ResEdChat Ep 10: DeAndre Taylor’s Dissertation on Black Senior Housing Officers

Paul Gordon Brown:
Welcome back to Roompact ResEdChat Podcast. This podcast series is a digital variety, our presentations, webinars, and interviews on topics of interest to residence life and education professionals who work in a college and university housing. And my name is Paul Brown, and I’m happy to invite Dr. DeAndre Taylor with us today. Newly minted doctor, who’s the Associate Director for Educational Initiatives in Residence Life at the University of Colorado Boulder. How are you, DeAndre?

DeAndre Taylor:
First off, Paul, I’m wonderful. Thanks for having me. I’m looking forward to the conversation. Yeah, thank you. I appreciate the opportunity. I really do.

Paul Gordon Brown:
Yeah. Well, you and I go way back. We keep intersecting at different points in our careers being… I did a curriculum workshop on your campus. We serve on the Institute for the Curricular Approach Faculty together. Of course, you’ve had leadership roles in the Commission on Housing and Residence Life and ACPA. I mean, good people bump into each other. That’s what I think.

DeAndre Taylor:
They do, they do, they do. And it’s not by coincidence.

Paul Gordon Brown:
It’s not by coincidence. And you’re one of my favorite people to talk to because you bring such a great perspective to things and really make me think about some stuff. And that’s one of the reasons why I wanted to have you on, because you just finished this doctoral process, finished up that dissertation. So bravo to you. But I wanted to talk a little bit about your research and whatnot. So, maybe for our listeners, tell us a little bit about what you decided, how’d you get to the place of what you decided, and what is it that you decided to research as part of your doctoral journey?

DeAndre Taylor:
First up, again, Paul, thanks for having me. Much like anybody, if you are in a doctoral program and you’re looking for your topic, your professors and your advisors, they’re going to tell you to read. You’re going to have an idea of what you want to explore. And then they’re going to say, “Read the literature, read things that are out there, what’s contributing to the idea that you have.” And as a housing professional, I knew I wanted to explore equity and housing and what does that look like? And so, I was reading ACUHO-I Connections article back in 2019, and they were highlighting just the numbers of marginal… Not marginalized groups in the housing profession, they gave the racial representation of housing professionals is what they gave. And when you look at numbers, you want to ask yourself, what story are these numbers telling us, right?
And so there was a phenomenon that was occurring when I began to look at those numbers. And what I noticed when I was reading that particular article in that Connections magazine is that as folks traverse between entry level, mid-level, and senior level, and then let’s take the outliers out. So particular positions like director of finance or director of IT, let’s take those out. If you look at hall director going into an assistant director and then going into a director, like that trajectory. If we look at that trajectory, what was happening is as folks first, the number of folks who identified as white increased and the number of folks who identified as Black decrease from entry level to mid-level to senior level.
And it wasn’t just with folks who identified as Black or African-American. It was happening with other land, next individuals, Asian, Pacific Islander individuals. It was happening with those populations as well. And I asked myself, “Well, what’s happening here? What is contributing?” The first thing that came to my mind, what was contributing to the attrition? Was it the lack of belonging? Was it burnout? What was happening there? What story is it telling me? And I decided to say, I want to look at barriers to career advancement for Black senior level housing professions.

Paul Gordon Brown:
Yeah, yeah. When I read over some of your work, and I mean I zeroed in on those statistics from 2009 that you’re talking about, right? I even copied [inaudible 00:04:26].

DeAndre Taylor:
2019, 2019, 2019.

Paul Gordon Brown:
2019, right?

DeAndre Taylor:
Yep.

Paul Gordon Brown:
It said that, 66% of entry level housing professionals identified as white while 22% identified as Black. Then when you get to mid-level, that 66% jumps up to 72.5, and that 22% jumps down to about 15.4. And then when you get to senior level, that 72.5 jumps up to 78.6, and that 15.4 drops down to 12.9. I wouldn’t say, that was surprising to me, but to see it in stark relief like that, just that drop off the further you go up. I mean, it’s disheartening, right?

