Black Lives Matter: The Journey of a Black IT Scholar

Abstract

In this paper, we focus on the lived experiences of a particular Black scholar in pursuit of a PhD in IT. The content of this paper was adapted from a dissertation that focused on identifying and analyzing the factors that support or undermine the achievement of Black males completing IT degrees and entering the workforce. The content of this paper centers around the factors that impacted the scholar. In light of the Black Lives Matter movement, we wanted to take a social issue and deconstruct it to apply it to academia. In order to accomplish this, we used a researcher's lived experiences as a Black male for the data for this paper. By the scholar's own admission, [blinded for review] has not reached the level of success that the scholar would like the scholar is still striving to reach those goals. These are goals that the likes of Trayvon Martin, Mike Brown, Dontre Hamilton, Eric Garner, John Crawford III, Ezell Ford and countless others no longer have, which sparked the Black Lives Matter movement.