by Eve Rosenfeld, University at Buffalo
Across the board, psychology graduate students of color face significant barriers compared to White students. For example, students of color rarely see themselves represented in their mentors, supervisors, and institutional leadership. This lack of representation makes it difficult for students of color to identify with professional role models and can reduce confidence in their studies and career prospects. Additionally, being a student of color in an overwhelmingly White student body and professional field contributes to feelings of isolation, making graduate school an unnecessarily fraught and challenging experience. Students of color also tend to carry a greater cognitive load as they contend with minority stress, microaggressions, tokenism, stereotype threat, and the expectation that they code-switch in academic spaces. Students of color are also expected to educate the overwhelmingly White faculty and students in their programs on issues of racial justice and inequality. In navigating the politics and Whiteness of academia, students of color survive by demonstrating a strength we should not need.
These shared adverse experiences in higher education unite students of color. We have an unspoken understanding. We share covert glances across classrooms when non-minority faculty turn our rights into “healthy” academic debates. In safe spaces, we swap stories of everyday racism we encounter in the workplace. Well, some of us do. Others have the distinct honor of being the token minority in their program.
While we share many of these experiences, certain experiences are unique to each minority community. While Latinx Americans’ rates of enrollment in college have doubled in recent years, they still have the lowest average educational attainment of any racial or ethnic group (Musu-Gillette et al., 2017). This means that Latinx graduate students are unlikely to have professional role models and mentors who share their background and are more likely than their non-Latinx Black and White peers to be first-generation college students (Postsecondary National Policy Institute, 2018). Latinx students have faced increased challenges in response to what has been dubbed the “Trump Effect”. Following rising anti-immigration rhetoric and the Trump administration’s attempted termination of DACA, Latinx students in higher-ed face emboldened racism on campus and exploitation of undocumented student labor (Muñoz et al., 2018). Undocumented Latinxs also contended with fear and uncertainty during the elimination of DACA.
Black graduate students face their own set of serious challenges. Recent incidents of police brutality including the murder of George Floyd have added to the racial trauma of Black Americans. Additionally, Black students are underrepresented among tenured faculty and face overt discrimination and rampant microaggressions in academia (for personal accounts, please see #BlackInTheIvory on Twitter).
Although specific underrepresented minority groups face unique challenges in academia, shared solidarity is beneficial for minority student resilience (Muñoz et al., 2018).
The Black community has demonstrated consistent solidarity with the Latinx community. For example, Black Americans protested alongside the Latinx Americans when ICE increased its efforts to tear apart our families and house our children in deplorable detention centers. As Latinx students, we must stand with our Black colleagues to fight police brutality, systemic racism, and racial injustice. Our united voices cannot be silenced.
As I finished writing this article, news broke that SCOTUS has declared Trump’s elimination of DACA unconstitutional. This is a victory for the Latinx community and relieves some of the burden on Latinx students, particularly undocumented students. The SCOTUS decision came about after Black Americans again demonstrated solidarity with Latinxs and the NAACP (among other groups) sued the Trump administration for terminating DACA. It is time for us as Latinx Americans to stand with Black Americans and fight for similar victories for the Black community. We must demand justice for them, as they have done for us so many times before.
Let us echo these words from the streets of the barrio to the halls of the Ivory Tower:
“Black Lives Matter
¡Sin justicia, no hay paz!”
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References
Muñoz, S. M., Vigil, D., Jach, E., & Rodriguez-Gutierrez, M. (2018). Unpacking resilience and trauma: Examining the “Trump Effect” in higher education for undocumented Latinx college students. Association of Mexican American Educators Journal, 12(3), 33-52.
Musu-Gillette, L., de Brey, C., McFarland, J., Hussar, W., Sonnenberg, W., and Wilkinson-Flicker, S. (2017). Status and Trends in the Education of Racial and Ethnic Groups 2017 (NCES 2017-051). U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics. Washington, DC. Retrieved from http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch.
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this newsletter are those of the authors alone and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Psychological Clinical Science Accreditation System (PCSAS).