White College Research Articles

Staging Intersectionality

This essay follows the making of a queer of colour aesthetic space in the form of a music video entitled Brother, within a largely homogenous white University. The video places white heteronormativity on the periphery whilst intersectional brown bodies take the centre. It inverts racist and fetishistic tropes in music video culture and reverses the white male gaze. The making of the video created a small brown island in a sea of white as a vision of a future brown space protected from the ubiquitous, ambivalently festishizing white gaze; a gaze that projects its own narrative onto bodies of colour. It puts forward a thesis of racial agency, whereby the performance of “race” is scripted by the person of colour and not provoked by the construct of whiteness.

“You never feel so Black as when you're contrasted against a White background”: Black students' experiences at a predominantly White institution in the UK

Abstract“Old” universities in the UK are typically populated with White middle‐class students who hail from White majority hometowns, whilst “new” universities have more diverse cohorts from diverse hometowns. Our research conducted with 17 Black students at a predominantly White university, examined the initial encounters in which Black students first realise their minority status on campus. We found that White numerical dominance combined with White students' racialised place‐based assumptions about who belongs where, had an immediate and powerful impact on our participants. Importantly, our findings suggest that for Black students coming from diverse hometowns, experiences such as being the only Black person in lecture halls, being told that you are the first Black person your peers have met, and being expected to use urban street slang and sell drugs constituted both a denial of their student identity and a misrecognition of their Black identity. Our analysis highlights the importance of considering the diversity within institutions alongside Black and White students' place‐based histories with diversity; and how these are consequential for Black students' experiences of (mis)recognition and (non)belonging on campuses. Please refer to the Supplementary Material section to find this article's Community and Social Impact Statement.

Welcoming Ain’t Belonging: A Case Study that Explores How Two-year Predominantly White Colleges Can Foster an Environment of Validation and Mattering for Men of Color

The qualitative case study explored the factors that foster an atmosphere of belonging for men of color (MOC) attending a 2-year Predominantly White Institution. The pressing issue is the PWI colleges make the erroneous assumption that an extension or invitation of welcome is the same as fostering a sense of belonging for men of color (MOC). This led colleges to construct policies and practices that do not intentionally and deliberately create an atmosphere where MOC feel valued, validated, and visible. According to Maestas, Vaquera, and Zehr (2007), fostering a sense of belonging is paramount to the retention and graduation of students of color. The study surfaced three central themes: (a) experiencing an atmosphere of welcome, (b) desire for cultural representation and celebration (c) importance of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) training. Though most colleges boast of creating a sense of belonging, the National Center for Education Statistics (2019) reports 25% of men of color graduate from a community college within 150 % or three-years of normal time. Additionally, the Community College Survey of Men (CCSM) reports a lack of validation, engagement, and high attrition rate for men of color attending these institutions (Harris & Wood, 2013). This can be problematic considering the majority of men of color began their academic journey by attending 2-year colleges. Community and 2-year colleges are critical to the educational system and positioned to improve access and equity for students of color, particularly males (Bailey, Jaggars, & Jenkins, 2015).

Black Students’ Perceptions of Campus Climates and the Effect on Academic Resilience

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationships between general, academic, and racial campus climates and academic resilience among Black college students. This study also investigated the moderating role of civic engagement on the relationships between campus climates and academic resilience. Participants were 388 Black undergraduate students (76.8% women; 58.8% social, behavioral, and economic sciences majors; 87.4% enrolled full-time) attending a predominantly White university who completed an online survey. Results from moderated regression analyses indicated more positive perceptions of general and academic campus climates significantly predicted higher levels of academic resilience, but more positive perceptions of racial campus climate significantly predicted lower levels of academic resilience. Civic engagement moderated the relationship between general campus climate and academic resilience only. These findings can be used to inform coordinated efforts by university constituents to advance academic resilience among Black college students by improving general and academic campus climates, promoting more positive perceptions of general and academic campus climates, and promoting student civic engagement.

