University of South Carolina Scholar Commons Theses and Dissertations 2016 The Experiences Of Black Males In Honors Colleges Sandra Greene University of South Carolina Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarcommons.edu/etd Part of the Higher Education Commons, and the Student Counseling and Personnel Services Commons Recommended Citation Greene, S. The Experiences Of Black Males In Honors Colleges. Retrieved from https://scholarcommons.edu/etd/3760 This Open Access Thesis is brought to you by Scholar Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Scholar Commons.
For more information, please contact digres@mailbox. THE EXPERIENCES OF BLACK MALES IN HONORS COLLEGES by Sandra Greene Bachelor of Arts University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2012 Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of Master of Education in Higher Education and Student Affairs College of Education University of South Carolina 2016 Accepted by: Spencer Platt, Director of Thesis Susan Bon, Reader Julie Rotholz, Reader Lacy Ford, Senior Vice Provost and Dean of Graduate Studies © Copyright by Sandra Greene, 2016 All Rights Reserved. ii DEDICATION This thesis is dedicated to my brother, for letting me pretend to be a teacher before my first day of kindergarten, and for always believing in me. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Thank you to the men who graciously shared their stories.
Thank you to my parents for everything. Thank you to Dr. Platt for supporting me throughout this process and for being a wonderful mentor. Thank you to Dr.
Bon and Dr. Rotholz for pushing me to think critically about my thesis. Thank you to Dan Friedman for the endless support and encouragement. Thank you to Tricia Kennedy for consistently reminding me to work on my thesis and for encouraging me to focus on my academics.
Thank you to Catherine Greene, Dottie Weigel, and the University 101 Programs office for moral support along the way. iv ABSTRACT The purpose of this study is to explore the experiences of Black Males in honors colleges. Specifically this study aims to highlight the successes, challenges, and common experiences of Black males in honors colleges. To this end, the researcher interviewed six Black men in an honors college located in a predominantly White institution in the southeast.
This study sought to share a story of success to counteract the majoritarian narrative of Black male underachievement. Critical Race Theory provided a framework and lens to help understand the emergent themes and findings. Through interviews with the study participants the following seven themes emerged; 1) the importance of faculty, staff, and student relationships 2) involvement in civic engagement, social justice, and advocacy 3) the role of advanced placement and international baccalaureate courses in preparing students for college 4) the importance of personal and familial expectations 5) the role of beyond the classroom opportunities in identity development 6) lack of visibility and representation 7) navigation of stereotypes, microaggressions, and racism. These seven themes help us to understand the experiences of the population being studied and come together to help highlight the successes of the study participants.
v TABLE OF CONTENTS DEDICATION .1 BACKGROUND AND SIGNIFICANCE .2 STATEMENT OF PROBLEM .4 THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK: CRITICAL RACE THEORY. 5 CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW .1 BLACK MALES AND THE EDUCATION SYSTEM .2 HIGH-ACHIEVING BLACK MALES .3 HISTORY AND OVERVIEW OF HONORS COLLEGES. 18 CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH METHODS.1 OVERVIEW OF STUDY .1 OVERVIEW OF PARTICIPANTS .1 DISCUSSION AND ANALYSIS .2 IMPLICATIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS. 74 APPENDIX A – INTERVIEW PROTOCOL.
78 APPENDIX B – INSTITUTIONAL REVIEW BOARD LETTER. 80 vii CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION 1.1 Background and Significance Upon a review of the research on Black undergraduate males it is clear that there is an overabundance of literature focusing on the challenges and underachievement of this population and a lack of research focusing on high-achieving Black undergraduate males. Starting in the late 1990s, scholars such as Fred Bonner, Sharron Fries-Britt, Kimberly Griffin, Shaun Harper, and Terrell Strayhorn started laying the foundation for the study of successful Black males at predominantly White universities and small private liberal arts colleges. There is a need to build upon this research by focusing on the stories of high-achieving Black males at different types of institutions.
This research study will contribute to the literature base by focusing on the experiences of Black males in an honors college setting at a large predominantly White institution in the southeast. In addition to contributing to the literature, this research has practical implications for higher education and for honors colleges. By highlighting the factors that best support the success of high-achieving Black males and the factors that create challenges for these students, this thesis will serve as a resource for higher education and student affairs professionals.2 Statement of Problem The lack of research on high-achieving Black males and the prominence of deficit-laden research is deeply problematic because it paints a picture of Black male underachievement while ignoring the stories of Black male achievement and success (Harper, 2005, p. To provide context, the deficit perspective focuses on an achievement gap rather than an opportunity gap.
It blames individuals and communities for ‘underachievement’ rather than highlighting the role that structural racism plays in unequal access to educational opportunities. The combination of research focusing on academic failure and a lack of research focusing on high-achieving students has three main negative effects. First, ignoring the experiences of high-achieving Black males doesn’t provide educators with the resources, knowledge, and tools to best serve this population. The words of Sharon Fries-Britt and Kimberly Griffin (2007) speak to this sentiment, “Black high achievers remain an understudied segment of the student population; consequently we know far less about their academic, social, and psychological needs and experiences” (p.
