Estranged Relations: African American Student Experiences with University Police on a Predominantly White Campus

Abstract

African Americans and other Black Students on predominantly white college campuses often face challenges in becoming fully integrated into these white-normed spaces. In the current cultural climate, policing and the Black community has received growing national attention. This has served to raise questions about how these types of relationships exist in college communities. The purpose of this exploratory study was to investigate the nature of the interactions between African American and other Black students with campus police in the northeastern United States. Using an exploratory qualitative design, one core concept of estrangement emerged along with three main categories on how estrangement operated in this higher educational context. The three main categories include cultural influences, racial oppression, and trauma. The results from the study suggest that African American and other Black students employ varying types of estrangement to avoid direct contact with campus police who are viewed as campus agents that function to perpetuate white supremacist norms on campus. The article concludes with a discussion and practical implications of these findings.