Antagonistic Categories: An Afropessimist Examination of Black Undergraduates' Experiences in the Afterlife of School Segregation

Decades after Brown V. Board of Education, Black undergraduates remain at the margins of campus life at historically white institutions (HWIs). While higher education research has consistently documented de facto segregation, few studies, if any, have interrogated the role of antiblackness — the paradigmatic position of blackness as slave — in reproducing racial division in modernity. This intrinsic case study centers the lived experiences of 8 Black undergraduates to examine Black/white relations at a Midwestern HWI. More specifically, I employ the Afterlife of School Segregation as an analytical lens to elaborate how equal participation in mainstream campus life is foreclosed to Black students, reifying the structural antagonism between blackness and humanity. The findings are articulated through the following themes: (1) blackness as abjection, (2) blackness as isolate, and (3) blackness as refugee. This study offers meaningful implications for select higher education stakeholders invested in supporting Black students in the Afterlife of School Segregation.