In Black America; Being Black And Male on Campus, with Dr. Derrick R. Brooms

From the University of Texas at Austin, KUT Radio, this is In Black America. On the social side, it's similar except that we're talking about meeting students in the holistic ways in their wholesale so that although you're a college student, you're not only a college student. And so what I found based on these men's narratives, this is a qualitative interview study. They gave creatives overwhelmingly to ways in which these programs kept them focused academically, provided them with multiple levels of support, not only their own kind of black male peers, but also with faculty and staff on campus. They felt like they had easier access to resources than if they would have tried to have to figure it out on their own. But even more importantly, many of these guys or a number of these guys were students where they were one of very few in the classroom or very

much minoritized numerically in a major program that they were studying. And so having this black male collective that they could count on, that they could feel wholly and that these were really in some ways, not just safe spaces, but actually counter spaces to the dominant institution of climate that where people held beliefs, perceptions, and even spoke these expressively that they didn't think black men were capable. They didn't argue an athlete. Dr. DeGobroom, assistant professor of sociology and African studies at the University of Cincinnati, an author of being black, being male on campus understanding and confronting black male collegiate experiences published by Sony Press. A recent study conducted by Brune's concluded that black male initiative programs enhanced black male students' sense of belonging and success in college. Brune studied black male students from three different educational institutions and found that they're out of class environment and BMI programs, strengthened their sense of community. According to the study

black male students are often faced with issues of isolation due to the low number of black male students on college campuses. Their participation in BMI programs, Health and Maxxac social and cultural capital provide support and aid it in their college success. I'm Johnny Owens in junior and welcome to another edition of in black America. On this week's program, being black, being male on campus with Dr. Derek Arbroom's in black America. So one of the things I think about, and this is from my own experience, is that there are too many colleges operate on this sink or swim mantra, right? That once you get to a college campus, you just need to figure it out. Well, that's really problematic. Exactly. Because that's based in the assumptions that people have had these prior experiences. They really set them up to know how to navigate that. And the reality is, even as I think about being, you know, my role as a teacher and an educator, what we ask students to do in college classrooms are in many ways fundamentally different than what we ask them to do in high school. So part of

what we're doing, especially in those first years, is helping students learn how to be college students. But if we set up a scenario in an environment where if you don't know this, then some kind of way, or some kind of, you know, interpretation of your lesson, then that immediately creates world blocks and instantaneous obstacles to these students are facing. Recruitment efforts towards African- American males have increased at many colleges and universities. Their retention and graduating weight rates still lag far behind their white counterparts. Men of color, particularly African-American and Latino men, face a number of unique challenges in their quest for college education that often impact their presence on campus and inhibit their collegiate success. One program that has helped them navigate the college terrain is the Black male initiative programs. According to Dr. Derek Arbum's and the System Professor of Sociology and Africana Studies at the University of Cincinnati, BMI programs provides a sense of community and access to resources that otherwise these students may not be aware of. Born and raised in Chicago, Illinois,

Brumsholes, the B.A. and African and African-American studies from the University of Chicago and a PhD in Sociology from the only University of Chicago. Recent Black Americans spoke with the first of Brums. I'm from Chicago, Illinois and folks who know about Chicago, you got to tell where you're from within the city. So I'm from the south side, lived there, grew up there, my entire kind of life and to early adulthood went to college at the University of Chicago. So south side of Chicago, born and raised. And tell us what was life like growing up on the south side of Chicago? It was a number of different things. I know it's much different back then than it is right now. Yeah, I mean it's a number of things. So I grew up in a large family, you know, multiple generations of folks who grew up in Chicago. So regardless of where I lived on the south side, I had family members who lived in different neighborhoods. I learned about a lot of the histories of Chicago through navigating the city and visiting and spending time with family. Obviously, as you know, many others know,