DeAndre Taylor:
Right.

Paul Gordon Brown:
It’s pretty disheartening. I’ve also found it too, in a way, many moons ago when I did some research based off of women in senior level, it’s the exact same phenomenon. I doubt the statistics have changed and it has equaled out at this point, but it was that same phenomena.

DeAndre Taylor:
Absolutely. And that’s why I wanted to look at navigating the barriers, right? Because there’s substantial literature that talks about what are the barriers, and we can assume those from what the literature told us, but I wanted to know how have senior level. And I looked at senior level for a reason, because they made it to the senior level position. I just didn’t want to simply look at, well, how have Black housing professionals navigated barriers? I particularly wanted to look at senior level housing professionals and how they navigated barriers because they made it to that position. And I really wanted to hear and shed light to their experiences, one, to not only help aspiring Black senior level housing professionals but to also shed light on some of the things that are happening in the housing profession.

Paul Gordon Brown:
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So, ACPA has its Strategic Imperative for Racial Justice and Decolonization, something you and I are both pretty familiar with being involved in ACPA. Coming out around probably a good time when you were thinking through your dissertation, how did that document help you conceptualize some things, inform your study? What were some of the things that did for you?

DeAndre Taylor:
Absolutely. What I appreciate about the Strategic Imperative for Racial Justice and Decolonization, it calls for a critical examination of policies and practices that contribute to the inequities that exist in some is what it does. And it has a great framework for that. So I encourage everyone who’s listening to this to just take a look at the Strategic Imperative for Racial Justice and Decolonization from ACPA. And not only does it cause that critical examination, but it asks folks and it tells folks, how can you apply it in your work? They don’t say in the imperative. It doesn’t say that, here’s the step one, here’s the step two. But it says, how can you apply this in your sphere of control and influence, which I really appreciated.
And one thing that guided my dissertation from the strategic imperative is that critical analysis, and how can we do a critical analysis? And for me, that critical analysis was through the experiences of Black senior level housing professionals applying critical race mythology as my theoretical framework to say, “Hey, here are the lived experiences of Black housing professionals, and I want to illuminate that.” I want to uplift their voices to examine those to say, what’s happening? How have they navigated the barriers?

Paul Gordon Brown:
Yeah, yeah. And you did both a survey as well as some deep dive interviews with those folks.

DeAndre Taylor:
Absolutely.

Paul Gordon Brown:
And what are some of the things that you found out? What would people want to know if they were to say, what are some of the key findings here?

DeAndre Taylor:
Not to get too academic on anybody or anything like that. But with the particular survey I used Lyness and Thompson’s perceived barriers to career advancement scale. And that looked at to what extent was cultural fit, a barrier to career advancement, to what extent was the lack of mentoring, to what extent was career management or poor organizations, career management, and then to what extent was getting developmental assignments, to what extent were those barriers to career advancement? So I looked at that. And then when we think about the findings from my surveys that I conducted, the lack of cultural fit was a salient barrier to career advancement. And then the lack of mentoring was a salient barrier to career advancement. And now you had the different subscales under there, right? So you have the lack of cultural fit, which looked at leadership tended to recommend and to deselect people like themselves. Lack of cultural fit included having fewer role models. And then lack of cultural fit also included being held to higher standards. Lack of mentoring included, not having senior managers facilitate career progress, and then not getting access to the right people.
So the lack of cultural fit and then the lack of mentoring came from the interview. Excuse me, came from the surveys that illuminated that. And so, from there really wanted to say, “Okay, well, what does that mean?” That gave the foundation, right?

Paul Gordon Brown:
Right.

DeAndre Taylor:
And that’s why I did two. The survey just gave the foundation, right? Ultimately, if I didn’t have folks to interview, I still had data that I can put forward with my study. Excuse me, the surveys were just simply a foundation. And it told me, saliently, lack of cultural fit, and lack of mentoring. Now, when we look at interviews, that’s where the meat of the matter comes in. That’s where some good information has come forward, and that is some good stuff there. So, I’m looking forward to diving into those questions that you have.

