Peer socialization agents (PSAs) play an important role in transmitting messages about the culture of higher education institutions (i.e. norms, values, practices, and assumptions) to new students, including messages concerning diversity and inclusion. The transmission of diversity messages depends on how student leaders make meaning of these…

This essay presents racial literacy and racial dexterity as educational desiderata, especially for white students. Racial literacy is defined as the ability to recognize and interpret racial nuances in real social engagements. Racial dexterity is defined as the ability to engage successfully with diverse racial contexts. After defining racial…

Histories of 19th-century U.S. education center White experiences, while formal education policy and practice pertaining to Black and Native Americans are treated as marginal phenomena that had little impact on schooling at a national level. Furthermore, current historical framings overwhelmingly analyze Native, White, and Black American education…

Nonverbal behavior is a ubiquitous, everyday cue that is often used as a basis for social evaluation. Numerous studies indicate that children are sensitive to these signals and form evaluative judgments after viewing positive or negative nonverbal cues directed toward a target. Furthermore, they generalize these judgments to other members of a…

Prior scholarship has documented the experiences of white students engaging in racial dialogues in curricular and co-curricular contexts, however less research considers their conversations about race within their white peer and family networks, specifically within the context of anti-racist practice. This constructivist grounded theory study…

This paper documents how segregation between Black students and White students across U.S. colleges has evolved since the 1960s, explores potential channels through which changes occur, and studies segregation across majors within colleges. The main findings are: (1) Black-White dissimilarity fell sharply in the late 1960s and early 1970s and has…

This exploratory study sought to determine if the Fast Friend intervention (Aron, Melinat, Aron, Vallone, & Bator, 1997) improve racial cognizance of cross-group dyads. Data were collected from freshmen (n=34) enrolled in a college of agriculture. The treatment and control groups included cross-group, same-sex, dyads composed of African…

Allies are members of a dominant group that work to dismantle oppression experienced by subordinate groups. Given the well-documented mental health impact of all forms of racism on people of colour, including microaggressions, cultivating White allies is important for reducing racism and advancing equity. This paper examines the impact of two…

The authors aim to illustrate the vernacular notion of reverse discrimination in higher education in the Trump era and beyond. While mapping out how a Whiteness affect morphs from White fragility to victimhood, the study uses Critical Race Theory to examine the discourse of reverse discrimination in a predominately White institution. The authors…

Contemporary scholars of race contend that the long-heralded "American Dream" rhetoric continues to thrive within the ideology of colorblindness, whereby race is deemed insignificant. Public schools are not insulated from this, and recent political assaults the teaching of "divisive" concepts have already had a chilling effect…

This qualitative phenomenological study explored the lived experience of American conduct practitioners in their process of responding to reported racialized incidents. A diary method was used for participants to capture their experiences and interactions with the person(s) harmed and the offender. Of particular focus was the response of the…

This paper critically analyzes the narratives of 62 White male undergraduates and their consistent use of the n-word during their college years. Almost all heard and/or used the n-word, but rarely did they believe using the n-word was racist. Despite these beliefs, the participants almost never used any form of the n-word in the presence of People…

De facto school segregation, stemming from structural racism, has myriad consequences for children's development. Extant research documents the implications of segregated schools for children's academic resources and opportunities, but there is less attention on the social processes that unfold as a result of school segregation, particularly in…

The purpose of this study was to understand near-peer mentoring emergent in student affairs higher education (SAHE) graduate preparation programs. Using qualitative methods grounded in a constructivist paradigm and informed by the diverse learning environments (DLE) model (Hurtado et al. 2012), we researched the experiences of graduate and…

A growing number of service learning classes bring students into jails and prisons, stepping across what Alexander (2010) might call the new Jim Crow color line created by mass incarceration. Many of these courses are part of the innovative Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program, which brings inside and outside students together in a shared college…