Dr. James A. Perry Jr.
As someone who has spent more than a decade navigating leadership in higher education, I have seen, and experienced, how predominantly white institutions (PWIs) subtly police the spaces where Black people gather. These are the lounges, student centers, cultural offices, and tucked-away conference rooms where we meet to breathe, connect, and affirm our identities. They are also the spaces most likely to draw the gaze of institutional oversight once whispers of “concern” rise to the right ears.
The Overseer Effect
It often starts with an innocuous-sounding comment: “I just wanted to check in and see what’s going on in here.” A white colleague, sometimes a peer, sometimes a supervisor, steps into the room uninvited, eyes scanning. The reason for the visit is rarely urgent. Sometimes, it’s framed as a friendly drop-by. Other times, it’s tied to vague reports of “noise,” “crowding,” or “unprofessional behavior.” The subtext is clear: We see you. We’re watching.
In my experience, these interventions don’t come from nowhere. More often than not, they’re the result of white staff voicing discomfort to their supervisors after encountering a space, often for the first time, where they are in the racial minority. That discomfort is then legitimized by leadership, who send a physical reminder of institutional authority into the space. This is policing by presence, a passive-aggressive echo of an older overseer model.
When Neutrality Isn’t Neutral
One moment stands out. I was called into a meeting with a senior leader after raising concerns about the treatment of a vulnerable student population. In that meeting, I was asked point-blank: “Do you want to be an activist or an administrator?” As if the two were mutually exclusive. As if naming the realities of marginalized students was somehow outside the bounds of my professional role.
That question crystallized something for me: in the eyes of some, equity work is acceptable only when it is sanitized, when it doesn’t disrupt the comfort of those in power. The irony is that these same institutions often tout diversity as a core value in recruitment materials and accreditation reports, even as they constrict the spaces and language that make diversity meaningful.
The Language of Displacement
When Black spaces are interrupted or disbanded, it’s rarely done in explicitly racial terms. Instead, coded language is used: “We’re concerned about optics.” “We need to make sure this is inclusive for everyone.” “We’re just trying to maintain professionalism.” These phrases are treated as neutral, but they function as a velvet-gloved form of exclusion.
In practice, “inclusion” becomes a rationale for dissolving the very spaces where belonging flourishes for Black staff and students. And “professionalism” becomes a weapon, measured against white, middle-class norms that pathologize our cultural expression.
The DEI Retrenchment Era
We are living in a moment when DEI is under direct attack. From legislative rollbacks to institutional restructuring, the message is often clear: tone it down, make it palatable, or risk losing funding or your job. What we’re witnessing is not just a political shift, but an institutional one. Equity work is increasingly being repackaged in ways that strip it of its radical potential, turning it into a checkbox rather than a catalyst.
In this climate, the policing of Black spaces becomes even more insidious. It doesn’t always come with explicit reprimands. Sometimes, it’s about subtle interference, enough to disrupt community rhythms without triggering official complaints. Enough to remind us who holds the keys to the room.
Reclaiming the Cipher
In hip-hop culture, the cipher is a circle of creative exchange, a space of mutual respect where each voice is heard and each story has weight. In higher education, we need our own ciphers: counter spaces that are protected, resourced, and recognized as vital to the health of Black faculty, staff, and students.
Research, and lived experience, tells us these spaces are not luxuries. They are essential for emotional wellness, retention, and leadership development. They allow for the kind of truth-telling and strategizing that can’t happen under the gaze of those who see our very presence as a disruption.
The Call to Action
If higher education is serious about equity, it must go beyond surface-level diversity and address the quiet, everyday ways Black spaces are surveilled and dismantled. This means:
- Institutionalizing counter spaces with formal recognition, funding, and protection from administrative interference.
- Interrogating professionalism standards that are rooted in white cultural norms.
- Holding leadership accountable for responding to racialized discomfort not by policing, but by educating and building cross-cultural competency.
It also means refusing to accept the false binary between activism and administration. For those of us in higher ed leadership, the work of creating equitable, identity-affirming environments is not activism as an extracurricular; it is central to the role.
Because here’s the truth: when you police our spaces, you police our joy, our strategies, our creativity, and our futures. And that is, indeed, culturally inappropriate.
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Dr. James A. Perry Jr., is a scholar-activist and the founder of CHILL (A Convergence of Hip-Hop, Identity, and Leadership for Liberation), advancing equity and leadership in higher education.
