ABSTRACT
Current rhetoric about the matriculation of Black1 students into higher education has centered exclusively on Black men and their needs for mentoring, support, and successful role models. Initiatives intended to bolster the recruitment, retention, and graduation of Black men have reached even to the White House with President Obama unveiling in 2014 a program called My Brother’s Keeper (Office of the Press Secretary, 2014). Missing in this rescue narrative have been Black women and girls. As Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw (2014) has written most recently, the focus on Black men’s greater endangerment “compared to whom” ignores Black women’s risk and endangerment while reinforcing the stereotype of Black women as superlatively strong, self-sufficient, and without need of supports (Wallace, 1978/1990).
