UC Riverside

This critical narrative inquiry examined the social and academic experiences of 20 Black transgender students currently or formerly enrolled in 4-year colleges and universities in the United States. Employing AntiBlack transness and plantation politics as my analytical framework, I demonstrate the insidious impact of plantation politics on Black transgender students' social and academic lives, which animate in both the processual and structural interactions within the plantation university. By problematizing the presence of plantation politics in both the processual and structural aspects of higher education, my study contributes to empirical understandings of how power dynamics operate within postsecondary institutions and the specific challenges faced by Black transgender students. The narratives shared by Black transgender students highlight the lack of representation, increased vulnerability, and the burden of educating others within the campus community. Furthermore, my research uncovers various issues, such as isolation, rejection, and marginalization, that lead some Black transgender students to abandon their educational pursuits. Despite examples of exclusion, my study also reveals how Black transgender students demonstrate a deep understanding of the expansiveness of their identities, fostering connections and communities within and beyond institutional spaces. Black transgender students create and sustain communities of care that provide vital support, recognition, and understanding, offering a safe and reliable space to be themselves without explanation. Battling institutional pushback and lacking formal support, these communities thrive; students meet one another's basic needs and facilitate their well-being and success. Black transgender students are actively creating spaces of Black trans futurity and transformation, where they (re)claim their life, (re)gain their agency, and embrace nonconformity. I offer practitioners the urgency in their willingness to resist and challenge the status quo, even in the face of significant obstacles, to support Black transgender students. Supporting these students will require disruptive logic, realigning solidarity, and shifting paradigms to meet Black transgender students where they are.