Racial disparities in sleep health between Black and White young adults: The role of neighborhood safety in childhood

ObjectivesBlack adults in the United States have shorter sleep durations and poorer sleep efficiency relative to White adults, yet reasons for these disparities are not well explicated. The objective of this study was to examine neighborhood safety in childhood as a mediator of subsequent racial disparities in sleep. MethodsData were from Black and White young adults attending a large, predominantly White university in the Southeastern United States (N = 263; 52% Black, 53% female; Mean age = 19.21 years, SD = 1.01). Sleep parameters were assessed from eight nights of wrist actigraphy (time in bed, sleep duration, and efficiency) and an established self-report measure of daytime sleepiness. Residential histories from birth through age 18 were documented, and retrospective self-reports of neighborhood safety in childhood were assessed. ResultsBlack participants had less time in bed (p < 0.001), shorter sleep duration (p < 0.001), poorer sleep efficiency (p < 0.001), and more daytime sleepiness (p = 0.009) than White participants. Neighborhood safety mediated race differences in time in bed (p = 0.028), sleep duration (p = 0.033), and daytime sleepiness (p = 0.048), but not sleep efficiency. Findings were substantively unchanged after adjustment for family socioeconomic status, BMI, and substance use. ConclusionsFindings support the hypothesis that neighborhood safety in childhood may partially account for race differences in subsequent sleep duration and daytime sleepiness. Addressing racial inequities in childhood neighborhood safety may be an important step toward reducing racial disparities in sleep health.

“Indigenous” Nature Connection? A Response to Kurth, Narvaez, Kohn, and Bae (2020)

“Indigenous” Nature Connection? A Response to Kurth, Narvaez, Kohn, and Bae (2020)

Sense of Belonging, Racial Microaggressions, and Depressive Symptoms among Students of Asian Descent in the United States

ABSTRACT This study explored the moderating role of sense of belonging on the relations between racial microaggressions and depressive symptoms. Using survey data from students of Asian descent in the United States (N = 553) at a predominantly White university, we found that racial microaggressions and sense of belonging significantly predicted depressive symptoms. In addition, sense of belonging moderated the relations between racial microaggressions and depressive symptoms. Specifically, having a higher level of sense of belonging had a counter effect against the detrimental impact of racial microaggressions on the depressive symptoms. Implications for research and practice in higher education are discussed.

Micro-Protests as Co-cultural Communicative Practice

In this article, I utilize phenomenologically-based creative nonfiction to present a case study of what micro-protest looks like for an African American faculty member working in a predominantly white university. Drawing from observations and informal information-gathering techniques over a 20+ year period, I present a layered account to share snippets from a larger narrative that vividly capture the nuanced ways co-cultural group members navigate predominantly white organizational spaces in the margins. Ultimately, I introduce the various ways micro-protest—as a new conceptualization of co-cultural practice—is enacted to achieve the preferred outcome of separation. I conclude with a brief discussion of how this scholarly endeavor contributes to co-cultural research and theorizing.

Theorizing the Involvement Experiences of Black Women in Historically White Student Organizations

The purpose of this research article is to provide an examination of the structures and practices of historically White student organizations (HWSOs). Examined through the lens of Black feminist thought (BFT), this article offers a critical analysis of the gendered racial encounters and interactions of Black women in historically White campus involvement spaces. This article critiques the structure and environments of HWSOs by centering the lived experiences of Black undergraduate women who were members of HWSOs. Categorized through BFT’s matrix of domination, participants’ narratives are juxtaposed among the four domains (structural domain, discplinary domain, hegemonic domain, and the interpersonal domain) outlined by Patricia Hill Collins. The experiences of Black women who were involved in HWSOs describe the nature and forms of oppression Black collegiate women encountered in HWSOs at one, historically White university in the Southeastearn region of the United States.

The possessive investment in honorary whiteness?: how Asian and Asian Americans reify a transnational racial order through language

ABSTRACT Considering the call for a global approach to analysing race, this study develops a theoretical framework of how racial ideology becomes structured at a global, transnational level. Drawing from approximately 500 hours of ethnographic participant observation at a predominantly white university located in the Southern United States, this study illustrates how Koreans and Korean Americans reproduce a transnational racial hierarchy at a predominantly white university. My findings show how Korean and Korean Americans normalize the imperial U.S.-Korea relations through a racially affective economy of language use in social interactions. The imperial standpoint observed in Koreans and Korean Americans calls into question the role that honorary whiteness plays in the United States’ triracial order. I further discuss the implication of Asian and Asian American's possessive investment in honorary whiteness, which is central to the maintenance of a transnational triracial order with Korea as an extension of the U.S. empire.

