Four Black recent college graduates reflect on the spaces that helped them process racial stress and feel whole.
By Aaliyah Amos
Word In Black
On many college campuses, Black students navigate racial stress without spaces designed to help them heal from it. So when those spaces do exist, Black students say they can be transformative.
Black students make up about 13 percent of college enrollment in the United States, while Black faculty account for only about 7 percent of full-time professors, creating a significant gap between the number of Black students and faculty, according to the National Center of Education Statistics.
For many Black students, racial healing — the process of repairing the emotional and psychological harm caused by racism, restoring a sense of wholeness, and finding spaces where their identities are affirmed without explanation — is not built into campus life. Instead, it is something they must actively seek out.
Without those spaces, students say the effects of isolation, pressure and racial stress can go unaddressed.
With the 10th anniversary of National Racial Healing Day this year, what do racial healing spaces look like, and how do they support Black students on campus?
This question was posed to four members of the Class of 2025 from undergraduate institutions, including Rutgers University-Newark (RU-N) and a historically Black college, Delaware State University.
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A Space of Vulnerability and Respect
A prominent space for racial healing at RU-N lived within courses offered through its social justice-centered Honors Living-Learning Community, according to alumni Madison Rae Pitts and Shaylah White.
Both students entered the program as juniors after transferring and said it offered two courses they describe as “intentional and impactful.”
“What made that space so impactful was the balance between vulnerability and respect,” Pitts says. “I didn’t feel like I had to defend my experiences or dilute them to make others feel comfortable.”
For Pitts, the absence of the pressure to constantly explain, justify or soften her reality became a form of racial healing.
As a Black woman attending a predominantly White institution, it was refreshing for Pitts to feel that she could speak honestly about how, in her eyes, she always had to navigate the world differently.
Being Your Authentic Self
Similarly, White feels that the class space created an environment in which healing took shape through her ability to be her authentic self. Course discussions ranged from societal issues shaped by race, such as microaggressions and systemic barriers.
“I could openly speak about the trauma, exhaustion and constant negotiation that comes with navigating the world as a Black woman, and instead of being met with confusion or silence, I was met with recognition,” she says. “That felt really good.”
That recognition — being understood without having to translate one’s experience — is what made the space healing, she says, allowing her to process experiences she had previously carried alone.
Since graduating, neither has found it easy to locate similar spaces.
Pitts says these spaces are “rare,” but she experiences a similar sense of racial healing at her church. Recreating that environment for the children in her church’s youth ministry is important to her because it exposes them to the same feeling of validation and racial healing, she says.
Healing Through Culture and Connection
While some students at Rutgers found healing in academic spaces, Travis Miles found it socially through men’s basketball and participation in a student organization. As a member of the Black Professionals Network, Miles saw his culture represented in different ways, which fostered his experience of racial healing.
“I still connect with those who helped me in that journey of Black racial healing while I was at Rutgers,” he says.
Now, after college, Miles seeks to balance his college and post-college worlds to find spaces that cultivate a sense of Black racial healing.
Healing in Historically Black Spaces
Jayla Hill, a 2025 graduate of Delaware State University, says attending an HBCU deepened her existing experience of Black racial healing. From her time attending Harriet Tubman Elementary School in Newark, N.J., she says she always felt both liberated and grounded in her Blackness.
The norm at college was being surrounded by Black students who exuded excellence and embraced Black identities naturally, which meant Hill never felt the need to explain her own identity.
“There was so much Black excellence around me,” she says. “It showed me that your community shapes you.”
That affirmation — of Black identity, culture, and excellence — became a key part of her racial healing experience, reinforcing a sense of wholeness and belonging that shaped how she saw herself beyond campus.
In her later years as an undergraduate, Hill found Black racial healing by joining the first Black Greek-letter sorority, Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc. In this space, she connected with other Black women and felt uplifted by the community.
“Being a member has taught me — and continues to teach me — sisterhood, service, and having a purpose together as a united force as Black women,” she says.
It’s a space that continues to nurture Hill even after college.
“It has shown me legacy, longevity, and a feeling of pride in being a Black woman,” she says.
This article was originally published by Word In Black.