Paul Gordon Brown:
Yeah. I think this is really smart. For anyone that goes through this doctoral journey, I did something very similar, totally different topic but using that survey as your initial data collection, and then using those interviews to really dig deep. Because that survey helps you identify a few things that then in those interviews, you can really get into more of the rich understanding of that lived experience. I mean, that’s what I took away in reading your dissertation is hearing folks talk about what does that look like on a day-to-day basis, right?

DeAndre Taylor:
Yeah.

Paul Gordon Brown:
What does that mean, if I’m in a meeting and I have to worry about the perception of me when I speak up? Am I the angry Black man? Am I this? And what are the those hidden level racist things that are swirling in rooms that these folks have to navigate through that they are very aware of, but of which other people probably don’t speak or might not even be aware of [inaudible 00:11:29] exam, right?

DeAndre Taylor:
Again, that’s why I wanted to look at senior level folks. Again, because they ascended to that role. And when I look at the average tenure of the folks in my study, we were looking at 20 plus years combined. Well, not combined, but each person having 20 plus years of professional experience. They have a breadth of knowledge. And not to give too much information away because it’s really thinking about the anonymity of my research participants, but they were Res Lifers. They started in Res Life and then they continued through Res Life. So they did bounce out and did bounce in. They may have dabbled in other areas, but that was another beautiful thing about my study is that they were Res Lifers. And so they’re speaking from their lived experiences as Black housing professionals with having 20 plus years of experience.

Paul Gordon Brown:
Yeah. I know this came up from one of the interviews you had was talking about racial battle fatigue.

DeAndre Taylor:
Absolutely.

Paul Gordon Brown:
And coping with that. And for a senior level person who’s been around for a while had you go through that for so many years, did you find any certain coping strategies or ways of confronting it that those folks were able to be resilient through that?

DeAndre Taylor:
You’re touching on the themes that I identified, right? And so when we think about ways to process through those, and we think about particularly… Because my interviews focus on what are perceived barriers and how do they navigate those barriers? And one of the things that folks talked about as I looked at my different codes, then of course, the themes that came from there is that folks talked about having that self-advocacy, right? That was really important for themselves is to process through the impact of the barriers that they were experiencing. And so, part of that was that self-advocacy was speaking up to their supervisors and letting them know the particular needs that they needed as people of color. Not people of color, but for Black professionals, and being not bold, but being transparent. How are you going to support me as a Black housing professional with these identities?
And I thought that that was brilliant. And I think it does take a level of, not necessarily courage, but it takes a level of knowing yourself on how to articulate that. Because I think that’s how you’re going to get the best piece out of that supervisor relationship. That’s how you’re going to maximize that supervisor relationship by telling your supervisor, “Here, how are you going to support me,” right? And being upfront. And that’s one of the implications. And one of my recommendations is that, how do we infuse inclusive supervision in our practices? I think that’s important. It may seem basic to someone to say, “Well, yeah, of course, we want inclusive supervision,” but how do we truly inform? Because here’s the thing, when going through my study as when Black housing professionals, identity was associated with leadership because their identities as Black college professionals informed how they showed up as leaders. Because they talked about being in meetings and saying, “I can’t say that it’s going to come off differently.”
So how do I leverage this relationship with this person that they can say it for me? So in that moment, their racial identity was impacting their leadership, and that’s what [inaudible 00:15:05]. They weren’t mutually exclusive. They were in some part, one and the same. And so, it’s really important that we think about how are we being inclusive in our supervisory practices to make sure that we understand how race impacts leadership?

Paul Gordon Brown:
Yeah, yeah. Did you notice any difference? Some of the participants talked about being in a culture where it’s like the good old boy culture, right?

DeAndre Taylor:
Absolutely.

