Black culture is placed at the forefront, appreciated, and sustained. Today and in the future, it will be paramount for HBCUs to not only embody their eminent legacies of social change, but to also serve as fierce settings that will ultimately champion action-oriented change for Black communities and the society at large. This cannot happen if Black students with additional oppressed identities feel ‘othered’ or shamed among their own within these unique post-secondary environments. In these tentative moments following the election, this work provides a call and challenge to HBCUs to capitalize on their unique abilities to serve as spaces of refuge for Black students, so long as they embrace the full spectrum of Blackness present.

Keywords:

• HBCUs
• resistance
• Black students
• higher education
• racism
• intersectionality

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Roderick Carey, Felecia Commodore, Jhirmack ‘Harold’ Eichelberger, Wyletta Gamble, Kevin Lawrence Henry, Jr., Adriel A. Hilton, A. C. Johnson, Jennifer Johnson, Cindy Ann Kilgo, Z Nicolazzo, Sunni L. Solomon, II, Candice Staples, and Leonard Taylor, Jr. for their thoughtful and constructive feedback on earlier drafts of this article.

Notes

1. African American and Black are used interchangeably throughout this study to refer to persons whose ancestry denotes Black racial groups of Africa, as defined by the US Census Bureau.

2. Ogbu and Simons (2008) contended that ‘involuntary (nonimmigrant) minorities are people who have been conquered, colonized, or enslaved. Unlike immigrant minorities, the non-immigrants have been made to be a part of the U.S. society permanently against their will. Two distinguishing features of involuntary minorities are that (1) they did not choose but were forced against their will to become a part of the United States, and (2) they themselves usually interpret their presence in the United States as forced on them by White people ...’ (pp. 165–166).

3. Van Jones is a Black political commentator, New York Times bestselling author, and former adviser to the White House’s Council on Environmental Quality during President Barack Obama’s administration.

4. I use historically White institutions instead of predominately White institutions to acknowledge and discern that the exact numbers/percentages of White students have less to do with overall campus populations than the ‘historical and contemporary racial infrastructure that is in place, the current campus racial culture and ecology, and how these modern-day institutions still benefit Whites at the expense of Black communities and other groups of color’ (Smith, Yosso, & Solórzano, 2006, p. 322).

5. The Higher Education Act of 1965, as amended, defined an HBCU as: ‘any historically Black college or university established prior to 1964, whose principal mission was, and is, the education of Black Americans’ (White House Initiative on Historically Black Colleges & Universities Website, 2017).

6. Intersectionality is a concept that was developed by legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw (1989, 1995), and is a critical manner of analysis often used to holistically glean understanding into how one reconciles myriad oppressed identities as they navigate several sociocultural systems of resistance and power (Nicolazzo, 2016). It is a way of knowing that provides distinct connections between one’s multidimensional identities and their lived experiences on one extreme, but also bestows a foundation that must recognize the historical, geographic, legal, political, and social contexts in which one perpetually exists (Bowleg, 2013; Crenshaw, 1995; Nicolazzo, 2016).