Black Students’ Perceptions and Experiences With Whiteness in Higher Education

• In Event: Friday Roundtable Session 9:45 am
  In Roundtable Session: Never a Level Playing Field: Higher Learning and the Black Student (Table 11)

Abstract

This project investigated perceptions of whiteness held by students who self-identify as Black college students.  Through focus groups, students were asked to share their lived experiences with whiteness on the college campus.  Participants’ reactions to behaviors they identified and classified as whiteness components were explored to better understand how Black college students experience whiteness on a college campus. With this, we offer suggestions to mitigate classroom, instructional, and campus-based behaviors, spaces, and encounters that offend and alienate Black undergraduate students. Information from the qualitative phase of the project was used to develop and validate a survey to quantitatively measure Black college students’ perceptions of whiteness in the second phase of this project. 

Authors

• Candice D. Davis, University of Kentucky

• Karen Margaret Guettler, University of Kentucky