A Racial Frames Analysis of Historically Black Colleges and Universities

• In Event: Sociology of Education Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 4. Contemporary Dilemmas in Higher Education

Abstract

This paper explores the presence of racial frames within Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). Based upon data collected from a six-month ethnography at Howard University, including thirty-three semi-structured interviews with current and former students, I argue that racial frames operate as converging logics within HBCUs. First, I argue that the home-culture frame is central to HBCU student culture, exploring the significance of family values and the cultural objects of music and dance. Second, I highlight how anti-racist counter-frames are reproduced through an institutional emphasis on ‘Black excellence’ and ‘Black beauty’. Third, I point out how the white racial frame operates covertly under the guise of these anti-racist counter-frames, urgently complicating theoretical conceptions of racial frames as immutable and distinct. I thus conclude by theorising a ‘critical counter-frame’, sociologically accounting for HBCU students who problematise supposedly ‘anti-racist’ counter-framing. Overall, this paper makes a crucial intervention within racial frames theory, demonstrating that predominantly Black spaces are not immune from reproducing the white racial frame and that students actively challenge dominant institutional counter-frames.

Author

• Maya Lily McFarlane, University of Cambridge