Black Joy on White Campuses: Exploring Black Students' Recreation and Celebration at a Historically White Institution

Students feel race across the emotional spectrum—from hate to joy to despair to sadness. This article is an invitation to take seriously, highlight, and analyze Black joy, in particular, through Black students' recreation and celebration at a historically White campus. The author explores Black joy in two main ways. First, the author provides a conceptual framing of Black joy in the historically White campus context. Second, guided by the theory of racialized emotions, the author uses qualitative data to analyze 29 Black students' experiences with and perceptions of celebration and recreation on campus. In doing so, this article demonstrates both how joy is shaped by race and how university structures can facilitate and/or inhibit Black joy on campus.