Racial/ethnic categories used in education research are frequently aggregated across groups and often used in regression models as relative to white individuals, (un)consciously centering whiteness. We employ Quantitative Critical Race Theory (QuantCrit) to consider the implications of collapsing racial/ethnic categories and of reference group category selection. We propose a decision tree framework to support researchers in choosing a reference category and illustrate its application using data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study (ECLS-K). We describe students' interest in math and estimate a series of models that vary the reference group, including comparisons to white students but also 1) to the average of all students, 2) to the average of all students excluding white students, 3) to a universal target, and 4) that analyze within group differences. We demonstrate how choices around racial/ethnic categories and reference groups can produce different interpretations of the same underlying data.
Black sororities and fraternities provide critical support networks, leadership development, and community engagement within Black communities. Historically, these organizations advanced civil rights and Black feminist movements, shaped sociopolitical discourse, and cultivated spaces for collective activism and resistance. Despite these contributions, Black Greek-letter organizations remain vulnerable to perceptions of exclusivity, while limited scholarship centers Black women sorority members' lived experiences. Guided by Black Feminist frameworks, this study examines Black sorority life as a form of cultural wealth within and beyond higher education. Through the perspectives of six Black sorority members, we examine cultural and generational orientations to sorority membership and its influence on enrollment, leadership, and well-being. Constructed through Sisterwork, this paper positions Black sorority life as an enduring source of cultural wealth that resists oppression and intersectional marginalization. Findings underscore Black women sorority members' contributions to kinship, legacy, social change, community engagement, and Black futures.
This article re-theorizes Malone and Ford's (2023) account of Black male faculty navigating the tenure track by situating their experiences within broader formations of racialized institutional life, gendered being, and academic marketization. The article treats autoethnography as archive and analytic site, engaging these narratives as fragments that reveal how Black faculty life is constituted through ongoing forms of slow, affective, and epistemic violence. The analysis examines how processes such as cultural taxation operate not as deviations from institutional norms, but as conditions of academic life. In doing so, the article advances the concept of ontological aversion to describe how faculty navigate the academy. It concludes by calling for a reorientation of faculty evaluation and institutional practice that centers relational, affective, and community-grounded forms of labor. In reframing Black male professorship as a site of theoretical production, the article contributes to ongoing efforts to rethink the meaning, value, and future of academic life.
