Black men in American higher education have often been positioned as the metaphorical “mules” of the academy. From the beginnings of the American academy, Black men have been forced or coerced into activities that centralize their brawn and position them in controlled servitude within colleges and universities. In the case of Harvard University, the nation’s first institution of higher learning, enslaved Black men were forced to clear land, build early campus infrastructure, maintain the grounds, serve as cooks, and perform other essential yet undercelebrated forms of labor.

Today, while some Black men hold elevated titles such as President, Dean, Director, and Professor, they are still often engaged through stereotypes historically applied to Black masculinity—from the enslaved “buck” to the hypervisible athlete. The titles may have changed, but the racialized and gendered expectations placed upon Black men have not entirely disappeared.

In recent years, scholars have increasingly examined the academy’s controlling image of Black women as metaphorical “mammies”, an archetype that centers higher education’s expectation that Black women place the university’s desires before their own personal needs and well-being. Far less attention, however, has been given to the ways Black men have been mythologized as bucks, brutes, and sambos within the academy. Such racist and misandrist ideas, reflecting deep-seated prejudice, bias, and discrimination against males, continue to shape the experiences of Black men in higher education.

These expectations can push Black men toward John Henryism: tirelessly working, producing, and sacrificing their personal well-being in pursuit of professional recognition and institutional legitimacy. At the same time, they must navigate relentless surveillance and the possibility of punishment when they refuse to acquiesce to racialized expectations of how Black men are supposed to perform.

I write this article not as a passive observer, but as someone who has taught and led within higher education and whose scholarship is grounded in higher education studies and the experiences of Black people within the academy. I have witnessed and personally experienced the coercive pressure to become a flattened archetype of Black manhood in service to the comfort of colleagues, peers, and institutional leaders.

I therefore offer this article as a missive to higher education leaders. Its purpose is to expose and interrupt the application of stereotypes that negatively shape the professional experiences of Black men. Below, I identify five metaphorical roles that the neoliberal American academy often expects Black men to perform in order to be considered successful, acceptable, and valuable.

The Threat

When Black men are hired into professional positions, they can experience a version of the “pet-to-threat” phenomenon similar to that experienced by their Black female peers. Black men may initially be hired and celebrated because of their competence, credentials, accomplishments, and professional promise. Yet that celebration can quickly dissipate when they disagree with a colleague or leader, speak firmly in a meeting, exercise authority, or demand parity with their peers.

The competent Black man who was initially viewed as an institutional asset can suddenly become “intimidating,” “angry,” “difficult,” or “aggressive.” His competence has not changed. What has changed is his willingness to remain deferential. The Black man becomes a threat when his expertise is accompanied by agency.

The Workhorse

The workhorse is perhaps most closely aligned with the John Henry archetype. Black men are often pressured, implicitly or explicitly, to work harder than colleagues and peers to command the same respect, recognition, and resources. They may be expected to demonstrate extraordinary productivity simply to be evaluated as ordinarily competent.

Such expectations can lead to burnout and other detrimental outcomes. Yet no matter how hard these men work, the greedy institution of higher education continually demands more. The Black male scholar or administrator is valued for what he can produce, carry, fix, build, or endure rather than for his full humanity.

The Token Pioneer

Given higher education’s abysmal legacy of including Black males at its highest levels, those who advance into senior roles are often the first and sometimes the only Black men to occupy their positions.

This places these men in the unenviable position of being promoted as symbols of institutional progress even when their institutions demonstrate limited commitment to hiring, developing, and supporting additional Black men in the same departments or in comparable leadership roles. Their presence becomes evidence that the institution has supposedly solved a structural problem.

Even more troubling, the individual Black man can become a referendum on Black men collectively. If he is perceived as imperfect, his experience can be weaponized as justification for not hiring another Black man. White colleagues are generally afforded the privilege of being evaluated as individuals. The tokenized Black pioneer often carries the burden of representing an entire people.

The Other-Father

Black male faculty and staff are frequently expected to serve as surrogate mentors, advocates, and Other-father figures for Black college students. These expectations are rarely articulated in formal hiring documents, position descriptions, workload policies, or promotion criteria.