Paul Gordon Brown:
Folks that have been there forever. This is how it goes here, not questions, maybe even barriers to entering that space, which I completely understood it and it resonated with me. I’ve been in some institutions where that culture is incredibly thick. Were there any spaces where some of the participants talked about where that broke down, where they were able to navigate a culture that was better for bringing voice, explicitly asking about experiencing, recognizing some of the experience of those folks?. Were there any of those participants that worked in an environment where that’s seemed particularly supportive beyond a supervisor, but more culturally broadly?

DeAndre Taylor:
In terms of being supportive?

Paul Gordon Brown:
Yeah.

DeAndre Taylor:
That’s interesting that you say that is because when I looked at the literature, and when I looked at literature that talked about how to navigate various upper mobility. In my literature, I looked at marginalized populations and how they navigated barriers. So I looked at from K-12 to various fields, from K-12 to parks and recreation to the business world, to even Black coaches and higher… Excuse me, in college, right? Black [inaudible 00:16:45] from NCAA. And the literature talked about institutional efforts that supported navigating those barriers. However, from my study, none of my folks that I interviewed talked about there being institutional efforts that supported the navigation of barriers to career advancement, right? And when we talk about barriers to career advancement just to frame for the listeners, we were talking about, again, from the survey, the lack of cultural fit was a barrier to career advancement.
The lack of mentoring was a barrier to career advancement. And then when we got into the study, what I’m hearing from my participants was the good old boy club was a barrier to proceed, barrier to career advancement, lack of diverse leadership, and particularly in that, the prevention of diverse leadership, right? Where my study participants talked about some very personal things about how folks were… They heard statements that leadership didn’t want to work with certain populations, or they refuse to promote certain populations, right?
So that was a perceived barrier, right? We talked about the microaggression. Now, we’re getting into that racial battle fatigue, microaggressions, the micro invalidations, because those are the lived experiences. And now, again, we’re getting into the racial battle fatigue because they have to go in day in and day out in the workplace and be subjected to that. Then of course, you had different things that were typical, right? So the need for additional job, skills, increased education, right? So those are not a no-brainer or a given, but I think one can assume. Yeah, professional skills increase that, increase your education, there’s a chance that you can excel in your career. So those were some of the barriers that were there. Now, if you look at navigating barriers, again, the literature talked about the institutional efforts that supported navigating barriers. And the literature even talked about how companies or particularly school systems were very transparent with their folks that they were recruiting, that were in marginalized population and said, “Hey, this is not a diverse area. We want you to know that.”
But on the same time, the literature also talked about they were working with community partners to make sure that they were helping the community understand this is not a diverse area, so how are they raising the competency of the community, right? That’s the literature. And we look at the study, how would they navigate barriers? None of my participants talked about institutional efforts. Now, they talked about that intrinsic motivation. They talked about leveraging relationships. They talked about keeping career options open. They talked about mentorship and sponsorships, that was huge. And they talked about having patients with their career journey. But they didn’t talk about institutional efforts. And so that was really, when I think about moving forward with my implications and my recommendations, I had to pause and reflect on that and say, “Well, that was interesting. None of my folks talked about that.”
So is it that the housing profession is not aware that these things are going on, or is it that they’re aware and they’re not doing anything about it? So, I had to ask myself those hard questions. I’m a housing professional and I want to see our profession be the best that it can be. But as a researcher, I had to ask those tough questions as well. And that informed the implications and the recommendations of my study. And so, really thinking about, well, why were those occurring? And that’s when I said, inclusive supervision is an implication and recommendation. And actually for institutions to adopt the strategic imperative as a framework to hopefully increase racial representation.
But then if not, it’s still calling for the critical examination of policies and practices that contribute to inequities that exist. That’s the key. What policies and practices are occurring that’s contributing to inequities, and that’s what we have to break down. That’s what we have to look at, what’s happening. And it’s important that you think critically about that. What’s going on? What are our policies and practices where we may not be recruiting, or not recruiting, but even being desired for marginalized groups to even come work at my institution? How am I marketing out? How am I going to market out myself as an organization to say, “Hey, here’s what I offered. Here’s what’s going on. Here’s what you’re going to get.” How am I putting it out there?

