Bruised But Not Broken: Exploring Levels of Education Violence in Higher Education

Scholars in higher education often placate the idea of race and racism. Harper (2012) notes that when scholars in the field dealt with racial disparities in higher education in several contexts, they overwhelmingly attributed such difference to all other factors except racism. Put simply, scholars in the field often overlook how and when race and racism appear in higher education. Thus, a growing number of scholars in higher education (Chesler, Lewis, & Crawfoot, 2005; Harper, 2012; Patton, 2015) are advocating that scholars actively name race and racism as a way to move beyond the proverbial veil and expose “how racism is multifaceted and has violent, material consequences for Black lives” (Mustaffa, 2017, p.1). To which I assert, if you are not naming the disease, how could you possibly cure it? As a result, my dissertation seeks to call out race and racism, specifically with the term of education violence, which is an extension of racism explored in the next section. As such, my three-paper dissertation tackles the many ways education violence often appears in higher education. I am focused on addressing distinct levels of education violence minoritized students face on white college campuses and how education violence limits and restricts states’ laws that seek to remedy higher education’s harm to Black people.