Chicago is very much racially segregated. Right. You know, learning about that racially, racially, racially segregation from a first-hand experience went to schools that were overwhelmingly 100% black student population. And then the teaching population, you know, was a bit diverse depending on, you know, where school I was in. So a lot of those kind of just early exposure to kind of how race matters. You're talking about the politics of a Harold Washington, you know, growing up during the sports prowess of the Chicago Bulls. And so you saw the ways in which people gravitated to certain activities and moved away from other activities depending on their interest and things in that nature. So it was a really great learning experience to think about people in very humanistic ways and not just kind of labeled them based on where they're from. Now the University of Chicago is a dynamic university. Well, what made you stay close to home? Primarily was just the opportunity to take advantage of the dynamic education and experiences that you can garner at a place like

University of Chicago, also played football. I wasn't a football player, I just played it. My friends played in high school and so that created an opportunity for me to play close to home while also pursuing, you know, high academic achievement, which also meant that from an athletic standpoint, my family members could come out and watch and support, but also as well, that I could access my home community, my family in ways that was just, you know, much closer proximity then if I went to school out of the city or out of state. Why African American studies as a major? Primarily because I wanted to, it's kind of funny. You end up studying things with, you don't really know all of it at the time. I mean, at the time it was, I wanted to learn more about black history, black culture, black communities, and what I ended up learning about was kind of more about myself and in being exposed to literary, giant art, music, culture, histories that, you know, it's fan not only the United States, but then also the

continent as well as the diaspora. It just helped me have a better sense of self and with that I felt self-empower to engage in things that I thought could make positive contributions to my communities. And so it was, it was one of those blessings and disguise where I didn't know what it was. I just figured I could study about black folks and as I got into it, I mean, I'm reading people like Walter Rodney and Chenette Chibay and obviously folks like Chainsball and and Lorraine, Lorraine Hansberry, there's so many others and you start to just get a better sense of kind of who you are, how you fit not only within kind of the U.S. society, but how you're a global citizen through the the writings and the lessons from others. Now you did the reverse migration, you went from North to the South of Clark Atlanta. Why Clark Atlanta? Well, one of the most compelling reasons is that Atlanta University, as it was formally called, is where Dr. W.

B. the boys taught. Right. And so for me, because I pursued a master's degree in African and African American studies, I just created my own symbolism in terms of being able to study at a place that he taught for years. Atlanta also was a booming city that allowed me to just be in a different part of the country and pursue studies in a space where blackness was celebrated in ways that look very different than other spaces. Now you had difficulties in choosing your PhD major, African American studies, but you also decided on sociology at the University, a lay-on university in Chicago. Part of it was that at the time, I just didn't know a whole lot about PhD programs. And so when I looked at PhD programs in African and African American studies or any kind of derivative of that name, Pan-African studies, African and African American studies, there were only a handful of schools that that offered it. And so given my

own kind of limited understanding and limited knowledge of, I mean, I still wasn't sure what I wanted to do as a career. I thought I might want to teach. And as I looked at African and African American studies in the PhD, I just knew that not a lot of colleges, universities had that program. And so again, based on my own kind of naivety, I thought that might limit some of the opportunities in the future. And at the same time, I had some friends who were in sociology programs and I began to learn and realize that I could actually study some of the same things at deafly black communities through a sociological lens. And so to me, figuring that most schools had social sciences or some, you know, derivation of sociology or some close proximity, I thought that would give me a lot of different types of opportunities. I understand. If you're just joining us, I'm Johnny O'Henson, Jr. And you're listening to In Black America from KUT Radio. And we speak with Dr. Derek armed rooms, Associate Professor of Sociology and

African Studies at the University of Cincinnati. And also being black, being male on campus, understanding, confronting black male collegiate experiences. Dr. Bruns, what led you to write this book? It really grew out of my own schooling experiences. And so, you know, being a professor, I have a unique opportunity to not only read and study other people's knowledge, I also have an opportunity to create knowledge that hopefully has an impact not only on people's lives, but on communities and institutions. And so as I continuously, even till today, reflect on my own schooling experiences, K-12 all the way through my graduate studies, excuse me, my college and graduate studies, given the types of schools that I attended, given some of the narratives that are out about black students in general, black males in particular, things such as they don't care about school, you know, the over preponderance and over support for athletic prowess as opposed to academic and intellectual

