Along with my colleagues Jelisa S. Clark at Fayetteville State University and Matthew Smith at California State University Dominguez Hills, our recently published book, Empowering Men of Color on Campus: Building Student Community in Higher Education, takes an in-depth look at the collegiate experiences of males of color at a Hispanic serving institution in the southwest region of the U.S.
Our main objective in writing this book, published by Rutgers University Press, was to investigate how a select group of students, all of whom were engaged in a male success program on campus, narrated their educational experience,s including their pathways to and experiences during college. We wanted to know how these students thought about themselves, built relationships with their male peers, made meaning of their engagement experiences and aspired to success. We argue that despite the overly projected deficit narrative about males of color, there is much to learn from their meanings, associations, engagements and efforts, as well as their connections to and uses of community.
In one of our interviews, Juan, a third-year Latino majoring in history, reflected on his pathway to college and confessed, “Well, in high school, I didn’t really care. I just wanted to get to college—that was the goal; that was it. Once I got to college, I figured I’d figure out what to do.” Another student, Eddie, in reflecting on his aspirations and motivations for success, noted, “My motivation to succeed academically is much higher now than it was before. It’s much, much higher because I want to succeed and I want to do much better. I created a vision for me to reach my goals, and one of those is [academic success].” He specifically referenced the importance of his family in informing and strengthening his aspirations, “My grandparents didn’t have that opportunity, and for my younger brother, I want to show him an example of what he can be. And plus, I wanted to, you know, step outside of that statistic. It seems like in many African-American communities, we lead in a lot of areas, and I wanted to lead in this one.”
The statements offered by Juan and Eddie and others in our study resonate well with some of the prevailing sentiments that dominate education discourse, especially within higher education. In Juan’s particular statement, he identifies a disconnect in his secondary school experiences and his educational aspirations. Similarly, what is revealing about Eddie’s reflection on the factors that contributed to his decision to attend college to pursue his bachelor’s degree is the inherent tension of both the push and pull factors that he battled prior to his college enrollment. On the one hand, like many of his peers and other college students, he acknowledged an increased motivation to succeed academically and develop “a vision” to achieve his goals. On the other hand, while his family helped motivate his aspirations, he expressed having to contend with the added burdens that come with being a Black male – being a negative statistic.
The statistics about males of color cut two ways. First, they can serve to “justify” the already-lowered expectations of males of color throughout the educational pipeline. Because they do not complete college at higher rates, some may argue, it might be expected that they will not be successful in college. In fact, some of our youth receive these messages well before they reach college. Second, the statistics signify to these students a narrowed conundrum: succumb to the perceptions or attempt to prove them wrong. Inherently, the cost of this dyadic view is that it strangles away these students’ sense of agency and belonging on many college campuses.
At some institutions, students of color in general and males of color more particularly are responding to and trying to navigate hostile and apathetic campus cultures. Here, the students often are trying to “survive” just to “make it through” college. In effect, with little and not enough support, racial tensions between themselves and staff and faculty, social and academic dissonance, racism and discrimination, and lowered views of them, standards of and support for excellence for males of color are compromised quite easily. And the resulting discussion indicts the students themselves for not performing better.
In Empowering Men of Color on Campus, we take a much different approach. We acknowledge the challenges that males of color face throughout the educational pipeline and note some of the ways that they may undermine their own efforts. More centrally, we take a culturally sensitive research approach as we set out to learn from males of color as opposed to talking about them. Given our own social identities and commitments to our communities, we are aware of both the statistics and the narratives that cloud their efforts. Learning from these students necessarily means that we are offered a context to better understand who they are. In learning who they are, we also are able to better appreciate their efforts and possibilities—and what they’re capable of achieving.
