Campus Counterspaces: Black and Latinx Students' Search for Community at Historically White Universities

by Micere Keels

Overview

Frustrated with the flood of news articles and opinion pieces that were skeptical of minority students' "imagined" campus microaggressions, Micere Keels, a professor of comparative human development, set out to provide a detailed account of how racial-ethnic identity structures Black and Latinx students' college transition experiences.

Tracking a cohort of more than five hundred Black and Latinx students since they enrolled at five historically white colleges and universities in the fall of 2013 Campus Counterspaces finds that these students were not asking to be protected from new ideas. Instead, they relished exposure to new ideas, wanted to be intellectually challenged, and wanted to grow. However, Keels argues, they were asking for access to counterspaces—safe spaces that enable radical growth. They wanted counterspaces where they could go beyond basic conversations about whether racism and discrimination still exist. They wanted time in counterspaces with likeminded others where they could simultaneously validate and challenge stereotypical representations of their marginalized identities and develop new counter narratives of those identities.

In this critique of how universities have responded to the challenges these students face, Keels offers a way forward that goes beyond making diversity statements to taking diversity actions.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781501746901
Publisher:	Cornell University Press
Publication date:	01/15/2020
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	240
Sales rank:	623,061
File size:	950 KB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Micere Keels is Associate Professor in Comparative Human Development at the University of Chicago. She is also the founding director of the Trauma Responsive Educational Practices project.

Table of Contents

Introduction: It Doesn't Have to Be Race-Ethnicity to Be about Race-Ethnicity
1. Outlining the Problem
2. The Impossibility of a Color-Blind Identity: Shifting Social Identities from the Margin to the Center of Our Understanding of How Historically Marginalized Students Experience Campus Life
3. An Ambivalent Embrace: How Financially Distressed Students Make Sense of the Cost of College —With Resney Gugwor
4. Strategic Disengagement: Preserving One's Academic Identity by Disengaging from Campus Life —With Ja'Dell Davis
5. Power in the Midst of Powerlessness: Scholar-Activist Identity amid Racially and Ethnically Motivated Violence—With Elan Hope
6. Importance of a Critical Mass: Experiencing One's Differences as Valued Diversity Rather Than a Marginalized Threat—With Carly Offidani-Bertrand
7. Finding One's People and One's Self on Campus: The Role of Extracurricular Organizations —With Gabriel Velez
8. Split between School, Home, Work, and More: Commuting as a Status and a Way of Being —With Hilary Tackie and Elan Hope
9. Out of Thin Air: When One's Academic Identity Is Not Simply an Extension of One's Family Identity —With Emily Lyons
10. A Guiding Hand: Advising That Connects with Students' Culturally Situated Motivational Orientations toward College—With Tasneem Mandviwala
11. (Dis)integration: Facilitating Integration by Carefully Attending to Difference

What People are Saying About This

Rachelle Winkle-Wagner

This is an excellent book that offers a significant contribution to the existing literature. A sense of the trajectory of Latinx and Black students' transitions is a new contribution that is needed in the field.

Beverly Daniel Tatum

In this important book, Micere Keels amplifies the voices of Black and Latinx students and their search for identity-affirming community in the face of marginalizing forces on historically White campuses. It offers important insights and actionable recommendations to campus leaders who are serious about supporting the success of all of their students. Recommended reading!

Elizabeth Lee

"The authors bring an important, specific focus to a number of populations that are often left less considered. The book is well written and engaging, drawing on  data that were clearly gathered with great care—the interviews are moving, intimate, and reflect a crucial rapport and trust."

Elizabeth M. Lee

The authors bring an important, specific focus to a number of populations that are often left less considered. Well-written and engaging, using fantastic data that was painstakingly gathered, the book contains interviews that are moving and intimate and that reflect a crucial rapport and trust.

Editorial Reviews

Through her exploration of counterspaces specifically in the context of Black and Latinx student experiences, Keels offers realistic steps that practitioners can implement both within historically White institutions and across them. Within Keels' framework, there is incredible potential for discussions on how colleges might re-examine current diversity policies and practices in the face of current social unrest across American institutions.

Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management

"The authors bring an important, specific focus to a number of populations that are often left less considered. The book is well written and engaging, drawing on data that were clearlygathered with great care—the interviews are moving, intimate,and reflect a crucial rapport and trust."

Elizabeth Lee

"This is anexcellent bookthat offers a significant contribution to the existing literature. A sense of the trajectory of Latinx and Black students' transitions is a new contribution that is needed in the field."

Rachelle Winkle-Wagner