Stop the pain: Black and minority ethnic scholars on diversity policy obfuscation in universities

PurposeThe author extends the work on diversity policy in UK higher education by centring the voices of Black and minority ethnic scholars and de-centring white comfort with the aim of a call to stop the pain that sanitised university diversity policies cause Black and minority ethnic scholars.Design/methodology/approachUsing in-depth qualitative and auto-ethographic research methods, this paper engages with both respondents' narratives as well as the author's experience of carrying out the research within the walls of predominately white universities.FindingsIn order for universities to move beyond hollow and sanitised diversity, they must centre the voices of Black and minority ethnic scholars. Respondents spoke of their experiences of pain, and feelings of “taking up” space in predominately white universities. The author also discusses respondents' feelings towards diversity and inclusion policies such as the Race Equality Charter Mark.Originality/valueThe research is built on previous work on diversity by decentring white comfort.

Multiple Identities and Scholarship: Black Scholars’ Struggles for Acceptance and Recognition in the United States of America

Abstract This article explores the stories of African and African American scholars in predominantly white institutions. It sheds light on the challenges of underrepresentation, sexism, and racial identity in an area of white fragility: academia. The lack of representation among International Studies scholars in the United States and Europe has not only had an impact on academia, but has also put heavy pressure on minority scholars, since they are often asked, by their institutions and students, to advise and mentor students who too often feel out of place or misunderstood by the faculty available to them. Therefore, it is imperative that we embrace minority faculty members, whether they are from the United States, Europe, or the Global South. Using narrative analysis, I examine conversations that I had with thirteen Black women who work at prestigious white universities and ten students who took classes with at least one Black, female professor. Although our field has expanded and accepted new members, many minority scholars still see it as a very selective, almost all Western, boys’ club.

Measurement Invariance of the Sexual Assault Script Scale (SASS): An Examination Among Hispanic and Non-Hispanic White College Women.

Rates of sexual victimization have remained steady over several decades, and preventative interventions to reduce men's sexually aggressive behavior have been largely ineffective. As such, research has endeavored to find novel approaches to identify women at increased risk for sexual victimization. Sexual assault scripts, or "cognitive models" that women adhere to that guide their beliefs about sexual assault are posited to influence their victimization risk. Prior studies on sexual assault scripts primarily have been qualitative in nature; however, recent work yielded a 27-item measure of putative risk for sexual victimization called the Sexual Assault Script Scale (SASS). The SASS has four subscales called Stereotypical Assault Scripts, Acquaintance Assault Scripts, Assault Resistance Scripts, and Date/Friend Assault Scripts, which were found in prior work to be internally consistent and associated with putative risk factors for sexual victimization. The focus of the current study was to test the measurement invariance of the SASS among Hispanic and non-Hispanic White college women who were recruited in the prior study. Four hundred sixty-nine (N = 469) Hispanic and 415 non-Hispanic White US undergraduate heterosexual or bisexual women from a Southwestern university in the United States completed the SASS. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) replicated the prior four-factor model with an acceptable fit to the data, and tests of measurement invariance revealed the SASS to be invariant across Hispanic and non-Hispanic White college women, suggesting that the SASS is measuring a similar construct in these groups.

‘It doesn’t bother me...I’m here for a reason’: a qualitative examination of white college athletes’ experiences at a historically black college/university (HBCU)

ABSTRACT The purpose of this study was to explore the academic, athletic, and social experiences of White college athletes at a Division I historically Black college/university (HBCU). Previous research has documented how White college athletes experience positive educational and developmental outcomes at historically White institutions (HWIs). However, there is a dearth of research on White college athletes’ experiences where they are the demographic minority within collegiate institutions like HBCUs. Three focus groups and four individual interviews were conducted and the data from four White college athletes at a HBCU were examined for the current study. Using symbolic interactionism and interpretive interactionism as theoretical lenses, key findings revealed participants largely expressed satisfaction with their academic, athletic, and social experiences. Implications for policy and practice are discussed.

