Policing Black Life: Black Student Leaders’ Stories of Race and Racism

Drawing on two 90-min interviews and multiple follow-up conversations with 16 Black student leaders, this study couples Critical Race Theory and Critical Race Methodology to examine their stories of race and racism, illustrating how they are policed through institutional racism. Findings describe the oppressive structures that Black student leaders work in, including how they experience overt acts of racism from peers, advisors, and administrators, leading them to self-police themselves. Additionally, findings account for the inequitable systems in higher education when their expectations as Black student leaders being policed through labor and work, exploited and expected to work in inequitable systems in higher education, where their labor was uncompensated and rewarded. Finally, participants, especially Black women, documented how they were physically policed by being asked to appease traditional white norms and standards of appearance under the guise of professionalism. As a survival mechanism, they frequently had to comply with these ideologies if they wanted to ascend to leadership within their student organizations, causing them to rethink how they showed up in these white spaces. We provide explicit recommendations for practices and policies that address policing injustices in higher education and combat the inequitable racialized labor they experience.