<em>Black Student Leaders Practicing Resistance in the Midst of Chaos: Applying Transgenerational Activist Knowledge to Navigate a Predominantly White Institution</em>

Examining the continuum of Black student leadership: From community to college and beyond

“…Findings contribute to research about how racial socialization informs the student identity development of Black collegians who are involved in leadership roles (Arminio et al, 2000;Dugan, 2006;Harper & Quaye, 2007;Herndon & Hirt, 2004;Hotchkins, 2017b;Hotchkins & Dancy, 2017;Kelley, 2018;Peters, 1985;Stevenson, 1994) while purposefully enacting social justice on a PWI campus. Data analysis resulted in two emergent themes: (a) Collective Definition; and (b) Selfsacrifice.…”

“…Participants explained that elders, parents and fictive kin racially socialized them to have high self-esteem, actively practice pro-Blackness and give back to their communities while being leaders in co-curricular organizations. The transgenerational racial socialization process instructed students about how to use leadership roles to develop and maintain Black student communities, in part through practicing racial resistance (Hotchkins, 2017b), which positively contributed to their resilience. Secondly, participants stated that although practicing social justice through using racial resistance was essential, they also found a sense of worth in expressing selfless, yet sacrificial modes of leadership to reinforce the preservation of a Black cultural collective while attending their PWIs.…”

“…In fact, participants purposefully led to uplift, emancipate and support Black peers attending UW despite the adverse personal impact-all due to a deep sense of Black communal connectedness. The presumed need to apply racial resistance (Hotchkins, 2017b) was attributed to racism experienced by participants at UW and undergirded by their micro-, meso-, exo-, macro-, and chrono-systematic (Bronfenbrenner, 1979(Bronfenbrenner, , 1994(Bronfenbrenner, , 2005 transgenerational, racial socialization learning processes. To this point, Black student leader ability to identify, strategize about how to endure and accurately locate hostile campus racial climate sources (Gusa, 2010;Hotchkins, 2017a;Hotchkins & Dancy, 2017;Hurtado et al, 2015) proved beneficial to navigating college.…”

“…This assertion that Black families are a communal resource informs an understanding about how when in doubt Black students must not only thrive during uncertainty, but also were also prepared to be racially resiliency prior to attending college (Herndon & Hirt, 2004;McAdoo, 1993). Similarly, Hotchkins (2017b) defines the racial resistance of Black collegians as "identifying racially threatening sources (e.g., White peers) and responding by developing strategies (e.g., organizing protest) to avert race-based trauma" (p. 270)-a liberatory process that is reminiscent of Black collegian's Civil Rights pursuits to secure social justice for Black people. To this point students engage in emancipatory activities as leaders in historically Black organizations (Dancy & Hotchkins, 2015;Hotchkins & Dancy, 2017;Patton et al, 2011;Sutton & Kimbrough, 2001) where they further learn how to be socially responsible, challenge deficit stereotypes and respond to racism where threatening campus racial climates are prevalent (Dugan, 2006;Joseph, 2003;Morris, 1981;Robinson-Wood, 2009;Rosenthal, 1975;Sawyer III & Palmer, 2014).…”

“…Subsequently, Black students who traverse WIP environments by practicing social justice activism as leaders in historically Black and predominantly White co-curricular organizations do so by means of online involvement to avert racism-based circumstances (Sandoval-Almazan & Gil-Garcia, 2014;Schuschke & Tynes, 2016). These culturally compromising situations place Black students in psychological, physiological and behavioral jeopardy while pursuing degree attainment (Arminio et al, 2000;Chatters, 2018;Hotchkins & Dancy, 2017;Sutton & Kimbrough, 2001). As it pertains to participants in this study, the personal rationale for social justice pursuits is informed by elders and parents of Black student leaders who were raised within communities that valued activism and socialized their children to do the same.…”