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"A steady drop will wear a hole in the rock": feminism, the John Henry myth, and the black male experience in higher education

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Title	"A steady drop will wear a hole in the rock": feminism, the John Henry myth, and the black male experience in higher education
Author	Riley, Nikki Michelle
Author email	nikkiril@usc.edu
Degree	Doctor of Education
Document type	Dissertation
Degree program	Education (Leadership)
School	Rossier School of Education
Date defended/completed	2007-08-09
Date submitted	2007
Restricted until	Unrestricted
Date published	2007-09-25
Advisor (committee chair)	Sundt, Melora A.
Advisor (committee member)	Jun, Alexander Fisher, Jackie S., Sr.
Abstract	The democratic and inclusive community college system has served as an important conduit for the post-secondary educational experiences of Black men. It has been suggested that the diversity of the community college student population creates a campus climate that facilitates African American male academic success. This study focuses on the academic and social integration experiences of fourteen African American male community college students who persisted towards graduation or transfer from a Southern California community college. Prior studies have focused on the persistence of African American students at large, often public universities. These studies tend to discuss African American male college students from a deficit perspective when comparing them to Black female or White college students. Further, African American men are collectively viewed as homogenous, static beings. Few studies have explored the potentially endogenous or emic perspectives of collegiate faculty, relative to the academic experiences of African American men. This study attempted to fill a gap in the literature by focusing on the academic and social integration experiences of African American men enrolled in a Southern California community college. The results of this study are discussed within the context of the Black feminist perspective of the researcher.; The purpose of this study was as follows: (1) to describe the influence of life experiences on the academic and social integration of African American male students who persisted at this Southern California community college; (2) to describe what administrators, faculty, staff, counselors and coaches said this college did to contribute to the persistence of these men; and (3) to compare administrator and student perceptions of the factors that influence the academic and social integration of African American men in the community college setting.; A qualitative methodology guided this ethnographic case study. Semi-structured, open-ended interviews were the primary data source. This approach enabled readers to experience and understand, through detailed descriptive data, what the academic and social integration experience was like for African American men at a Southern California community college. Phenomenological inquiry, grounded in traditional student attrition models and Critical Race Theory, directed the data analysis. This methodological approach enabled the researcher to explore the life experiences of the participants along with their interpretive world view.; The completed analysis produced multiple thematic patterns. Parallel to the existing literature, most of the study participants were not socially involved or integrated with the respective college campus site. Faculty interaction and campus climate were the most significant persistence factors for the students interviewed in this study. Family support, personal maturation, and the deconstruction of mediaderived, negative, stereotypes of African American men were also significant. A large majority of the study participants were either in the process of pursuing theathletic/entertainment career dream, or had done so in the past. Additionally, at least half of the study participants were former or active duty military personnel.; Many other themes related to the life narratives and the academic persistence of the study participants were described as complements to the study's significant findings. Data from administrators, faculty, counselors, staff and coaches was compared to student interviews. The culmination of analysis resulted in suggestions for institutional policy and practice, especially as related to the college's student equity and learning outcome agenda.
Keyword	African American men; college; athletes
Language	English
Part of collection	University of Southern California dissertations and theses
Publisher (of the original version)	University of Southern California
Place of publication (of the original version)	Los Angeles, California
Publisher (of the digital version)	University of Southern California. Libraries
Type	texts
Legacy record ID	usctheses-m830
Rights	Riley, Nikki Michelle
Repository name	Libraries, University of Southern California
Repository address	Los Angeles, California
Repository email	http://www.usc.edu/isd/libraries/services/ask_a_librarian/email/
Filename	etd-Riley-20070925
Archival file	uscthesesreloadpub_Volume14/etd-Riley-20070925.pdf