skills. I thought about my experiences and going from 100 percent black high school to a college that was four and a half percent. And I thought about some of the adjustments and some of the trials, tribulations, lessons and triumphs that I had in my own experiences. And of course, at the same time, we know that college's universities, particularly, you know, historically and predominantly white institutions, continue to be spaces that are rife for black students with regards to hostility challenges, discrimination, racism, et cetera. And part of, so part of what I wanted to do was give agency to black men's experiences in college, in particular, it just so happened that the schools that I studied were the students that I partnered with attended schools that were historically white institutions. And at the same time, I wanted them to tell their own stories, as opposed to people constantly talking about black men, but not talking with black men. Understand, is it somewhat different you arrived at the University of

Louisville in 2012 from the students that you are now encountering at the University of Cincinnati in 2018? I mean, I think that I used to teach at the community college as well, at the prairie state, yeah, prairie state. Right. So as I think about my own teaching experiences within higher education, I think we find similar trends that we find students who are, you know, incredibly talented, intellectual, academically oriented, high educational aspirations. You know, on the other end of the aspect, when we have students who struggle, some of that is for person-to-reads, motivation, some of that family background, some of it is previous schooling experiences, some of it is the environment at that college. And we have a bunch of students in the middle who, you know, with various backgrounds are kind of navigating the negotiation, negotiating college campuses and trying to pursue their goals. That's been consistent for me at each of those three institutions, prairie state, University of Louisville, and here at the

University of Cincinnati, I think one of the things that you just, you know, really kind of contributes to what you experience and how students try to navigate and negotiate college is that college culture. So, you know, at Louisville, during the time that I was there, there was a lot of focus and attention on the athletic prowess of the institution. Okay. Here at Cincinnati, it didn't just so happen that the football team did really well. Maybe I brought a little luck with me, but they did really well, but you don't have the overdominance of athletics, right? So, here at the University of Cincinnati, at least in the time that I've been here, it's a bit different, and I want to scale it. It's just a bit different than the focus on athletics at the University of Louisville. And then, of course, if I go to prairie state, well, they don't have a football team. This is a community college, so their sports and athletic programs aren't funded in any stretch of the imagination in the same ways, and so that different kind of institutional climate has an impact on how students are attracted to these institutions, how they make

meanings of their experiences and how they try to negotiate. And the study that you conducted, which led me to reach out to you for an interview, you said blackmail, initiative programs, enhance the success and belonging of African-American males on campus. Yeah, so I have a major study that it's a multi-year, multi-institutional study where I'm looking at 65, in that particular study that you referenced, 65, blackmail across three different institutions, all of whom participate in some form or variation of a blackmail initiative program. In these programs, buying large or intended to increase the retention and graduation of blackmail. For the most part, they really kind of have two main domains, an academic domain and a social domain. And so academically, it's a focus on, you know, pursuing your education of goals and ensuring that you're tapping into the resources that are available on campus and also forming some

cohorts, if you will, or study groups or, you know, bonding sessions where they're supporting each other academically. And then on the social side, it's similar, except that, you know, we're talking about meeting students in the holistic ways in their whole sales, so that although you're a college student, you're not only a college student. And so what I found, based on these men's narratives, this is a qualitative interview study, they gave credence overwhelmingly to ways in which these programs kept them focused academically, provided them with multiple levels of support, not only their own kind of blackmail peers, but also with faculty and staff on campus. They felt like they had easier access to resources than if they would have tried to have to figure it out on their own. But even more importantly, many of these guys or a number of these guys were students where they were one of very few in a classroom or very much minoritized numerically in a major program that they were studying. And so having this blackmail collective that they could count

on, that they could feel holy and that these were really in some ways, not just safe spaces, but actually counter spaces to the dominant institution of climate that where people held beliefs, perceptions, and even, you know, spoke these expressively, that they didn't think blackmail were capable, they didn't, you know, are you an athlete? Are you here because of affirmative action? And so these, what we might call racial microaggressions, they're really delimited and demonized who these men are, their abilities, and these blackmail collective spaces, these blackmail initiative spaces, they really felt like they could be heard, they could share, they could be healed, and they could develop and come up with strategies on how to navigate some of these things. So when I look at all of those things collectively, I mean, overwhelming increase in or high numbers of their graduation, even engaging in leadership roles, not just within blackmail initiative programs on their campuses, but then also in other registered student organizations such as Creek Life,

