"Some friends and I started talking...": a participatory action research project to deconstruct white privilege among student affairs practitioners

Abstract

The purpose of this participatory action research (PAR) project was to investigate and deconstruct white racial privilege as one step toward developing an anti-racist professional identity for white students in a student affairs graduate preparation program at a predominantly white university. This study was significant because it furthered the development of a roadmap for whites to use in developing white privilege awareness. An awareness of privilege, generally, and white racial privilege, specifically, are integral for practitioners in the helping professions. This qualitative study used the approach of PAR, influenced by a critical, emancipatory perspective. Five participants came together for a 30-hour group process that was both dialogical and experiential. Each group member was interviewed before and after the group process, and the transcripts of the interviews and group process formed the core of the data that was generated. Participants also wrote personal reflections in between the PAR group sessions and these reflective writings were analyzed as part of the data. Finally, as an evaluation component and as a method to triangulate data, each participant completed the White Privilege Attitude Scale (WPAS) (Pinterits, 2004) at the beginning and end of the PAR group process. Several significant moments or categories emerged from an analysis of the PAR group process transcripts. The all-white constitution of the group and the engaged and democratic framework of PAR facilitated the formation of a cohesive dialogue marked by authenticity and trust among the members. The group participated in a series of experiential activities that helped them apprehend the construct of white privilege and begin to problematize its presence in their lives. The group worked through typical responses to white privilege awareness, such as guilt, stuckness, and resistance, and emerged with several critical, action-oriented strategies to contest privilege within their own spheres. They identified barriers to their own willingness to confront privilege and generated personal action plans to deconstruct white privilege. The core finding of this research project was that all-white anti-racism encounter groups, especially when they are embedded within an engaged, decolonizing methodology such as PAR, can facilitate white privilege awareness among graduate students in a student affairs preparation program. Limitations of this study include the constructed 30-hour time frame that bounded the process, the manner in which participants were selected which limits the transferability of these findings, and the attenuated spiral of planning, action, observation and reflection that occurred