“No CAP”: Reflections on the Intersectionality, Positionality and the Experiences of Navigating Race as a Black Male Criminologist

The arrest of respected Black professor and scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr., by the Cambridge Police Department in 2009 for allegedly breaking into his own home proverbially “set the table” for this discussion. Following his arrest, Gates noted: “There are one million black men in jail in this country and last Thursday I was one of them. This is outrageous and this is how poor black men across the country are treated every day in the criminal justice system. It’s one thing to write about it, but altogether another to experience it.” Regardless of social class or occupational prestige, Black professors at predominately White institutions are subjected to hyper-surveillance and racially bias policing in public spaces on campus. Using intersectionality and positionality as conceptual frameworks, this paper describes the lived experiences of a Black professor and criminologist at a predominately White institution and his encounters with the university’s police department and the carceral state. Using Armour’s (2020) N*gga Theory, which is framed by Critical Race Theory, I analyze the relationship between race, class, unequal justice, and the politics of respectability. I use Armour’s N*gga Theory (2020) to show solidarity between those vilified as a “crime prone” Black underclass, and the less “crime prone” Black bourgeoisie. Although, the Black bourgeoisie in the academy may embrace the politics of respectability, according to N*gga Theory there is no moral or political distinction between the those considered good Negroes and those considered bad.

“I’ll Be Right Behind You”: Native American Families, Land Debt, and College Affordability

Family connections are critical for Native student persistence, yet families’ voices are absent in research. Using an Indigenous-specific version of educational debt, land debt, we center familial perspectives by exploring the financial struggles among Native families as their students transition to a Predominately White Institution. Findings indicate that Indigenous families experienced fear and frustration surrounding college affordability and the financial aid process. Regardless, these Native families made extreme sacrifices in paying for college. These findings were contextualized within the economic conditions created by land theft from Indigenous peoples. Returning to land debt, we argue that institutions need to begin from a perspective of what is owed to Native peoples in their policy decisions. That is, such decisions should take account of the benefits historically accrued by institutions residing on forcibly taken Indigenous land, and then examine how that debt can be repaid by supporting Native students, families, and communities.

Critical Service-Learning

Colleges and universities in the U.S. engage in service-learning in order to cultivate dispositions of empathy and civic engagement. This chapter draws from a Foundations of Education course in a historically and predominately White institution participating in service-learning in predominately Black and Latinx high schools. The purpose of the course was to teach about the legacy of state sponsored oppression, social justice education, and advocacy. The course provided theoretical frameworks to the practical knowledge and skills that students garnered from engagement in community schools. Data collected for research purposes were quantitative and qualitative. The results of the study show that service-learning can be a vehicle toward social justice education particularly in exposing oppressive structures and practices in urban schools.

THE ECOLOGY OF LATINX TWITTER

Twitter is a conduit of culture. A miscellany of networked communities where participants reinforce and/or dismantle socially constructed ideas and narratives. For nearly a decade, studies on the uses and gratifications, and sociality of ethnic-centered networks in the U.S. have emerged. The body of literature is interdisciplinary and largely discusses Black Twitter (Brock, 2012; Florini, 2013; Sharma, 2013; Clarke, 2014; Lee, 2017), and to a lesser extent, Asian-American Twitter (Lopez, 2016). Conversely, research on Latinx Twitter is scarce (Novak, Johnson, & Pontes, 2016; Slaughter, 2016; Rosenbaum, 2018). As the second largest Spanish speaking country in the world, Latinx make up 18% of the U.S. population – the nation’s largest minority group (Pew Research Center, 2017). Often described in monolithic terms, Latinx epitomizes diversity. The pan-ethnicity represents over 21 nationalities, and a host of European and Indigenous languages, in which regional dialects are blended with African tongues to varying degrees. We take the position that prior to conducting behavioral focused analyses on Latinx Twitter, the network’s ecology must be defined. This means, to understand how the network of tens of ethnicities and heritages has self-organized. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to augment existing scholarship by exploring its ecology. Through a content analysis and interviews with six Latinx and Afro-Latinx women (18-24 years old) attending a Predominately White Institution (PWI) in U.S. South, we identified three major ecological themes: (1) Seeking Latinx Twitter; (2) Mega Network versus Sub-Networks; and (3) Implications for Monolithic Narratives.

Emerging Black Scholars: Critical Reflections on the Impact of the Association of Black Psychologists

This article highlights two Student Circle members’ reflections on how the Association of Black Psychologists (ABPsi) has had an impact on their development as emerging scholars, clinicians, and advocates in African (Black) psychology. The emerging scholars share their personal training experiences at a predominately White institution and historical Black college/university. Reflections also include how ABPsi members and scholarly works have influenced their identities as future African (Black) psychologists. In addition, the history, meaning, and personal experience with jegnaship will be discussed. Finally, this reflection concludes with a call to action for students to get involved in shaping the future of ABPsi.