Yet when Black male students, particularly student-athletes or those experiencing difficulty adjusting to college, find themselves struggling, Black male employees are frequently called upon to intervene, mentor, counsel, advocate, and provide culturally responsive support. This labor can be deeply meaningful, and many Black men willingly embrace it because of their commitment to Black students and communities.

The problem is not the mentoring itself. The problem is the institutional assumption that Black men should provide this labor without additional remuneration, workload recognition, resources, or structural support. Their racial and gender identity becomes an institutional resource from which the university freely draws.

The Charismatic Jester

Lastly, because Black men remain underrepresented in many academic spaces, colleagues and students may expect them to perform versions of Black masculinity informed by popular culture and social media.

In the classroom, students may assume that Black male professors will be unusually entertaining, charismatic, humorous, or performative. In academic social settings, Black men may be expected to provide comic relief, display exceptional sociability, dance, or otherwise enliven the environment. These expectations reduce multidimensional human beings to consumable performances of Blackness.

Some Black male employees may therefore choose not to participate in social outings or environments where they feel pressured to perform. Yet refusing to perform the expected version of Black masculinity can itself carry consequences. Perceptions of collegiality, teaching evaluations, leadership assessments, and other measures of professional performance may be shaped by whether a Black man fulfills or refuses the archetype others have assigned to him.

Refusing the Archetypes

At various points in my career, I have felt pressure to perform these stereotypes. They can be particularly harmful for Black men who are socially conscious, committed to Black liberation, and willing to prioritize the needs and flourishing of Black communities.

Non-Black colleagues, peers, and leaders may observe these dynamics but too often fail to function as accomplices in interrupting the harm. Silence allows racialized and gendered expectations to become normalized as simply part of institutional culture.

These stereotypes are rarely codified in formal policies. Their power lies precisely in their informality. They silently shape expectations around labor, influence how behavior is interpreted, determine who is perceived as collegial or threatening, and ultimately inform how Black men advance or fail to advance in their careers.

Higher education leaders must therefore understand the historical and contemporary forces shaping the experiences and opportunities of Black men in the academy. The persistent mythologizing of Black men as brutes, Sambos, bucks, jesters, tokens, and workhorses continues to constrain the ways Black men are allowed to exist within academic institutions.

Black men should not have to become caricatures of Black masculinity to thrive in higher education. We must be treated and engaged as full, multidimensional human beings.

Toward an Academy Where Black Men Can Flourish

I conclude by proposing three initial steps for creating academic environments in which Black men can genuinely thrive.

First, read the scholarship on Black men in higher education and, equally important, listen to Black men themselves. Their experiences should not be interpreted solely through frameworks developed to understand other populations. Black men deserve serious intellectual inquiry into the distinct ways race, gender, masculinity, class, institutional power, and anti-Blackness converge to shape their experiences.

Second, interrupt anti-Black misandry when you witness it. When Black men are being overworked, tokenized, stereotyped, disproportionately surveilled, or discussed using language that traffics in racialized and gendered tropes, challenge it. Institutional allyship that disappears precisely when intervention carries social or professional risk is insufficient.

Third, redistribute labor and build organizational structures that recognize Black men’s humanity. Institutions should examine who is expected to mentor, rescue, entertain, represent, endure, and produce—and whether those expectations are equitably distributed, recognized, and compensated.

My desire is for Black men in the academy to no longer have to navigate anti-Black, misandrist environments that simultaneously view them as dangerous and demand that they function as workhorses. Instead, institutions must recognize Black men as multidimensional human beings who have been—and continue to be—among the academy’s most consequential contributors.

Black men should not merely be permitted to survive the academy. We should have the freedom, resources, dignity, and institutional support necessary to reach our fullest potential and flourish within it.

Dr. Sydney Freeman Jr. is President and Chief Research Scientist at Dr. Freeman, LLC. His scholarship focuses on the thriving and flourishing of Black populations in higher education. He is a 2016 H.E.L.F Gamma Cohort Fellow.