The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 43, No. 3 - 45

Black Students' Responses to Racism

This paper fills a gap in the campus
racial climate and environmental
racial macro-aggression literature
about responses to hostilities and
strategies for empowering Black
students to successfully navigate
PWIs they perceive as unsafe and
unwelcoming.

is overwhelmingly a perspective held by those
who self-identify as White.
This qualitative constructivist case study
examines 20 self-identifying Black students'
perceptions of campus racial climate (Hurtado,
1992; Hurtado et al., 1999; Hurtado & Ruiz,
2012) within residential learning communities and their responses to being racialized.
Photovoice was applied to Black student inventories of individual and community assets,
as juxtaposed to challenges, within residential
domiciles at two predominantly White institutions. This paper fills a gap in the campus
racial climate and environmental racial macroaggression literature about responses to hostilities and strategies for empowering Black
students to successfully navigate PWIs they
perceive as unsafe and unwelcoming.

METHODOLOGICAL
FRAMEWORK
Central to this research process is the participatory research method of photovoice, which
was used in this study to create an opportu-

nity for participants to capture and think about
strengths and concerns of their community
through critically analyzing photographs for
the purpose of creating systemic change on
their campuses. The photovoice process serves
to encourage the development of "critical consciousness" (Freire, 1970) by facilitating the
assessment of oppressive power relationships
experienced by participants within dominant
societies. Additionally, in understanding how
race-related issues negatively impact Black
students' retention, the perceived notions
of campus climate and ability to persist (Bonilla-Silva & Forman, 2000; Hurtado, 1992,
1994; Hurtado et al., 1998; Lewis, Chesler,
& Forman, 2000), we acknowledge previous
research that framed racial microaggressions
as a primary source of trepidation for Black
collegians. Racial microaggressions represent
subtle "non-verbal exchanges which are 'put
downs' of blacks by offenders" (Pierce et al.,
1978, p. 66) that "stem from unconscious attitudes of white superiority and constitute a
verification of black inferiority" (Davis, 1989,
p. 1576). Although the foundational racial microagressions literature (Davis, 1989; Pierce et
al., 1978) positions the phenomenon within a
Black/White binary, recent literature extends
the context to include people of color (Sue et
al., 2007, p. 273) and is subdivided into microassaults, microinsults, microinvalidations,
and environmental macro-microaggressions.

RESEARCH METHODS
Site and participants
Midwest Loft University (MLU) consists of
19,306 undergraduates and has a total of 1,105
Black students, while University of Grand
West (UGW) is comprised of 16,339 under-

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The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 43, No. 3

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