Paul Gordon Brown:
Yeah. Well, it also makes me think of too, the example of students. Let’s say, you’re trying to recruit a more diverse student body. Yeah. There’s certain things that you can do to increase the diversity of your applicants. Well, then what’s for them when they get on campus? How are you going to support them, right?

DeAndre Taylor:
Absolutely, absolutely, absolutely. And there are things that are occurring. I don’t want to sit here and pretend as if there’s nothing that’s happening, whether it’s professional development opportunities, institutes and different things that are happening. I’m not saying those things don’t exist, but we also have to think about continuing the other opportunities. There’s no one-size-fits-all approach to really thinking about the racial representation of housing professionals. And so, how are we contributing to fostering a more inclusive profession?

Paul Gordon Brown:
Yeah, yeah. And then, what is the work we’re doing ourselves, right? It’s not just a policy, it’s not just, “Oh, we’re going to do this,” that’s it. Especially, when you talked about in terms of microaggressions and voice and meetings and how that’s perceived and things like that, that’s not going to be solved with the policy change. That’s going to be solved with people putting in the work to recognize how they interact with that space, what other folks experiences are having that change. It’s not just as simple as doing a different recruiting practice or things like that, right? It’s cultural, it’s embedded, it’s systemic. I mean, that’s the way. Well, as we’re getting towards the end here, I did want to ask, so what do you think we can be doing better as a field or… As a white person, I was reading this through that lens and I was like, “What can I do to improve the situation? What advice would you give either for an institution or for individuals who may be…”

DeAndre Taylor:
That’s a great question, Paul. And my mom and my dad, they hate it when I did this as a kid. I would respond to a question with a question. And my question for you, Paul, is what did you take away from reading it? When you read it, what did you say, “Hey, I can do this. From reading this, here’s how I think I can contribute.”

Paul Gordon Brown:
Yeah, yeah. One thing I’ve been cognizant of, this is a different dynamic, but I have an ACUHO-I intern this summer. This ACUHO-I intern is a white woman. Our company currently has one other woman who is not involved in the day-to-day, so she will not be present in the day-to-day space. And so for me, that’s what’s been on my mind is if I’m bringing someone who identifies as a woman into an all-male space and I’m going to be supervising them, what are the things that I should do to make sure that’s supportive, right? I think a big part of it for me and reading through this is, you got to name it, right? You mentioned it with the supervision. If I’m supervising someone, I have to say, “Hey, I want to recognize that you’re the only person of color. You’re the only Black person walking into that space, and it’s going to be different.”
And so I want to know how I can support you and that I recognize that is the case. Here are some of the things that I’ve already thought of to do, but I also recognize that I’m not going to have all the answers and you’re going to navigate it differently. So I also want to try to empower you to bring those things up because I want to listen to those things, right?

DeAndre Taylor:
Mm-hmm.

Paul Gordon Brown:
And so that’s what’s been on my mind, particularly as I read it. It’s not on the racial dynamic, but it’s also similar of a person of a minoritized identity in this particular space and supervising that person, and how do I create a space for that? So that’s what’s been most present.

DeAndre Taylor:
Absolutely.

Paul Gordon Brown:
Right.

