"A Bit Heavy on the Struggle": White Male Students' Responses to Race-Conscious College Transition Stories

• In Event: The "Wicked Flexibility" of Whiteness in Progressive Educational Reform Initiatives

Abstract

Purpose
Race-conscious college transition initiatives supporting racially minoritized students face endemic, enduring white supremacy in higher education (Cabrera et al., 2016; Leonardo & Porter, 2010; Patton, 2016). White male students’ reactions to these initiatives matter because this long-majoritized group actively contributes to challenges facing their peers of color. This study examines survey responses of white male students to one such college transition intervention. Their responses point toward shared figured worlds (Holland et al., 1998), including orientations toward their peers and the challenges their peers navigate. Our study identifies ontological and affective trends in their responses, illuminating ways in which whiteness is contested and reified in higher education.

Perspectives
Scholars have argued that most white people are unlikely to address whiteness, especially their own. As discourse and standpoint, whiteness is cloaked in epistemological ignorance (Mills, 2007), colorblind ideology (Bonilla-Silva, 2013), and amorphous discourses of diversity and inclusion (Ahmed, 2007; Grinage, 2020). Whites “think they are white” (Baldwin, 1998, p. 180), while imagining their whiteness is invisible to others (hooks, 2008). Indeed, white male undergraduates may react defensively -- even aggressively -- when their positionality is named and implicated (Cabrera, 2019), reflecting a post-colorblind era in which white men mobilize identity politics of resentful victimhood (Leonardo, 2020). However, when educators and activists have challenged young white people to explicitly name whiteness, and their white positionality, some have developed critically-conscious identities and joined anti-racist struggles. Thus, white male students who bring up whiteness, unprompted, may represent competing (and consonant) currents among white men.

Methods
We examined survey data from a study of color-evasive and race-conscious college transition stories at a politically liberal, research-intensive Hispanic-Serving Institution. All incoming undergraduates encountered the online survey during orientation; total participants (n=3172) included 676 white males. We analyzed open-ended responses of white male students who mentioned “white” or “whiteness” (n=24, < 4% of all white males), compared to a random sample of white male students who did not (n=24).

Findings
Among the 24 students who mentioned whiteness, 12 explicitly self-identified as white (“as a straight white male”), while 3 did so implicitly (“I come from a very uniform, white, conservative community and it is disgusting”). Responses frequently included strongly-worded, emotional language: some criticizing whiteness and white supremacy, others portraying whites as victims. These strong reactions were absent from the responses of students who did not mention whiteness. Students who explicitly self-identified as white most often did so to explain why they could not “relate” to the race-conscious stories. In some cases, these explanations reflected positive orientations toward peers of color; in others, they reflected feelings of exclusion and aggrieved victimhood. Across all responses, neoliberal discourses of diversity and inclusion frequently functioned as vehicles for whiteness.

Significance
Identifying trends and tensions among white male students’ figured worlds can inform the work of educators, activists, and scholars to support critical trajectories among these students, and improve conditions facing students of color. Such shifts can bolster movements to support racially minoritized students and abolish white supremacy in education and beyond.

Authors

• Ian Slattery, University of California - Santa Cruz

• Giselle Laiduc, University of California - Santa Cruz

• Rebecca Covarrubias, University of California - Santa Cruz