“Why aren't all the White kids sitting together in the cafeteria?”: An exploration of White student experiences at a public HBCU.

Abstract

Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) are racially diverse institutions. As such, this qualitative study examines the interconnected aspects of the college choice processes and campus experiences of White students attending a public HBCU. Utilizing (Renn and Arnold, The Journal of Higher Education, 2003, 74, 261) Ecological Model on College Student Peer Culture, findings highlight how participants’ perceptions of HBCUs were influenced by racially informed societal influences and how their academic and social experiences provided opportunities for them to critically engage race and racism. Furthermore, this work reveals how White HBCU students experience intra-racial social anxiety that limited their desire to interact with their White peers on campus.

The HBCU advantage: reimagining social capital among students attending black colleges

“…Students associated their success with the support, empathy, and intentional accessibility that faculty and staff members displayed to them as human beings and as students (Arroyo and Gasman, 2014;Winkle-Wagner et al, 2019;Johnson and Winfield, 2022). Through curricular and co-curricular activities, HBCU students are encouraged to learn more about the diversity of Black culture and to be of service to the Black community (Mobley et al, 2022). In tandem with the ethos of family and the importance of community, students also conceptualize faculty and staff as mentors and role models.…”

Why Are All the White Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?: Toward Challenging Constructions of a Persecuted White Collective

“…If HBCUs are under pressure to attract nonblack students for economic reasons as these studies suggest, it follows that HBCUs must consider ways to retain them. This led to numerous studies of nonblack students' self-reported experiences at four-year HBCUs and how to serve nonblack students [21,[67][68][69][70][71][72][73][74][75][76][77][78][79]. Although the motivation of understanding students' experiences to serve them better is sound on its face, many of these studies and scholars have equated white students and administrators at HBCUs with Black students and administrators at TWIs in ways that pass over power and historical analyses and enable whiteness, privilege, and the co-opting of diversity narratives by white students to take place unchecked.…”

“…This can lead to problematic recommendations that re-center whiteness. In one example, Mobely et al ( 2021) [74] appropriates literature on culturally relevant pedagogy for Black, U.S. Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) in white spaces to suggest a parallel approach for students "learning in 'temporary-minority' situations within HBCU contexts" (p. 12). This demonstrates a dangerous disconnect from power analyses-white students are not actually victims and minoritized, despite some scholars' attempts to frame them as such.…”

Evaluating the perceptions of pre-service teachers' personal and professional readiness to teach culturally and linguistically diverse students

“…One potential explanation for the lack of difference between HBCUs and non-HBCUs could be that both institutions had similar demographics of PSTs, with both populations at HBCU and non-HBCU teacher preparation programs comprising of more than 70% white students. These demographics may partly be explained by national data that state HBCUs are becoming more diverse (Gasman et al, 2007;Mobley & Johnson, 2022), with white students comprising 25 % of HBCU enrollment in 2020 (Digest of Education Statistics, 2020). This also confirms findings that show some HBCUs are becoming predominantly white (Jackson, 2022).…”