Table Of ContentBLACK MEN IN COLLEGE
Black Men in College provides vital information about how to eff ectively
support, retain, and graduate Black male undergraduates. This edited
collection centers on the notion that Black male collegians are not a
homogenous group; rather, they are representative of rarely acknowledged
diff erences that exist among them. This valuable text suggests that
understanding these diff erences is critical to making true in-roads in serving
Black men. Chapter contributors describe the diverse challenges Black men
in HBCUs face, and discuss how to support and retain high-achieving men,
gay men, academically unprepared men, low-income men, men in STEM,
American immigrants, millennials, collegiate fathers, those affi liated with
Greek letter organizations, and athletes. Recommendations for policy and
practice to encourage retention and persistence to degree completion are
grounded in extant theory and research. This text is a must-read for all
higher education faculty, researchers, and student aff airs practitioners
interested in addressing the contemporary college experiences of Black men
in post-secondary institutions.
Robert T. Palmer is Assistant Professor of Student Aff airs Administration at
The State University of New York—Binghamton.
J. Luke Wood is Assistant Professor of Administration, Rehabilitation, and
Post-Secondary Education at San Diego State University.
BLACK MEN IN
COLLEGE
Implications for HBCUs and
Beyond
Edited by Robert T. Palmer and J. Luke Wood
First published 2012
by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Simultaneously published in the UK
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2012 Taylor & Francis
The right of the editors to be identifi ed as the authors of the editorial material, and of the
authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and
78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any
form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented,
including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system,
without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks,
and are used only for identifi cation and explanation without intent to infringe.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Palmer, Robert T.
Black men in college : implications for HBCUS and beyond / by Robert T. Palmer and
J. Luke Wood.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. African American men—Education (Higher) 2. African American male college
students. 3. African American universities and colleges. I. Wood, J. Luke, 1982– II.
Title.
LC2781.P35 2012
378.1’982996073—dc23
2011026466
ISBN: 978-0-415-89383-1 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-415-89384-8 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-0-203-15644-5 (ebk)
Typeset in Bembo and Stone Sans
by EvS Communication Networx, Inc.
Printed and bound in the United States of America on acid-free paper
by Edwards Brothers, Inc.
CONTENTS
Foreword vii
Michael J. Cuyjet
Acknowledgments xi
1 Setting the Foundation for Black Men in Colleges: Implications for
Historically Black Colleges and Universities and Beyond 1
Robert T. Palmer and J. Luke Wood
2 High Achieving Black Men at Historically Black Colleges and
Universities 18
Marybeth Gasman and Dorsey Spencer Jr.
3 Coming Out of the Dark: Black Gay Men’s Experiences at
Historically Black Colleges and Universities 26
Terrell L. Strayhorn and Jameel A. Scott
4 “Yes, I Can!” Strengths-Based Approaches for Engaging and
Empowering Academically Underprepared Black Men 41
Tiff any P. Fountaine and Joelle Carter
5 “Reaching Out to My Brothers”: Improving the Retention
of Low-Income Black Men at Historically Black Colleges and
Universities: A Critical Review of the Literature 57
Jameel A. Scott
vi Contents
6 Establishing Critical Relationships: How Black Males Persist in
Physics at HBCUs 71
Sharon Fries-Britt, Brian A. Burt, and Khadish Franklin
7 Bicultural Experiences of Second-Generation Black American
Males 89
Lorenzo DuBois Baber
8 Standing at the Intersection: Black Male Millennial College
Students 107
Fred A. Bonner, II
9 Black Fathers in College: Multiple Identities, Persistence, and
Contextual Diff erences 122
T. Elon Dancy, II and Gralon A. Johnson
10 Black Men, Fraternities, and Historically Black Colleges and
Universities 138
Dorian L. McCoy
11 “Man-to-Man”: An Exploratory Study of Coaches’ Impact on
Black Male Student-Athlete Success at Historically Black Colleges
and Universities 148
David Horton, Jr.
12 Academically Gifted Black Male Under graduates in Engineering:
Perceptions of Factors Contribut ing to their Success in an
Historically Black College and University 163
Alonzo M. Flowers
13 Innovative Initiatives and Recommendations for Practice
and Future Research: Enhancing the Status of Black Men at
Historically Black Colleges and Universities and Beyond 176
J. Luke Wood and Robert T. Palmer
About the Contributors 197
Index 205
FOREWORD
Access to college by Black students has lagged behind that of White students
since the inception of higher education in this country. The upturn in admis-
sion of Black students to predominantly White institutions (PWIs) that began
in the late 1960s and early 1970s was matched by increased study of the issues
related to this defi ciency. However, much of the earlier discussion articulated
only the problems and failed to focus adequately on their solutions. Fortunately,
more recent research and writing on Black student college attendance has
included discussion on how to resolve many of these issues confronting students
and how to help those students achieve tangible results in college completion.
