Reimagining HBCUs in the Future of P-20 Black Education

Introduction

Black people have distinct educational experiences within the United States that have been shaped by a history of racial injustices and discrimination, in addition to a conscious reproduction of the ideas of Black intellectual inferiority and antiBlackness in educational spaces since before Plessy v. Ferguson (Anderson, 1988; Ladson-Billings, 2006). Since its inception, the U.S. education system was not created for Black people; and as the country began to offer education to Black students, the U.S. created “schooling systems [that] have functioned as channels through which members of the African Diaspora could be inundated with ideology that would stunt their political, economic, and social progress” (Givens, 2016, p. 1). Although many Black people have excelled (while resisting) in their educational journeys in spaces that believed the myth of Black intellectual inferiority, this myth has continued to permeate P-12 schooling systems and higher education by not centering students of Color – more specifically Black students (Dumas, 2014; Ladson-Billings, 2006; Mustaffa, 2017). However, there has been an educational space that has kept Black students and people at its center— Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs).

Though the origin of HBCUs is controversial, from inception, HBCUs give hope to Black Americans while serving as sites for Black resistance, Black excellence, and the Black community (Gasman & Nguyen, 2015; Lee, 2015; Smith, 2017; Williams et al., 2019). A substantial body of literature centers how HBCUs function as educational safe spaces for recognizing and validating Black culture, history, and identity (Renn & Patton, 2017; Williams et al., 2021). However, little attention has been given to how in recentering HBCUs as sites for understanding the impact and implications of centering critical pedagogies can add to a growing body of literature that follows Black students' experience throughout the entirety of P-20 spaces (Warren & Coles, 2020). In this recentering, it is important to note that HBCUs are not absolved from the trappings of whiteness, and it would be negligent to ignore the impact those trappings have had on the societal views of HBCUs, and the institutions' construction of Blackness in this contextual space. Furthermore, in centering critical pedagogical praxes, the implications of this work can impact the schooling experiences of students of Color as the United States seeks to reckon with its racist history and its racial diversifying future (Massey & Denton, 1998; Dumas, 2016).

In this chapter, through a qualitative study of HBCU alumni, the author will examine how educational spaces, such as HBCUs, act as racialized spaces offer ways to filling a gaps in the development of racially conscious Black individuals by providing Black students with the tools for understanding and shaping their racialized identities for participation as citizens of a broader racial society. By providing insights from a focus group conversation with seven HBCU alums about whether their HBCU experience provided them with insights that helped them in shaping their developing Black identities and racial consciousness, the author will explore emerging themes from the participants' experiences that may prove to be implicative for P-12 Black education. To do so, the author provides a literarature review on HBCUs' continual existence (or resistance) and their support of Black identity development will be provided to support theorizing HBCUs as racial spaces that support Black students in identity development and racial consciousness.

At the outset, it is important to discuss how the position of the research influences data collection, analysis, and interpretations (Jones et. al, 2014). The author identifies himself as a Black man who attended an HBCU for his undergraduate degree. As an individual who attended and conducted this research on HBCUs, the author's identities and experiences may have created a unique lens and position for understanding the experiences of Black students in a familiar context. Though the experiences and research may have helped to better understand the contextual environment of HBCUs, they may have biased how the author structured the questions and interpretation of the data. Nevertheless, the author allowed the findings to emerge independent of their biases. Member checking helped to make certain that findings were reflective of the participants' voices.