"The Secret to Selling the Negro": Stories of Student Success and Higher Education Policy

• In Event: Tales of Two Institutions: Social Justice Teaching Confronts Contradictions of “Student Success” in Higher Education

Abstract

Overview: In the 1954 documentary “The Secret to Selling the Negro,” a narrator explains why the White business community should capitalize on the buying power of the Negro market: like middle class Whites, Black families are educated, trustworthy when it comes to paying their bills and despite common misconceptions, are willing to pay for quality and name brand items. This idealized narrative selling White businesses the idea of welcoming Black customers offered Black Americans putative equality via consumer capitalism. Today, higher education funding policy has shifted from a retention-based to a performance-based model. Colleges and universities are developing a similar marketing strategy that represents Black students as consumers of education--as the new bill of goods. Student success means “buying power” with no commensurate emphasis on “giving back” or serving their community. As education institutions boast high “minority” graduation rates as proof of student success, the issues Carter G. Woodson (1933) raised regarding the quality of the education Black students are receiving in terms of developing their critical consciousness are missing from this story (Arellano, Cintrón, Flores & Berta-Avila, 2016).

This paper asks: As Black students graduate at higher rates with overwhelming student loans what does student success mean? Is student success without critical consciousness another form of mis-education or exploitation? As a graduate research assistant for a summer research course on social justice and student success I was able to reflect on how my experiences observing, taking field notes, assisting students and faculty as well as co-teaching a lecture with another graduate student shaped my understanding of student success, community and critical consciousness as essential to Black students receiving what Woodson considers an “education of the right kind”.

Theoretical Framework: Afrocentric theoretical concepts (Accurate Scholarship, Critical Thinking and Representation) (King & Swartz, 2016) are paired with Critical Race Theory (Dixson & Rousseau, 2005) to critically analyze neoliberal policies and the relevance of community input as a solution for mis-education.

Objective: The objective of this paper is to critique newly adopted performance-based funding policy use three autoethnographic vignettes to show the need for critical consciousness and community input in definitions of student success.

Methodology/ Data: Using autoethnographic inquiry (Humphreys, 2005), I constructed three vignettes from the documentary film (“Selling the Negro”), personal reflections, classroom observations and lesson planning content that: 1) captures experience in the Social Justice and Student Success research course that shaped my critique of the student success story at my university; 2) illustrates how my understanding of student success impacted by my role as GRA and shaped the lecture that I co-taught; and 3) demonstrates the importance of building community partnerships within the course as a way to broaden and incorporate community definitions of success.

Findings: My critique of the newly adopted performance-based funding policy highlights how essential critical consciousness is to ensuring the quality education of Black students as well as the role of community in defining and supporting student success.

Author

• Natasha McClendon, Georgia State University