A laundry list of examples show that the University has always been an Anti-Black institution

Sites of Anti-Blackness: Colleges and Universities in the Settler Colonial State U.S. colleges and universities embed the legacies of the anti-Black settler colonial state (Anderson, 1988; Thelin, 2004). In fact, the explicit function of the university was to operate within (and in service to) the new colonial establishment (Thelin, 2004). Created to educate the offspring of colonizers, the colonial university acted as a preserver of social inequality by only serving White “elite” males (Thelin, 2004). In addition to preparing ministers, lawyers, doctors, and “men of affairs,” the colonial university also functioned to educate the developing nation’s White male descendants about the methods of controlling classes (Palmieri, 1987; Solomon, 1985). The colony envisioned White women as domestics and reproducers who both supplied and served generations of White male colonialists (Palmieri, 1987). The colony dictated the relationship of the enslaved and indigenous to the colonial university, which was consistent with state doctrine. In Ebony and Ivy: Race, Slavery, and the Troubled History of America’s Universities, Wilder (2013) dispels the notion that there were no Black people in colonial colleges. In fact, enslaved Black people outnumbered faculty, administrators, and trustees at a number of Ivy League colleges (Wilder, 2013). Black people erected the buildings, cooked the food, and cleaned the dormitories and yet were not understood as laborers, but as property. Colonizers advocated (from college campus podiums) for the inhumane treatment of Black people everywhere, and violence was a common experience for the enslaved on college campuses. Colonial college trustees (many of whom were ministers) tortured and murdered enslaved Black men, women, and children in the most sadistic ways.

College presidents, many of whom were “slave masters,” used enslaved Black people as personal attendants and as house servants to maintain the president’s mansion. Harvard President Increase Mather (from 1692 to 1701) used an enslaved man “gifted” to him by his son Cotton Mather, to run errands for the college. Harvard President Benjamin Wadsworth (1725-1737) brought an enslaved man named Titus, who lived with his family, to the college and “bought a Negro Wench” two days before arriving on campus. Benjamin Franklin, founder of the College of Philadelphia; the first eight presidents of the College of New Jersey (Princeton); and Georgetown presidents Fathers Louis William Valentin DuBourg (1796-1798) and Stephen L. Dubuisson (1825-1826), all accumulated enslaved Black people for their own personal service during their tenures as the top college administrator (Wilder, 2013).

Inducing the humiliation and suffering of Black people for sport comprises the early student life in the colonial colleges. These practices were necessary to mark White subjecthood and the separation between Black people and Whites. For example, several college students seeking recreation at Harvard (who were all White and male) forced the intoxication of an enslaved Black man almost unto death. One of these men was John Hancock, future governor and signer of the Declaration of Independence and the rest became ministers, doctors, and lawyers (Wilder, 2013). At one of the Yale campuses, the record shows that the early students raped Black women so frequently that the college removed them from the students’ presence except the cook whom the students also terrorized. At Williams College, students forced a Black man to smash his own head into wooden boards and barrels. On other early college campuses, college students shot at Black enslaved children to satisfy their boredom when out of class (Wilder, 2013). Enslaved people at the University of North Carolina were often subjected to “pranks” that, in one case in 1811, involved students running wild while attacking their Black servants. Black people endured whippings, dismemberments, brandings, sexual assault, and secret sales that disrupted family units—all on the college campus (Wilder, 2013). This resulted in emotional trauma, leading some Black people to commit suicide. The next section details studies that expose recomposed and reenacted colonial preoccupations.

Colonial Preoccupations, Black Labor, and U.S. Universities Several scholars have explored the differentiated labor expectations placed on Black academics (Brown, 2012; Burgess, 1997; Gregory, 1999; Patitu & Hinton, 2003; Thomas & Hollenshead, 2001). These expectations come in the form of increased mentoring, advising, and committee work, among other demands. As previously mentioned, there is clear evidence and discussion of “discriminatory” practice. Only a few scholars have connected these discrepancies to colonial design (Dancy, 2014; Edwards, 2010, 2013; Wagner, Acker, & Mayuzumi, 2008; Wane, Jagire, & Murad, 2013). Recognizing anti-Black settler colonialism reveals not simply a trend of exclusionary practice, but also a performance of inclusion that reasserts the colonial order and engages the Black body as property.

The labor expectations placed on Black women in academia are not just comparatively excessive, but they are also reflective of domestic servitude and eroticism (Austin, 1995; Edwards, 2014; Harley, 2007). Black women academics are expected to attend to the caregiving needs of not only students of color, but also White students and faculty. They are also regularly called upon to attend to the failures of Whites, or “clean up behind,” through interim positions, promotion following scandal, and committee leadership. These colonial labors are often uncompensated and unseen. When Black women insist on the recognition of their labor or resist accommodating White student mediocrity, they are summarily punished as defiant Sapphires (Austin, 1995).1 Black women’s theoretical contributions are also rarely acknowledged. When they are, it is within very narrowly defined curricular parameters, and is often experienced by White audiences as provocative and momentarily titillating, but not central to U.S. higher education mission and purpose (Edwards, 2014; Fasching-Varner, 2009).

Black male bodies on college campuses are seen as primarily generators of income and properties of entertainment (Dancy, 2012; Rhoden, 2006; R.L, 2013). The testimonies of Black male non-student-athletes attest to the academy’s rejection of Black men as intellectual and unwelcome in the classroom. Furthermore, Black males across historically White campuses lament the regular assumption that their admission is predicated on their athletic prowess (Dancy, 2012; Harper, 2015; Palmer, Wood, Dancy, & Strayhorn, 2014; Strayhorn, 2008). For a Black man to exist within higher education as a thinking being is oxymoronic in the White psyche. A comparative analysis of political commentary regarding legacy, athletic, and affirmative action admissions confirms the academy’s commitment to White entitlement, Black male bodies as commodity, and the rejection of Black intellect (Charles, Fischer, Mooney, & Massey, 2009). Perhaps nowhere are these concepts more evident than in revenue-generating athletics