ABSTRACT
The purpose of this article is to offer insight to administrators and human resource professionals at Traditionally White Institutions (TWIs) about developing action plans that provide meaningful support to Black administrators and faculty who are coping with racial trauma. Operationalizing tenets of Critical Race Methodology (CRM), the counter-narratives presented here are drawn from 15 years of unpublished professional and personal communication created by an individual Black faculty and administrator. The lectures, conference presentations, commencement addresses and other ephemera trace the development of battlements and emotional battle scars over the early years of one scholar-activist’s career at TWIs. The calamitous aftermath of Hurricane Katrina is considered in this context both as metaphor and collective psychic wound. As such, it illuminates other instances of vicarious trauma, foreshadows the Movement for Black Lives, and provides a devastating illustration of administrative unpreparedness. Revealing the ramifications of racial trauma can serve to help others who suffer to feel less alone and can provide stakeholders in higher education with valuable knowledge for the sake not only of recruitment and retention, but institutional transformation.
