Negotiations of Women’s Black and Activist Identity Through Dress on the College Campus, 2013–2019

Black people, especially Black women, have used dress to reject racism and discrimination and as a means for negotiating their Black and activist identities. Building on past work, we examine how Black women use dress as an embodied practice to negotiate both their Black and activist identities. We focus on a particular space and time: campus life at predominantly White institutions during the Black Lives Matter movement era from 2013 to 2019.To achieve this purpose, we conducted 15 in-depth, semistructured wardrobe interviews with current Black women college students. Overall, we identified three themes relating to Black women college students: experiences on predominantly White campuses, negotiating Black identity through dress, and negotiating activist identity through dress. Examining how Black women negotiate identity through dress recognizes their stories as important through counter-storytelling, allowing Black women to write their own history in their own voices.

A qualitative study of microaggressions against African Americans on predominantly White campuses

Background Pierce’s (The Black seventies: an extending horizon book, 1970) conception of “subtle and stunning” daily racial offenses, or microaggressions, remains salient even 50 years after it was introduced. Microaggressions were defined further by Sue and colleagues (Am Psychol 62:271, 2007), and this construct has found growing utility as the deleterious effects of microaggressions on the health of people of color continues to mount. Microaggressions are common on campuses and contribute to negative social, academic, and mental health outcomes. Method This paper explores how Black college students’ experiences correspond to or differ from the microaggression types originally proposed by Sue et al. (Am Psychol 62:271, 2007). Themes were identified from focus group data of students of color (N = 36) from predominately White institutions (PWIs) of higher learning (N = 3) using interpretative phenomenological analysis. Results We identified 15 categories of racial microaggressions, largely consistent with the original taxonomy of Sue et al. but expanded in several notable ways. New categories in our data and observed by other researchers, included categories termed Connecting via Stereotypes, Exoticization and Eroticization, and Avoidance and Distancing. Lesser studied categories identified included Sue et al.’s Denial of Individual Racism, and new categories termed Reverse Racism Hostility, Connecting via Stereotypes, and Environmental Attacks. Discussion While previous literature has either embraced the taxonomy developed by Sue and colleagues or proposed a novel taxonomy, this study synthesized the Sue framework in concert with our own focus group findings and the contributions of other researchers. Improving our understanding of microaggressions as they impact people of color may better allow for improved understanding and measurement of this important construct.

Breaking Down Walls and Building Bridges: A Study of Cross-Racial Interactions across Two Predominantly White Campuses

We examined predictors of self-reported cross-racial interactions (CRIs) by exploring ego networks for 355 Black and White undergraduates at two predominantly White institutions (PWIs). One PWI was 67% White, and the otherPWI was only 50% White. Institution, 1st year status, and racial homogeneity of student network were significant predictors of CRI. Students at the less structurally diverse university (that was 67% White) reported fewer CRIs;students with racially homogeneous networks (i.e., where all alters/connections were the same race as each other) also reported fewer CRIs. In contrast, 1st yearstudents reported a higher number of CRIs. Network homophily (i.e., where alters/connections in a network were all the same race as ego--the student himor herself) did not significantly predict CRIs, and neither did parent education or ego’s (i.e., the students’) race or gender. There was one significant difference by race; however, a higher percentage of White students had racially homogeneous networks. The importance of structural, interactional, and curricular diversity in higher education is discussed.

‘‘I Can Turn It on When I Need To’’: Pre-college Integration, Culture, and Peer Academic Engagement among Black and Latino/a Engineering Students

Drawing on interviews with 38 black and Latino/a engineering students at a predominantly white, elite university, I use a cultural analytic framework to explicate the role of pre–college integration in the heterogeneous psychosocial and academic experiences of students of color on predominantly white campuses. I identify three cultural strategies students of color adopt to navigate the university’s ethnoracially segregated peer network landscape and more specifically, engage majority–white academic peer networks: integration, marginalized segregation, and social adaptation. Integrators, who hail from predominantly white high schools, engage majority–white academic networks with ease, do not experience ethnoracial marginalization, and form predominantly white networks in college. Marginalized segregators, who come from predominantly black, Latino/a, or mixed high schools, exhibit discomfort engaging majority–white academic networks, experience ethnoracial marginalization, and form predominantly same–race or co–ethnic networks in college. Finally, social adapters, who come from high schools with varying ethnoracial compositions, manage their experiences with ethnoracial marginalization to engage majority–white academic networks with ease, and the ethnoracial composition of their college networks varies. The findings extend previous scholarship on the experiences of black and Latino/a students on predominantly white campuses and uncover the cultural processes that contribute to the reproduction of inequality among students of color.

White Female Bystanders’ Responses to a Black Woman at Risk for Sexual Assault:

Although much research suggests that intergroup contact reduces prejudice, less research has examined the effects of contact on prosocial intergroup bystander behaviors. The current study examined mediators between White undergraduate women’s (N = 139) contact with racial/ethnic minority group members and their intent to help a Black woman at risk for sexual assault. As expected, White women who had more frequent and higher quality contact reported greater intent to intervene. Results showed that the effect of quality intergroup contact was mediated by diversity beliefs, or the attitude that cultural heterogeneity leads to favorable outcomes. These results suggest that promoting high-quality opportunities for intergroup contact and education regarding cultural diversity could promote the safety of racially and ethnically diverse students on predominantly White campuses.