Race on Campus - What It Feels Like to Be a Black Professor

Sep 29, 2026

Race on Campus examines what racial inclusivity means inside higher education, focusing on the lived experience of Black faculty and broader campus-wide efforts. “What It Feels Like to Be a Black Professor” recounts a personal childhood story shaped by high expectations, education, and fear of mediocrity. It contrasts an absence of “race talk” in the home with the pressures and realities of racism in schooling and academic life, including burdens that persist despite achievement.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages34

Reading Time1 h 26 min

AccessFree to download

Race on Campus

What It Feels Like to Be a Black Professor

The Invisible Labor of Minority Professors

When Pursuing Diversity, Victory Is Hard to Define

Making Diversity Not the Work of One Office, but a Campuswide Priority

Helping Black Men Succeed in College

A Liberal-Arts College Intervenes to Diversify Its Faculty

Advice: ‘A Little More Every Day’

White Like You: The Challenge of Getting White Students to Grapple With Racial Identity

THE CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION ® In Context Race on Campus INSIDE 2 What It Feels Like to Be a Black Professor 8 The Invisible Labor of Minority Professors 13 When Pursuing Diversity, Victory Is Hard to Define 19 Making Diversity Not the Work of One Office, but a Campuswide Priority 22 Helping Black Men Succeed in College 26 A Liberal-Arts College Intervenes to Diversify Its Faculty 29 Advice: ‘A Little More Every Day’ 32 White Like You: The Challenge of Getting White Students to Grapple With Racial Identity C olleges across the country are gripped with questions of racial inclusivity as students demand more recognition, more support, and more change. Their demands and protests draw attention to continuing racial disparities in high- er education, where African-Americans make upa small portion of professors, presidents, and selective-college enrollments. This collection of recent news and commentary from The Chronicle can provide a starting point for discussion of what might be done to improve the climate and conditions on your own campus. ©2015 THE CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION, INC. What It Feels Like to Be a Black Professor By JOHN L. JACKSON JR. A young child scribbling on a blackboard perched atop an easel in the hallway of a two-bedroom Brooklyn apartment. That’s one of my earliest memories . I’m writing my ABCs and spelling out three-letter words, fingertips and palms caked white with chalk. For as long as I can remember, probably from about my second birthday, this was my afternoon routine, a ritual mandated by my stepfather, who would periodically make stops at the chalkboard on his way out the front door, or to the bathroom, just to confirm that I was demonstrating the kind of progress that he expected. He was determined to make sure that I was better prepared for school than all the other kids on the block. More to the point, he had convinced himself that I already was . The man loved to pump me up with positive reinforcement about my intellectual abilities, my God-given gifts—only further enhanced by his judicious enforcement of my daily chalkboard regimen . By the time I started kindergarten, I was more than ready for public school. And I did well, both at the original elementary school I attended (with mostly Afro-Caribbean and African-American classmates) in East Flatbush and at the second one (with a majority of Jewish and Italian kids) just a 15-minute drive south in Canarsie . In junior high and high school, I read and read and read. When I scored in the 90son a test or paper, I would hear tongue-in-cheek (mostly) questions about why I hadn’t gotten the full 100. I got the point. I had to bethe best. I needed to outcompete everybody in my classes . “What did the chiney girls get on the test?” my Trinidadian stepfather would ask. We never really talked about racism in my house, and certainly not as the reason for why I had to do well. In fact, I never heard my parents talk about race at all. When we moved to Canarsie, a lower-middle-class neighborhood, there were ample opportunities for them to wax xenophobic—or at least frustrated and incredulous—about the ethnic whites in our housing project or in the coveted sin- THE TAKEAWAY No amount of publishing or acclaim will exempt you from the burdens that come from being black in higher education. gle-family brick houses just across the street. But if they did, I wasn’t within earshot. Many academics have written about the differences between how African-Americans and black immigrants from the West Indies or Africa deal with racism . They offer various theories for why those differences exist and how they affect black people’s lives . Many of those scholars would find the lack of race-talk in my household predictable, given that my mother and stepfather were both from the Caribbean . But I grew up think- 2 race on campus the chronicle of higher education / november 2 0 1 5 ing of myself as an Afri

FAQs

What core insight does the “Takeaway” emphasize?

No amount of publishing or acclaim can exempt Black academics from the burdens that come with being Black in higher education.

How does the author describe their early experience with education?

The author recalls learning routines centered on practicing the ABCs and spelling, followed by strong academic expectations and a focus on performing better than others.

Why is “race talk” described as limited in the author’s household?

The author states that racism was not discussed at home and that parents rarely spoke about race, making the later pressures feel more externally grounded than internally acknowledged.

Sep 29, 2026

Upload by WPS_1790064749