One other issue that, thankfully, has shown some evolution over the past
20 years of writing on Black student college attendance is the recognition of
subpopulations in the community of Black college students. In the mid-1990s,
I started asking for the disaggregation of data on Black college students and its
interpretation to show how Black men and Black women college students dif-
fer in perceptions, performance, and interests. Other scholars have also voiced
that concern and have also called for an extension of the disaggregation of
student information and research based on those data to include other char-
acteristics besides gender. That message continues to go forth to the higher
education community as an important part of the eff ort to aid Black students’
matriculation.
Carrying this idea a step further, researchers have begun to further disag-
gregate the study of Black male college students in particular. As Strayhorn and
Scott state in chapter 3 of this book, “much of what has been written about
Black men in higher education treats them as a monolithic group whose expe-
riences are much more similar than diff erent. Yet a growing body of research
indicates that ‘they are not all the same’.” Happily, the study of Black men
viii Foreword
is being expanded to focus on a number of specifi c subgroups among that
population.
Perhaps the last of the areas where attention needs to be focused, but hereto-
fore had not been adequately addressed, is the diff erences demonstrated by stu-
dents at diff erent kinds of institutions. For example, the proportion of research
on students at community colleges lags behind the percentage of students who
actually attend such institutions, particularly research on students of color.
Likewise, there is a corresponding absence of research on students at histori-
cally Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) probably because, despite their
signifi cant contribution to the creation of an educated Black population for a
century and a half, they represent today only 3% of the institutions of higher
education in this country. However, as Robert T. Palmer and J. Luke Wood
explain in chapter 1 of this volume, those 3% of the nation’s schools produce
20% of Black undergraduate degrees, 11% of all master’s degrees, 11% of all
doctorates, and 20% of all fi rst professional degrees earned by Black students.
So, it is for these reasons that I enthusiastically welcome the work that
Robert T. Palmer and J. Luke Wood present in this volume. They shine a
bright light on the importance that HBCUs continue to have in educating a
disproportionately high number of this nation’s Black male college students.
More importantly, they give proper emphasis to the wonderful diversity within
that Black male population on those campuses that is too often overlooked
by academicians who have not taken the time to become more familiar with
them. This book begins by giving a properly comprehensive explanation of the
HBCU environment that provides the context for the academic, cocurricular,
and social lives of its male students and then proceeds to enlighten readers to
the intricacies of the issues of numerous subgroups within that population,
including: high-achieving Black men; gay Black men; academically unprepared
Black men; low-income Black men; Black men in science education; Black
American immigrant students; Black male Millennial students; Black fathers;
Black men affi liated with historically Black fraternities; Black male athletes;
and academically gifted Black males in engineering. The book concludes with
programmatic initiatives implemented on campuses across the nation to help
retain Black male collegians, provides salient metalevel recommendations from
chapter contributors, and off ers directions for future research.
Such a review of these student characteristics and the impact they have on
each other and on the colleges themselves provides an important view of the
wonderful mosaic that is the Black male population on many of the campuses
of our country’s HBCUs. This picture would be most welcome at any time. It
is particularly salient in 2011 as HBCUs and their tremendous impact continue
to endure new threats to their existence like the one being proposed by the
current governor of Louisiana, who is trying to merge one of his state’s premier
historically Black universities with a neighboring predominantly White school,
and to eliminate one HBCU campus entirely. As more research like that pre-
Foreword ix
sented in the present work is published, we can all learn to better appreciate the
national treasure that our HBCUs still are and how they serve their students in
a very important and critical way.
I also believe that the impact of this book can extend far beyond the cam-
puses where this research material was collected. The critical work being done
at HBCUs to support, retain, and graduate Black men can be signifi cant “best
practice” models for use at many of the PWIs across the country as well. Fac-
ulty, academic administrators, and student aff airs practitioners at all institutions
can all learn retention strategies for Black men from the material in this volume.
Bravo, Drs. Palmer and Wood!
Michael J. Cuyjet
Professor of College Student Personnel Program
Department of Educational and Counseling
University of Louisville