DeAndre Taylor:
And that’s what I’ll say. And not to answer your question with a question, but I’m happy that you shared with that and you weren’t expecting that. But it’s really doing a deep dive for yourself and really saying, how can I expand my knowledge? Not being trendy with it. We don’t want challenges. We don’t want to challenge ourselves and not challenging the sense of not wanting to do something for the better, but the trendy part of the challenge. We’ve seen in this day and age, we have challenges. The X challenge, this challenge that don’t make it a commodification, right? Do it to want to better yourself. And you just mentioned that, right? For female-identified folks, as a male-identified person saying, “Here’s what I know.” You’re not saying that you know everything, but you’re saying, “Hey, this may impact, how you show up?” There’s only two female-identified folks in this organization.
So what does that mean? You’re putting it out on the table. And I think you start at that individual level, particularly if you’re supervising someone with a marginalized identity, really putting it on the table. That’s why that inclusive supervision is important. That’s why inclusive leadership is important, because inclusive leadership also talks about what policies and practices are also happening, right? And then how do you make sure that voices are incorporated into the creation of those policies and practices? That’s what inclusive leadership talks about, and I think that’s what we can do. We have to do it internally to want to do better and be better, right? And so I think that’s what we can do, right? Because the reality is this, Paul, the pervasiveness of racial inequity just doesn’t exist in our profession. It happens in housing, in this case, it happens in employment, it happens in education, it happens everywhere, right?
So this is just a microcosm, my study of what’s happening globally and in that world, right? I just narrowed in on a particular facet of a particular subset of everything that’s happening. So the reality expands beyond just what I looked at, right? Because these types of issues that are happening, people talk about not getting loans for a house, or Black folks saying that their homes were value less or praise less than homes that were owned by whites, right?
So it’s not just happening in our profession. So this is an issue that we all are experiencing, the world is experiencing, our nation is experiencing, and how do we look inwardly to say, “I want to do better.” We have to challenge ourselves, because I appreciate the question saying, “Hey, what can I do?” And I appreciate that, but I always say, “Well, what do you think you can do,” right?

Paul Gordon Brown:
Yeah.

DeAndre Taylor:
I can go and ask a farmer, “Hey, I want to grow some corn.” And they’re going to say, one, two, three, four. And then I have to realize, I have a small patch of grass that I’m going to grow corn. So maybe I don’t grow corn. Maybe I grow something else, right? That’s more feasible for the work that I’m doing, that I can still make an impact.

Paul Gordon Brown:
I mean, that’s what it comes down is people have to do the work. I mean, you have to do your work if we’re going to make any strides of this. I mean, particularly white people, right? White people need to do the work to show up to support Black people. Same thing with all the other different ideas. You have to do the work in order to do that, and you have to constantly be in a space where you’re comfortable with reexamining and being wrong and making mistakes, [inaudible 00:29:21]. And as easy as that sounds to name, it is way more difficult in practice for folks to do and to do consistently, and to encourage other people to do.

DeAndre Taylor:
Absolutely. And I’ll add, I want to put this out there too, is that when I looked at my study participants, there were differences between the male-identified folks and the female-identified folks.

Paul Gordon Brown:
Yeah. I noted that.

DeAndre Taylor:
How they articulated barriers to career advancement and navigating barriers, right? So it’s happening. So, even if you mentioned and given the example of the female-identified person in your workplace, that’s real, because there was two differences that I saw in terms of even how microaggressions were given to male-identified folks to female-identified folks. And so, that’s real. Now, we’re looking at the intersectionality of identities and how it shows up. So my studies is one piece in that puzzle. My studies is one piece. There’s a lot to do when we think about this. As I think about, well, what are future recommendations? How are we looking at barriers to professionals who identify as trans or who are trans, excuse me, and what barriers are they experiencing who may happen to be Black, right? And so looking at that, right? And then, of course, not just because I looked at Black and African-American housing professions, but that trend of decreasing as they traverse between entry level [inaudible 00:30:50] senior-level, what’s happening across the board from marginalized populations. So there’s a bigger piece that we can look at, but what’s happening?

Paul Gordon Brown:
Well, there it is. DeAndre just gave the listeners a great dissertation topic to dig into.

DeAndre Taylor:
Absolutely. Absolutely.

Paul Gordon Brown:
The next one arising right out of it. Well, I really appreciate you spending some time to talk through a little bit of your research. I think it’s important research. I think it’s very timely research. At least as a takeaway for folks, they think through, how does this instantiate on my own campus? How do I participate, not participate, do anything? Where do I show up in this process, and how can we move the whole profession forward? So, I really appreciate it.

DeAndre Taylor:
Absolutely. Thank you, Paul. Appreciate it.

Paul Gordon Brown:
Yeah, well thanks DeAndre, and tune in next time for another episode of the ResEdChat Podcast. Bye everyone.