#BlackCitesMatter: HBCUs Addressing Citational Disparities

• In Event: The Role of HBCUs in Constructing Knowledge: Race, Relevance, and Research

Abstract

The historically Black college and university (HBCU), even in its nascence has always been at the epicenter of Black intellectual progress and thought. According to the Thurgood Marshall College Fund (TMCF), “Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) were established in the United States early in the 19th century to provide undergraduate and graduate level educational opportunities to people of African descent. Black students were unwelcome at existing public and private institutions of higher education (IHEs), even after the passing of specific legislation, resulting in a lack of higher education opportunities” (para 1, 2023). A hallmark of these ebony citadels is their representation of Black excellence through the provision of agentive space for Black people to develop their axiological, epistemological, and ontological positionalities. A daunting task in a country that at best rendered them as being partial, and at worst two-thirds of a human-being. Yet, it was the HBCU that offered refuge for those seeking to understand what it meant to Black, to be whole, to be human.

Noted for the cultivation and production of key Black leaders like W.E.B. DuBois, Booker T. Washington, Mary McCleod Bethune, Anna Julia Cooper, George Washington Carver, and Thurgood Marshall, the HBCU is unquestionably the progenitor for Black diasporic brilliance across many fields of endeavor. And, it was mainly through the research and scholarly contributions, in which the HBCU served as a crucible for the intellectual alchemists to foreground ground-breaking legal arguments, innovative crop production, and novel social science experiments that would forever shift the way the world functioned. Through their voices, and through the written word, it has been our citation of the work of these Black scholars and thought leaders that has been critical. Yet, in current contemporary contexts we have witnessed an erosion and muting of the Black voice. This slow and gradual process has been primarily operationalized through both the explicit and implicit practices of excluding Black scholarship.
This paper presentation will focus on HBCUs and their role in addressing Black citations and citational disparities. As a conceptual frame I will use a recent co- authored opinion editorial that I completed with my doctoral student Barbara Garcia Powell. Published in Diverse Issues in Higher Education, #BlackCitesMatter: Foregrounding a Citational Justice Movement (Diverse, 2022), sought to underscore the widespread disparities that exist when citation rates among diverse scholars, particularly Black scholars, and their White counterparts are compared. In the op-ed we indicated our intentions to start a citational justice and hashtag movement #BlackCitesMatter that would speak to,
Citing Black scholars is quintessential to the fight for social justice, as there exists a citational value system that relegates visibility, competence, and prestige to those who are cited most frequently. Citational practices are less about mentioning and more about mattering, as the most cited authors are deemed thought leaders, and their works are regarded as scientific knowledge. Black authors whose works go uncited are denied appropriate recognition and acclaim as scholars. Hence, the movement we are attempting to foreground is called #BlackCitesMatter, for which the goal is to circumvent the perpetuation of citational injustice. (para. 2)

Author

• Fred A. Bonner, Prairie View A&M University