"I Just Really Wanted Them to See Me": Mentoring Black Students on Days After Injustice

• In Event: Mentoring While White: Culturally Responsive Practices for Sustaining the Lives of Black College Students

Abstract

This presentation explores the experiences of Black students at a predominantly white institution (PWI) on the days after major events and injustices. Two weeks after the Presidential Inauguration in 2017 and following a series of racist incidents on campus, the researcher began interviewing Back college students at a predominantly white institution (PWI) of 50,000 students about their experiences on election day in 2016 and in the days after.
This session explores the results of this research, the researcher’s concurrent study on postelection pedagogy, and personal narratives from the author’s perspective as a white faculty member in education. The presentation examines Black students’ experiences of the election, Black students’ responses to the election, and Black students’ perceptions of faculty responses to the election.
This research argues that white faculty must refuse a stance of neutrality and silence in the face of racial injustice, must actively work to be co-conspirators, and must center the perspectives of Black students in classrooms and on campus. This is especially true if institutions are going to “transgress the practices of whiteness that render millennial teachers of color, along with their knowledge, experiences, and perspectives, as invisible” (Brown & Ward, 2018, p. 103). The session explores the dangers of white faculty neutrality and its impacts on Black students (Journell, 2016; Sleeter, 2017).
The presentation concludes with a series of recommendations for white faculty mentoring Black students, including specific recommendations for white faculty teaching in the days after racial injustice (Dunn, 2021).

Author

• Alyssa Hadley Dunn, University of Connecticut
  Presenting Author