“Every Day We Wake Up with Something to Prove”: Black Misandry and Black Men’s Experiences in Navigating the College Environment

Abstract

This research analyzes how Black men understand and make sense of their college experiences through their racialized and gendered identities and the campus climate. In-depth interviews with 105 Black men attending 5 different institutions, including three historically White institutions (HWIs) and two Hispanic-serving institutions (HSIs), reveal how they are accosted by Black misandry on a continual and routine basis during their college years. Based on students’ narratives, I find that Black misandry renders Black men as undeserving and unworthy, which is predicated on their seeming nothingness and nonbeing. Students cite being unseen and misperceived, acknowledge various ways that they are subjected to hyper-surveillance on campus, and discuss differential treatment. Given the ways that they are troubled and challenged on campus, the students describe what can be considered as daily battles of Black misandry—a specific form of gendered racism that creates seemingly daily phenomena that require them to prove their worth and being. Such efforts, including the emotional and psychological labor that they must enact, inform how they make sense of and navigate the campus ethos at HWIs and HSIs alike. Findings are presented across two main themes: (1) always already facing deficits and (2) dispositions and responses to anti-Blackness and Black misandry. These themes reveal a near consistency of Black misandry across both institutional types and inform the coping strategies that Black men employ in order to pursue their educational goals and keep their humanity intact.