The impact of a diversity intervention on White college students’ colour-blind racial attitudes

ABSTRACT This research explored the impact a 3-day pre-college diversity intervention had on incoming White college students’ (N = 63) colour-blind racial attitudes (COBRAS), or their unawareness of racial privilege, blatant racial issues, and institutional discrimination. Repeated measures analysis of variance tests indicated that students reported a greater awareness of racial privilege and blatant racial issues immediately after the programme. Students’ awareness of institutional discrimination – a potentially more abstract and complex understanding of racism – did not change after the program. To isolate the effects of the intervention, independent sample t-tests between White college students who did not undergo the intervention and intervention participants were conducted. Results indicated that both samples did not have significantly different COBRAS before the intervention, providing evidence that the intervention likely contributed to changes in intervention participants’ COBRAS. These results suggest that the pre-college diversity intervention impacted forms of COBRAS differently. Implications for diversity interventions on predominantly White college campuses are discussed.

Institutional culture and transformation in higher education in post-1994 South Africa: a critical race theory analysis

Apartheid left in its wake a South Africa characterized by social inequalities that are embedded and reflected in all spheres of social life, including the higher education system. While the post-apartheid government has made efforts to transform the higher education system it inherited, the pace has been slow and has fallen significantly short of what many regard as modest expectations. This paper interrogates why transformation has remained elusive in the higher education sector in post-apartheid South Africa, particularly with regards to the institutional culture at historically white universities (HWUs). Focusing on the Rhodes Must Fall (RMF) campaign at the University of Cape Town (UCT), and Luister, a documentary film at the University of Stellenbosch, it employs critical race theory (CRT) as a conceptual framework and analytical tool. Using CRT identifies the centrality of racism in shaping the slow pace of transformation in general and concerning the institutional culture at HWUs in particular. The paper concludes by reflecting on the implications of this lack of transformation, particularly in a time where poverty is endemic and unemployment rampant.

Allison Davis: Social Scientist for Social Justice

Allison Davis (1902–1983) was one of the premier African American intellectuals of his generation. Having inherited a world dominated by the color line yet privileged enough to attend the most elite universities in the United States, Davis dedicated his life to social science. At turns an anthropologist, sociologist, psychologist, psychoanalyst, and educationalist, Davis spent his career com-batting race and class inequalities within an academy dominated by White men. He personally broke barriers by becoming the first African American to earn tenure at a predominantly White university, and his research was no less path breaking. It pushed the theoretical boundaries of multiples disciplines and influenced policymakers and activists alike. Through works such as Deep South (1941), Children of Bondage (1940), the Social-Class Influences upon Education (1948), and many other publications, Davis had a significant impact on American intellectual life—one that endures to this day. This essay explains Davis's contributions while also critically assessing the limitations of his body of work, including the top-down model of social change he represented and the marginalization of women and gender.

Diversity Cupcakes and White Institutional Space: The Emotional Labor of Resident Assistants of Color at Historically White Universities

This study draws on interviews with 22 Resident Assistants of Color across three universities to better understand the racialized nature of their work within white institutional spaces. We bring together theories of emotional labor (Hochschild, 1983; Turner-Kelly et al., 2021) and white institutional space (W.L. Moore, 2008) to detail the tensions and contradictions these students experience between their institutional role as RAs and their racialized identities as Students of Color at historically white universities. Implications for supporting RAs of Color are offered.

The Ocean in the School: Pacific Islander Students Transforming Their University by Rick Bonus

