The second ID: critical race counterstories of campus police interactions with Black men at Historically White Institutions

Although campus racial climate on colleges and universities has been scrutinized in research on higher education, scholarship focused on Black male collegians’ interactions with campus police remains limited. Considering how the logics of white supremacy and anti-Black racism have characterized policing across the nation, we assert that a critical examination of how those practices are mirrored on college campuses can illuminate the challenges Black students face when navigating white campus spaces. Drawing on Critical Race Theory, this study reports on the encounters between three Black male students and campus police officers at three distinct historically white institutions. We posit that for Black college students, the student identification (ID) evokes a legacy of surveillance that can be traced to the freedom papers that freed slaves were required to carry while traversing white spaces as a means to affirm rights to freely belong. We conclude with implications and directions for future research.