Re-Lensing Predominantly White Universities: Examining and Advocating for Black Thriving within PWI through Photovoice

Background and Purpose: Student activism has played a significant role in the Black Lives Matter movement with Black students founding branches of BLM and leading protests across the nation. Black students have applied the BLM lens to the injustices that occur within the academy- focusing on the absence of their voices in policies that impact Black students’ ability to thrive. As such, it is essential to support Black students to create, analyze, and disseminate research that centers their experiences within predominantly white universities (PWIs).

Limited research explores how Black students understand and identify themselves, form and participate in communities, experience oppression, manage their wellness and enact resistance in these spaces. As such, two Black undergraduate women, with the support of two doctoral researchers, use the PAR method of Photovoice to address the following three aims:

1: Record and reflect Black student’s identified challenges and supports in institutions where Black students are underrepresented.

2: Engage Black students in creating and sharing their knowledge about the conditions of their lives at Predominantly White Universities (PWIs).

3: Identify and create recommendations for higher education institutions to change their practices in order to create healthier environments to ensure that Black students are able to thrive

Methods: PhotoVoice is a qualitative research method rooted in PAR principles that incorporates photography, analysis, group discussions, and action. Co-creators identified weekly picture topics that highlighted strengths and needs of Black students within a PWI. The final research collective consisted of five Black undergraduate women from two different universities. The weekly sessions were 90 minutes, held via zoom, and lasted for 8 weeks.

Results: Through 8 weeks of photo-led engagement and discussion the collective identified their top pictures, and through discussion came up with 5 main themes: (1) Identity (2) Community, (3) Oppression, (4) Wellness, and (5) Resistance. Within each of these themes the collective created a shared description of meaning. They then used these themes to create action outcomes that highlighted their assets and addressed their needs.

Conclusions and Implications: Through this study, Black students have called on universities to value Black lives all the time. First, they provided an honest portrayal of the circumstances of Black college students. Highlighting and presenting their experiences within each theme forced PWIs to confront the harm that their anti-Black policies cause. Next, a virtual photo exhibition was held to present the pictures and their descriptions. Through this, the young women started to build empathy via perspective taking with other students, administrators, and professors. Finally, the young women provided tangible steps for change. To disseminate their work, the young women created a website and committed to sharing their data through presentation opportunities and their universities and surrounding communities.

This PhotoVoice project emphasizes the need for community members to lead knowledge production to meaningfully influence policies and programs. As such, social work researchers should adapt the process and outcomes of this research to advance social justice. which includes supporting the community as they use findings to implement self-identified change.