Visualizing Beyond the Mask: Black Collegians Cultivating Safety Through Joy

Abstract

This nationwide study examined how 25 Black undergraduate and  graduate students defined and constructed the meaning of safety and joy  on their campuses. Through our newly developed Critical  Socioecological Framework for Racialized School Safety (CSFRSS), we  address students’ experiences of cultivating joy within a liberatory  framework, given that these students have historically been underserved  and invalidated in academic spaces deemed unsafe. Using the study’ s  data, we found that 1) feeling authentic–particularly within Black racial  identity–was rooted in how students determined feeling safe, and 2) even  in their unsafe academic spaces, students could cultivate joy due to their  Black communities.