et cetera, this really became a micro community that helped them see their possible sales. Does the administration at these colleges and university understand some of the hidden pressures if one African-American male isn't an athlete that they're going through on campus? I would say yes and no. Yes, from the standpoint that these things aren't new, right? Exactly, exactly. We look at the black student campus movement in the 1970s, much of the same kind of issues they were talking about here 40 years later are really the same. It's not just affecting black men, it's also affecting black women, and even other students who are non-gender conforming, et cetera, you know, different sexualities. And so these are not necessarily new phenomena. So to me, if folks say that they don't know, then that's problematic, right? And at the same time, when they do know, the questions just be, you know, we're not, we're not satisfied

with you know, what are you doing to move the needle to change the institutional culture and climate to put supports in place that help these men and other students who may face other types of challenges, you know, be successful on campus. Getting back to your book, Dr. Brune, why was it easy for these men to express themselves to you about their experiences on campus? Well, I think the main part of what I do and the work that I do, and I'm not just talking about research, but I'm talking about teaching and talking about service, right? I'm talking about just working with people. This is, we're talking about people and people's lives. And so the most important thing for me is about building relationships because at the end of the day, I can go and find research in a lot of other places. So this isn't an approach or I don't take this approach just because I need a research project. I'm doing it because I'm trying to support students efforts. I'm trying to learn more about their experiences so that I can in some ways, whether through writing or you know, through my own leadership, et cetera

contribute to ways to enhance their college experiences. I think that there's a bit of authenticity that the students see in my approach and the things that I've done in the past that I share with them and where it is and I'm trying to go and what it is I'm trying to accomplish. And I think that they you know appreciate my willingness to listen. I think you know, one of the most significant findings in this study and it's not necessarily surprised, it's actually really frustrating is you know, the end of the interview and kind of when we just continue with it, just have conversation, but it's not an interview based. I've asked a number of these guys, you know, outside of say black military programs and maybe your family, does anybody, have you talked to anybody on campus about your experiences? Overwhelmingly the answer is no. Nobody's ever asked me. So we have, you know, scores of students on college campuses who are facing challenges. And I say that very broadly because I don't

want to try to nail down if there's just one or two challenges. Again, it depends on their backgrounds and experiences. And yet we're putting programs in place and we treat these programs as if they're a fix all. And at the same time, we're not even talking to the students. Right. I like, I don't even, I mean, that's so anti-educational. Exactly. That it's really painful and it's frustrating. And so I think that was part of it, too, that genuinely speaking, nobody's show, you know, beyond, again, beyond black military programs. And in particular, the staff members and their black male peers and a few others, they didn't feel like anybody was even, they didn't even feel like people was interested in them as people first. Right. Interested in their experiences. And we're willing to listen in efforts to try to create change. So if I can buy in all of those, why am I going to talk to somebody? Exactly. Yeah, I don't believe you interested in knowing. You know, professors doesn't call me by name,

professors stereotyping me because I'm sitting in the back of the class, you know, I'm being policed on where I sit in the class, I ask for help, then that's certified, you know, interpreted a certification that I don't know. So, you know, from that kind of perspective, you know, we begin to ask questions well, if they don't get an opportunity to talk to us and by us is the village. Right. Then who do they, who do they get to talk to? Talk to them. Right. Dr. Brune, when you, when you look at the number of African American males on campus and then understanding the pressures in which they're undergoing with the isolation and the feeling that no one really believes that we should be here, how does that affect them in the educational process? Because colleges are already hard enough with all this other stuff going on. So, one of the things I think about, I mean, this is my, from my own experience is that there too many colleges operate on this sink or swim mantra, right? That once you get to a college campus, you just need to figure it out. Well, that's really

