In this paper, we examine the academy as a specific case of the racialization of space, arguing that most colleges and universities in the United States are in fact historically white colleges and universities (HWCUs). To uncover this reality, we first describe the dual relationship between space and race and racism. Using this theoretical framing, we demonstrate how seemingly “race neutral” components of most American universities (i.e., the history, demography, curriculum, climate, and sets of symbols and traditions) embody, signify, and reproduce whiteness and white supremacy. After examining the racial reality of HWCUs, we offer several suggestions for making HWCUs into truly universalistic, multicultural spaces.

Historically White Colleges and Universities: The Unbearable Whiteness of (Most) Colleges and Universities in America

This article insists on a reframe of mourning, away from a period of sadness or weeping alone, to a vision of its merits for discovering and unlocking possibility in Black Education. For example, m...

From Morning to Mourning: A Meditation on Possibility in Black Education

I engage Black feminist thought in this genre-blending text to further theorize Black feminist memory work, a visual research tool for embodied reflexivity Using my lived experience surviving bere

Some of us die: a Black feminist researcher’s survival method for creatively refusing death and decay in the neoliberal academy

In this article, we outline some of the vital measurements of racism and anti-blackness as a macro system in education. We contend that principal preparation programs have not explicitly prioritize...

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All We Need Is One Mic: A Call for Anti-Racist Solidarity to Deconstruct Anti-Black Racism in Educational Leadership

Due to the growth of school choice across the United States as well as declining enrollment in some districts, schools are experiencing increasing competition for students. As a result, principals ...

Principals and District Leaders Navigating the Marketplace: Lessons From Texas, New York, and Pennsylvania:

Although campus racial climate on colleges and universities has been scrutinized in research on higher education, scholarship focused on Black male collegians’ interactions with campus police remai...

The second ID: critical race counterstories of campus police interactions with Black men at Historically White Institutions

In this article, I draw on interviews with teachers and administrators at a secondary neighborhood public school in Washington, DC about their perceptions of how the school is viewed by external stakeholders and the impact of those perceptions within an urban education market. Extant empirical research on market forces and effects has not centrally focused on school reputation as an analytic unit to understand how public schools are impacted by school choice and competition. Utilizing reputation of place as a conceptual frame, the findings reveal that school reputation has both discursive and material impacts on urban public schools. Further, school reputation acts as a site of struggle for educators at three distinct and overlapping areas: struggle with partners, struggle with enrollment, and site of struggle with the urban space environment. Finally, the findings confirm that the logics of choice as a means for school improvement are inherently flawed. Given these findings, recommendations for teachers and leaders are offered.

De Marcus A. Jenkins

Papers

The second ID: critical race counterstories of campus police interactions with Black men at Historically White Institutions

School Reputation as a Site of Struggle: An Investigation of the Impact of School Choice in Washington, DC on a Neighborhood Public School.