Reviewed by: The Ocean in the School: Pacific Islander Students Transforming Their University by Rick Bonus Rachel Endo (bio) The Ocean in the School: Pacific Islander Students Transforming Their University, by Rick Bonus. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2020. 264 pp. $26.95 paperback. ISBN: 978-1-4870-0742-5. The Ocean in the School: Pacific Islander Students Transforming Their University is a critical ethnography that centers the collegiate experiences of culturally diverse Pacific Islander students and their allies who attended the University of Washington between 2004 and 2018. Rick Bonus, who has spent over twenty years on the faculty in American Ethnic Studies at the University of Washington, provides firsthand insights into how an elite predominantly White university (PWI) that purported to value diversity, equity, and inclusion failed to fully live up to its promise in serving Pacific Islander students and other minoritized students. Using the cultural metaphor of the ocean to amplify the significance of "respecting nature, ancestry, and religious belief, and how paramount it was to the community care for the community above the self" (6), this work investigates how Pacific Islander students transformed their university by creating culturally affirming programs and spaces with little formal institutional recognition and support. The introduction interrogates several dominant definitions and explanations of "student success" in relation to the literature on academic achievement. Primarily drawing on Angela Valenzuela's framework of subtractive schooling, Bonus untangles the various individual and institutional challenges that Pacific Islander students navigated at a PWI that materially and symbolically failed to nurture their imagined-community values of care and collectivism. The first chapter provides an in-depth analysis of Pacific Islander students' collegiate experiences in relation to their university's structures and systems that stratified different groups of students based on classed, racialized, and other identities. While college is often imagined as a time for discovery, most incoming Pacific Islander students instead experienced despair and uncertainty, carrying forward memories from their K-12 years where they felt perpetually devalued [End Page 171] and uncared for. The second chapter provides an overview of the challenges and possibilities of collective mentorship through the Pacific Islander Partnerships in Education mentorship program (PIPE), where Bonus has also served as faculty advisor. In contrast to dominant mentoring programs that focus on one-to-one-relationships, PIPE is a culturally relevant partnership where participants "treated each other as if they were family members, something that many of them thought was the glaring omission in their school lives" (92; original italic). Like any close-knit community, various misunderstandings and tensions arose that at times created hard feelings, but overall, the program has persisted because it is a dynamic space where everyone genuinely cares for each other like family. The third chapter highlights the various reasons why many Pacific Islander students leave school. Bonus offers all PWIs with a bold reminder: several high-promise students do not necessarily drop out of school, but rather are pushed out for a range of reasons for which the institutions are directly and indirectly responsible. For Pacific Islander students, their university was a persistent reminder of their "colonized lives" (196) in all aspects of multiple types of curricula: formal, hidden, and informal. Ironically, many left school because they spent too much time participating in extracurricular activities for which most faculty and staff view as "wasteful, excessive, and unnecessary" (122). Indeed, universities pressure students to finish their coursework and degrees quickly without fully considering the value of a whole-person approach to retaining and supporting them. The fourth chapter articulates the possibilities of high-impact educational practices, which are loosely defined as "courses and programs that were central to students' lives rather than peripheral or extracurricular to their course of study in the university" (151). There are intangible payoffs when students are afforded opportunities to co-construct knowledge in ways directly connected to their lived experiences. Bonus focuses on several case examples including Poly Day, Pioneer!, a study-abroad class in Manilla, a course that one of his former students taught on Pacific Islander Studies, and other initiatives that blended academic content with community engagement and critical thinking. High-impact practices did not compete with traditional academic activities but rather...

Exceptional Injustice: Facebook as a Reflection of Race- and Gender-Based Narratives Following the Death of George Floyd

Following the death of George Floyd, Facebook posts about the Black Lives Matter movement (BLM) surged, creating the opportunity to examine reactions by race and sex. This study employed a two-part mixed methods approach beginning with an analysis of posts from a single college student’s Facebook newsfeed over a 12-week period, commencing on the date of George Floyd’s death (25 May 2020). A triangulation protocol enhanced exploratory observational–archival Facebook posts with qualitative data from 24 Black and White college students queried about their views of BLM and policing. The Facebook data revealed that White males, who were the least active in posting about BLM, were most likely to criticize BLM protests. They also believed incidents of police brutality were exceptions that tainted an otherwise commendable profession. In contrast, Black individuals commonly saw the case of George Floyd as consistent with a longstanding pattern of injustice that takes an emotional toll, and as an egregious exemplification of racism that calls for indictment of the status quo. The exploratory data in this article also illustrate how even for a cause célèbre, attention on Facebook ebbs over time. This phenomenon obscures the urgency of effecting change, especially for persons whose understanding of racism is influenced by its coverage on social media. The need to recognize the divergence of views—how they vary by sex and race and their connection to social media—remains critical for progress in determining the best steps forward in race relations and police reform.