These students have the potential to succeed greatly and to impact the world around them, and like any student, they deserve the support to help them achieve their goals. This study aims to provide educators with the knowledge to better support their Black male students. Second, focusing on the “achievement gap” has the potential to lead educators to have lower expectations for their Black male students. The damaging consequences of the focus on the underachievement of Black males is poignantly captured by Sharon Fries-Britt (1998) in Moving Beyond Black Achiever Isolation: Experiences of Gifted Black Collegians, “the disproportionate focus on Black underachievement in the 2 literature not only distorts the image of the community of Black collegians, it creates, perhaps unintentionally, a lower set of expectations for Black student achievement.
It would be impossible to ignore the fact that the opportunity gap exists, however it is critical to understand that this gap is promoted not by individual characteristics in the Black population but by an education system plagued by structural racism and inequality. This thesis will demonstrate the importance and power of high expectations and accountability by highlighting the connections between high expectations and the success of the participants. Finally, on a basic level, focusing on the academic challenges of a population but not on the success is unethical and damaging. Noted researcher Shaun Harper (2009) highlighted that “there should be something embarrassing about publishing only deficit- laden scholarship that depicts Black men as 'at-risk'” (p.
For society to progress, the literature base must appropriately represent the lived experiences of all people. Understanding the experiences of Black males in honors colleges will shed light on the methods students and families used to navigate the education system, will highlight stories of success, and will thereby create more accurate representation in the literature. This thesis represents a small addition to the research base that will hopefully one day accurately represent the experiences of Black males.3 Research Questions The following questions helped to guide this research study: 1. What factors have led to the success of Black males in honors colleges and how do these students perceive their success? 3 2.
What challenges have Black males in honors colleges faced and how have they navigated these challenges? 3. What are the common experiences of Black males in honors colleges? 1.4 Theoretical Framework: Critical Race Theory Throughout this study, I will be using Critical Race Theory (CRT) as a lens for understanding the experiences of high-achieving Black males. Critical Race Theory focuses on the role that race and racism play in the education system (Yosso, Villalpando, Delgado Bernal, & Solorzano, 2001). Critical Race Theory originated as a response to Critical Legal Studies and expanded into the field of education at the hands of Gloria Ladson-Billings and William Tate.
The purpose of this thesis fits with the five tenets of critical race methodology that Solorzano and Yosso (2002) described in Critical Race Methodology: Counter- Storytelling as an Analytical Framework for Education Research. The five tenets of critical race theory are: 1) “The intercentricity of race and racism with other forms of subordination.” 2) “The challenge to dominant ideology.” 3) “The commitment to social justice.” 4) “The centrality of experiential knowledge.” 5) “The transdisciplinary perspective” (pp. This thesis focuses on race and seeks to share the experiences of high-achieving Black males in honors colleges who have successfully navigated the education system. Furthermore, while this thesis focuses on race, it also seeks to understand the intersection of identity.
At its heart, this study seeks to challenge the idea that success in education is purely merit based and seeks to challenge deficit-laden research by sharing the stories of 4 high-achieving Black males. My hope is that this study will act as a call to action. More research is needed, more reforms in the education system are needed, and more people need to fight for equal access to education at all levels. The successes of the students in this study should serve to empower other students to succeed themselves or to help faculty and staff support other students.
As a qualitative study, this research project is grounded in the voices and lived experiences of the participants. In Tara Yosso’s (2006) article, Whose culture has capital? A critical race theory discussion of community cultural wealth, she perfectly summarizes the significance of critical race theory as a theoretical framework for this study. “Many in the academy and in community organizing, activism, and service who look to challenge social inequality will most likely recognize the tenets of CRT as part of what, why and how they do the work they do” (p. One of the key components of Critical Race Theory is the counter- story.
Solórzano and Yosso define the counter-story as, “a method of telling the stories of those people whose experiences are not often told (i., those on the margins of society). The counter-story is also a tool for exposing, analyzing, and challenging the majoritarian stories of racial privilege” (p. One of the fundamental motivations for writing this thesis was to use counter-storytelling to share the stories and voices of Black males in honors colleges, and by doing so to fill a gap in the literature and challenge a majoritarian story that focuses on underachievement.5 Positionality My interest in this topic stems from two contradicting experiences. As an undergraduate student, I was deeply interested in educational policy and access to quality 5 education at all levels.
I enrolled in several educational policy classes and learned a one- sided story about the achievement gap and the underachievement of Black students. Between 2012 and 2014 I worked as an AmeriCorps*VISTA in an honors college at a predominantly White institution. In this role, I saw a stark contrast to the coursework I was taught in college; I worked with a handful of high-achieving Black males who were smart, motivated, and hardworking. Throughout my two years as an AmeriCorps*VISTA, I wondered why my college coursework hadn’t highlighted their stories and successes.
Not unsurprisingly, upon a review of the literature, it seems clear that I wasn’t exposed to the stories of high-achieving Black males because there is an over-abundance of deficit-laden research that ignores the stories of high-achieving Black males.