The Black One

Abstract

Some faculty are like father figures to the students. The other younger White males are scholarly and tough but brilliant. Then, there is you, the Black One. Black men are six times as likely to be incarcerated as White men. Hispanic men are 2.3 times as likely. In corrections alone, people of color are overrepresented. This chapter will discuss the disparities in the criminal justice system and why students of color are attracted to the field. Microaggressions in a criminal justice program show up as machismo, as a joke, or even as witty, but never as racist. This chapter will tell the narrative of being a Black woman in a predominately White male department and why Black scholars belong in a criminal justice education.