Role of Black Faculty as Surrogate Parents in the Counseling Profession

Introduction

In focusing on Black faculty as surrogate parents, let us begin our discussion with the first principle, defined by Aristotle, 1554, as the basis from which a thing is known (Hakim, 2016). As Black faculty, we define serving as the action of helping. We assist others as a way of helping our community and ourselves. The students we support are like our sons and daughters; they rely on us implicitly for our nurturing and care. It is essential to note that, for the purposes of this chapter, the terms Black and African American will be used interchangeably.

Surrogacy is defined as a substitute, or a person deputized by another for a specific role or office (Patel, Jadeja, Bhadarka, Patel, Patel, & Sodagar, 2018). The role regarding Black faculty compliments the role of the parent and is like a person who brings up or cares for another (Reddick, Bukoski, Smith, Valdez, Wasielewski, 2014; Morgan, LaBerge, Larremore, Galesic, Brand, & Clauset, 2022). The guardians of students are delegating to us, the academic guidance of their most precious asset, their children. They expect us to usher them to be responsible, reliable, and accountable. Black faculty are oftentimes expected to teach Black students how to successfully negotiate a society that is, often, potentially hostile. As African Americans, we know what it means to be born in a country that may not reciprocate the love we have for it in return. “We Keep loving this country, and this country does not love us back,” (TePoel, Nauright, 2021). Its nomenclature is “unrequited love.”

The academy is an environment where Black students learn skills that help them contribute to society and live their dreams (Ladson-Billings, 2022). Additionally, the experience helps the student to find their purpose. In the role of surrogate parents, of adult children, our role is primarily that of giving counsel. Moreover, we are responsible for their emotional, psychological and physical safety (Jones, 2021).

As older adults we have experiences of the recent past, treatment of which our grandchildren have no concept. In some regards, the naïveté of youth will protect them and give them a certain amount of resilience, hence the phrase, “They don’t know, and they don’t know they don’t know.” However, to be forewarned is to be for-armed and in the role of a surrogate parent, it is incumbent upon us to enhance their ability to recover. According to Code Switch (2015), ‘Coping while Black’ can create a season of surprising news that takes a psychological toll (Code Switch, 2015). Black people can become bothered about things that are not typically worrisome. There might be changes in their appetite. They can feel weighted down, often by not one incident but by an accumulation, and such trauma can occur even vicariously (Code Switch, 2015).

Coping while Black can be exhausting, and we must emotionally harden this group of intellectuals for subtle and blatant disrespect. According to Google, CNN politics, 2016, President Obama was confronted by Jan Brewer in 2012 at a Phoenix Arizona airport. “One of several incidents that led to the talk was that he was being treated with less respect than his predecessors because of his race. Google further stated that he [President Obama] was referred to as ‘Primate in Chief’.” Even though Obama was in the top 10% of his Harvard Law class and was president of the Harvard Law review, he was regarded as up-pity, and not born in America, by Donald Trump, spurning the birther movement (Abramson, 2016).

Black intellectuals are deeply resented. Not only did we dare learn to read, but we have also acquired knowledge to analyze and be “woke” in a society that is satisfied if our children and we are comatose to the injustices we endure. Malcolm X opined that the so-called American dream for Black folk is a nightmare (Malcolm X, 1964 Speech). I propose our children do not have the luxury of being somnambulant in a society whose mission is to incarcerate, debilitate and marginalize the progenitors of our gene pool. According to Prison Policy Initiative, calculated from the U.S census, 2010 summary file 1, Blacks represent the highest percentage of American ethnic incarcerated at 2,306 per 100,000 (Sakala, 2014).