Journal of College & University Student Housing "Housing While Black" Theme Issue - 51

Serving as a Resident Assistant While Black
Critical race theory research explores how racial inequities
are reinforced within academia, challenges racist notions about
whose voices are valued, and strives to disrupt dominant narratives
and create knowledge that can transform higher education
institutions into more equitable spaces.
Data Collection and Analysis
We conducted two rounds of 60-minute, semi-structured, virtual interviews in the
fall of 2020. We conducted two interviews to build rapport with participants and
honor the relational nature of narrative inquiry (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000). The
first round of interviews (mid-September to early October) focused on participants'
motivations for pursuing the RA position, the application and training process, and
first impressions of the position. The second round of interviews (late November or
early December) explored their experiences in the position, including relationships
with residents, peers, and supervisors. Throughout both interviews, we encouraged
participants to reflect on the ways that race shaped their motivations and experiences.
Informal data analysis occurred concurrently with data collection via memoing
and conversations as a research team. To start our formal data analysis, each research
team member transcribed the interview(s) they had conducted and re-read them
multiple times before creating a narrative retelling the participant's story (Clandinin
& Connelly, 2000). We paid particular attention to the ways in which race shaped
participants' experiences within different contexts. Next, we reviewed all narratives,
reflecting on commonalities and differences among participants' stories. We engaged
in reflective memoing before meeting as a team to develop a list of tentative themes
and then conducted more formal coding, marking segments of data that corresponded
with our tentative themes as well as adding themes we noticed during this round
of data analysis. Through conversations as a team, we narrowed down our themes,
focusing on the ways that race shaped participants' experiences. We decided to share
our findings as a fictional conversation in order to highlight the particularity of participants'
stories and their unique voices, an approach aligned with narrative inquiry
(Clandinin & Connelly, 2000) and critical race theory (Delgado & Stefancic, 2001;
Ladson-Billings & Tate, 1995). We chose a fictional setting for our conversation but
used quotations directly taken from interviews.
FINDINGS
Conversations in staff meetings at PRU had recently revolved around recruiting a more
diverse staff. While thinking about these departmental efforts, the conversation among
a group of Black RAs (Captain, Simone, Liam, Student, and Brandon) eating lunch in
the dining hall turned to how race shaped their motivations for working in residence
life as well as their experiences being on staff.
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Journal of College & University Student Housing "Housing While Black" Theme Issue

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