We Are the Authors of Our Story: Black and Latinx Students' Perceptions, Responses, and Resistance to Environmental Microaggressions in STEM

• In Event: Calling in Well-Being: Critical Examinations of Black and Brown STEM Students

Abstract

Research on Black and Latinx students studying Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) highlights the toxic and deficit oriented environment students face as they navigate STEM spaces (McGee, 2020). STEM culture illustrates and prefers white, male, middle-class, heterosexual, able-bodied individuals (Carlone & Johnson, 2007) conveying the message that if you do not hold these identities you do not belong and your experiences are not valued in the STEM environment (McGee & Martin, 2011). Recognizing the impact that STEM culture has on students, we co-theorize the experiences of Black and Brown students’ in STEM, specifically focusing on their experienced microaggressions and navigation skills. The following research questions guide our study: (1) How do Black and Latinx students author themselves in STEM spaces at a R1-PWI in the Midwest? (2)What are the environmental microaggressions they experience and how do they engage in transformational resistance?
To address these questions, we draw from an existing dataset composed of 52 Black and Brown students discussing their various STEM experiences. We employ a framework that explores institutions as microcosms and microaggressions to complicate understandings of Black and Latinx students in STEM. Institutions of higher education are microcosms of society mirroring the the social norms, isms, backgrounds, histories, and ideals of the larger society (Kaldis, 2008). Racial microaggressions are defined as intentional or unintentional indignities that communicate hostile, derogatory, or racial slights and insults, which is a pervasive form of racism that results in deleterious effects on its reciever (Harrell, 2000; Pierce et.al, 1978; Sue et.al, 2007). However, these forms of racial slights surface in daily interactions. Microaggressive forms of racism can take the form of verbal, behavioral, and even environmental slights (Sue et al., 2007).
Using 26 focus groups (two rounds) as data, we engaged a deductive coding process with a codebook outlining codes from microaggressions (16) and forms of resistance (seven). Codes were synthesized into larger themes that reflected student experiences within the (larger) STEM environmental context, where through our findings we narrate a composite story between two students as they name their realities navigating STEM. This story illustrates the macro-level or environmental microaggressions of visibility and invisibility experienced within the institution and across interactions with peers, staff, and faculty. The conversation that emerges from these two students reveals how they navigate and engage in transformational resistance as they critique the STEM environments they are part of. In many ways, this work offers a counternarative to the deficit perceptions of Black and Brown students in STEM (King & Pringle, 2019; Ong et al., 2018; Author, 2021), and instead offers a narrative of resistance (Solorzano & Bernal, 2001;Yosso et al., 2009). This work adds to the research on Black and Brown students conceptions of their identities, arguing for the need to center the well-being of Black and Brown undergraduate students within how we position them within STEM spaces.

Authors

• Michele Williams, University of Illinois at Chicago
  Presenting Author

• Adrianna González Ybarra, University of Missouri
  Presenting Author

• Ekaete Udoh, University of Missouri
  Presenting Author

• Ymbar I. Polanco Pino, Tufts University
  Presenting Author

• Terrell R Morton, University of Illinois at Chicago
  Non-Presenting Author