problematic. Exactly. Because that's based in the assumptions that people have had these prior experiences, they really set them up to know how to navigate that. And the reality is, even as I think about being, you know, my role as a teacher and an educator, what we ask students to do in college classrooms are in many ways fundamentally different than what we ask them to do in high school. So, part of what we're doing, especially in those first years, is helping students learn how to be college students. But if we set up a scenario in an environment where if you don't know this, then some kind of way, or some kind of, you know, interpretation of your lesser than, then that immediately creates world blogs and institutions, instantaneous, you know, obstacles to these students are facing. And one of the things is really, really, I, another critical finding is that even with these challenges, barriers, obstacles, setbacks, lowered expectations, no expectations, lack of support, these men still have high educational aspirations. So, I think that in and of itself, number one, pushes

back against that kind of deficit-oriented narrative that Black men don't care about education. And at the same time, it also speaks very, in a very real sense, to these men's educational urgency and their educational aspirations. And so, even when I'm facing all of these things, I'm still going to try to figure out a way to pursue my goal. I, you know, so unfortunately, we have these dominant narratives that speak for Black men as if they're a monolith. Black students in general, actually, as if they're a monolith. I mean, we can think about Black women in their, in many ways, constrained by their successes. So, because they have high levels of retention and graduation, people present that or interpret that as, well, they don't really need any help. So, we've got to, we've got to appreciate the nuance and heterogeneity of students experiences and understand that, you know, different students, different student populations might need different forms and types of support. And at the same time, we also got to make sure that we always and continuously hold

space for students to tell their truths and speak about their experiences on our college campuses. Because otherwise, then we're really not appreciating who our students are. We celebrate diversity in numbers, but we're really not appreciating what our students are bringing to the campus. The cultural knowledge is that they have to offer us in the ways that they try to navigate campus. I think about my preparation for college, junior high and high school, knowing that the end game was to attend college. So, that tenium was always the preparation. I found an interesting chapter to actually dealt with that. And I think if one, if regardless of the ethnicity is going to attend college, they should reach this chapter. But why is that important to have all these ducks in row to prepare yourself long before you arrive on a college and university campus? I think for me, you know, again, in terms of experience and research and working with students from various

backgrounds, is that, you know, transition in college is just difficult for some students. You know, if you think about the class schedule, so in high school, you're very regimented, you're pretty much 830 to 330. You've got things laid out. There's very few times where you don't have anything to do. You're supposed to be somewhere. You can get to college and not have classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. You have to learn how to be very strategic in terms of time management and self-management, right? Those are not necessarily skills that our students are learning in the same ways within the K-12 setting. So, you know, another thing that a colleague and I, Arthur Davis, Dr. Arthur Davis, we write about is, you know, what are the ways that our kind of high school students can learn from current college students, right? So, we talk about this notion of peer pedagogies because they're in close proximity to age. And it's these valuable lessons and insights that they can learn from folks who just kind of got into college that, you know, you're

not going to necessarily learn in a high school context kind of in a general sense. So, kind of being exposed not only to colleges of varying types, so, you know, my work primarily speaks to kind of historical and predominantly white institutions because those were the, you know, where the students were. But we can, you know, talk about Hispanic-Serbian institutions, community colleges, of course, historically black colleges and universities. And so, you know, how do you transition from whatever your high school and your background is to that specific type of institution? Dr. Derek Abrams, Assistant Professor of Sociology and African Studies at the University of Cincinnati and author of being black, being male on campus, understanding and confronting black male collegiate experiences. If you have questions or comments or suggestions asked your future in black America programs, email us at inblackamerica at kut.org. Also, let us know what radio station you heard us over. Remember to like us on Facebook and to follow us on Twitter. The views and opinions expressed

on this program are not necessarily those of this station or of the University of Texas at Austin. You can hear previous programs online at kut.org. I'm sure we have the opportunity again for technical producer David Alvarez. I'm John L. Hanson, Jr. Thank you for joining us today. Please join us again next week. CD copies of this program are available and may be purchased by writing in black America CDs. KUT radio 300 West Dean Keaton Boulevard Austin, Texas 78712. That's in black America CDs KUT radio 300 West Dean Keaton Boulevard Austin, Texas 78712. This has been a production of KUT radio.