Further Contextualizing Racial Identity: Multiracial Students at Hispanic-Serving Institutions

Despite the recent growth of literature on multiracial college students, there is still limited understanding about multiracial students at Minority-Serving Institutions (MSIs). This qualitative study explores the interplay of racialized identity and the unique contexts of Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSIs) using data from eight multiracial students attending two HSIs in the Midwest. Findings explore how students made sense of their multiracial identities within specific ecological contexts of HSIs, including a mesosystem of diversity and inclusion and an exosystem of Latinidad. Overall, multiracial students generally felt included and provide a promising platform to better understand the unique positioning of HSIs in serving an increasingly diverse student body.

Whiteness and the Rainbow: White LGBTQ+ College Students’ Racial Identity Development

LGBTQ+ communities and spaces on college campuses are often known as white-centered spaces, implicitly or explicitly excluding students of color. While White LGBTQ+ students may experience marginalization and exclusion on the basis of their sexual orientations and/or gender identities, they may unwittingly perpetuate oppression on the basis of race. Utilizing Helms’ (1990) white racial identity development model, this study explored how White LGBTQ+ college students understand their racial identity and white privilege. The sample of 12 White LGBTQ+ college students was drawn from a larger four-year longitudinal qualitative study of LGBTQ+ college student success. In early interviews, students either did not discuss their white racial identity or did not view their white racial identity as a salient aspect of their identity. However, students increasingly spoke about their white identities, race, and racism in later interviews. Interpersonal experiences, academic engagement, and national events provided access points for White LGBTQ+ students to talk about race and their white identities. Implications for research and practice with White LGBTQ+ college students and in LGBTQ+ campus spaces are discussed.

Your True Colors

This poem reflects the author’s heartbreak, disappointment, and the realization that people may not show who they truly are to one. The author describes feeling disappointment and a sense of guilt from a previous relationship. The person she thought she knew turned out to be someone who did not align with her values. The author is a Mexican American woman who immigrated to the United States as a teenager from Mexico. She found within herself to educate herself through her adult life seeking to erase internalized patriarchy and oppression. Living through such divisive political environment between 2017 and 2020, she began to realize people around her, in specific the relationship illustrated in the poem, were not who she thought they were. The author describes the end of the relationship with a play on words declaring that she does not want to see this person’s dull colors again.

Examining the Experiences of Campus Safety among International Students

Although international students comprise a significant percentage of the college population, limited attention is directed to their safety needs. This study measured the experiences and perceptions of campus safety among international college students in the United States. The researchers sampled participants from institutions around the country, who self-identified as international students. A researcher-developed 53-item Likert scale questionnaire, the International College Students’ Safety Questionnaire (ICSSQ), was administered to the sample. Findings from the exploratory factor analysis provided preliminary evidence for a four-factor solution for the 26-item ICSSQ with adequate internal consistency. Salient demographic variables, such as, nationality, college status and perceived proficiency in English, were found to be significantly linked to derived factor scores. Implications for institutional adoption of this instrument, along with limitations and directions for future research are included.

In Praxis: Creating a (Web)Site of Resistance and Disrupting the Hidden Curricula of Academic Socialization

The navigation and socialization within academia is rife with toxicity and a hidden curricula reflective of neoliberal competitiveness, drawn from White cis-hetero colonialist patriarchy. To challenge and resist the toxicity within academia, Communities of Color have created counterspaces to share resources, build beyond the purported individualism, and connect through vulnerability and care. Within this reflection, are the lessons learned of creating one such counterspace through the development of a website— a “site” of resistance.

A Whitened Rainbow: The In/visibility of Race and Racism in LGBTQ+ Higher Education Scholarship

Scholars critique LGBTQ+ social movements for failing to understand how oppressive systems like racism inform the experiences of LGBTQ+ community members. To investigate whether LGBTQ+ literature in postsecondary education reproduces this same pattern, we used a critical summative content analysis approach to examine research published on LGBTQ+ people between 2009 and 2019. Guided by a conceptual framework mobilizing notions of colorblindness and queer of color perspectives, we found that the 97 articles in the sample largely minimized the role that racism, anti-Blackness, whiteness, and settler colonialism plays in shaping LGBTQ+ realities in higher education. Implications for future scholarship are offered.

"I Can’t Be Racist, I’m Gay”: Exploring Queer White Men’s Views on Race and Racism

In society and on college campuses, whiteness has staked a claim as the default race for queerness. This has manifested in queer and trans people of color feeling like outsiders who must resist hegemonic whiteness at personal and institutional levels. This qualitative study explores how queer white men negotiate their relationship to race and racism on and off their campuses. These men oscillate between normalizing whiteness, working through whiteness, and working with their whiteness. Implications for improving campus climate and the experiences of queer and trans people of color (QTPOC) students, staff, and faculty are discussed.

Privilege and Oppression: Exploring the Paradoxical Identity of White Women Administrators in Higher Education

Race is a prominent issue in higher education, which has intensified demands upon postsecondary leadership to acknowledge and respond to increasing racial tensions within campus communities. Many administrators, who are mostly White, are left perplexed regarding how to address such demands. Having leaders who understand bias can potentially support institutional responses to racial tensions. As such, this study focused on the second largest share of college administrators, White women – an identity rooted in both privilege and oppression. White women may better understand the conditions of oppression given their gendered status, yet may also be unaware of the extent of their privilege or its effects on their leadership decisions. Their unique positioning calls for a deeper exploration of the role identity plays in leadership, especially in times of racial discord. Utilizing Putnam’s bridging capital and bonding capital framework, findings highlight where their privilege and oppression emerge in study participants’ leadership, leading to recommendations for future research and practice.

“No, Teach Yourself!”: College Women’s Expectations for White Men’s Awareness of Privilege and Oppression

Addressing gender inequities in higher education must begin with the acknowledgement that men play a key role in creating change. The purpose of this qualitative study is to center and raise the experiences of women students, and to communicate to men who are students, faculty, and administrators what women students expect from them in terms of privilege and oppression awareness. Findings indicate that women students felt criticized, judged, and underestimated by men, and expected men to self-educate to become aware of and interrogate their own privileges. The authors provide recommendations for higher education teaching and learning, focusing on attitudes and behaviors of White men in the academy.

Know Family, Know Self: Exploring the Influence of Family on Vietnamese American College Students’ Experiences

Much of the existing literature on Vietnamese Americans focuses on experiences of previous generations and does not capture the perspectives of the current generation of Vietnamese Americans, more specifically those who are college students. The present study examined the role of family influence on college experiences for Vietnamese American students. This study utilized qualitative methodology, analyzing data collected from semi-structured, in-person individual interviews conducted with six Vietnamese American college students (VACS) attending a large, predominantly white institution (PWI). Results from this study reveal not only how VACS construct meaning of their family influences and college experiences, but also how they come to understand their own Vietnamese American identity. Major findings from this study reveal that VACS exist between two worlds: the life of a second-generation immigrant Vietnamese American, and the life of an American college student. This article provides implications for higher education and student affairs practitioners to understand the unique experiences of this underrepresented and under-researched student population. Implications for further research are also discussed.