6

Importance of a Critical Mass

Experiencing One’s Differences as Valued Diversity Rather Than a Marginalized Threat

With Carly Offidani-Bertrand

Despite glossy university flyers depicting a diverse circle of friends in the library—smiling white, brown, and black faces—minority students often arrive to campus only to realize that their new environment is a very different picture. As detailed in a December 2013 National Public Radio story, “A Campus More Colorful Than Reality: Beware That College Brochure,” universities often oversell their diversity. Tim Pippert looked at more than ten thousand images from college brochures, comparing the racial-ethnic breakdown of students in the pictures to the colleges’ actual demographics. He found that, overall, the whiter the school, the more diversity depicted in the brochures.¹

Upon arrival on campus, racial-ethnic minority students find themselves dramatically outnumbered by White students, taught by largely White professors, and learning about White historical figures and artifacts. Because of the segregated nature of American K–12 schooling, this shift into suddenly being racially-ethnically outnumbered can be a significant challenge to campus integration. Mounting feelings of social isolation add an additional layer of stress atop an already difficult transition. Away from home for the first time, many minority students feel culturally lost as they begin their new life as college students. Lourdes, a Latinx woman enrolled at Suburban StateU, where Latinx students were 9 percent of the student body, described how she felt as if she were the lone representative of her group. “I felt like I was the only Hispanic person there, which I know I wasn’t, but it felt like it. You wouldn’t really see many Hispanic people. And then, I got really homesick, so I hated it even more.”

Even on campuses with more diverse student bodies, feelings of social segregation still pervade. Rosa, a Latinx woman enrolled at Urban StateU, where Latinx students were 26 percent of the student body, felt no institutional support in helping her to build friendships across racial-ethnic boundaries.

Research shows that without intentional efforts to facilitate cross racial-ethnic interactions and relationships, universities may succeed at creating structural diversity but fail at facilitating meaningful relationships between students of different racial-ethnic groups.² Although most campus cultures seem to resist deep discussions of racial-ethnic differences, at the same time these differences feel inescapable in everyday social interactions. Although students believe it should be possible to move beyond these differences, they continue to be confronted in their daily lives with cultural stereotypes and differences in understandings and expectations.

At historically White colleges and universities, minority students must get over the shock of feeling alone in their difference, while also learning how to cope with microaggressions suggesting that they do not belong. In describing some of her most negative experiences over the last year, Camilla, a Latinx woman attending Urban PrivateU-North, talked of the hurt that minority students feel when they are othered.

The students in our study varied widely in how they managed these new experiences and feelings. Some felt positive recognition of their differences, while others felt stereotyped as the sole representative of their group. Regardless, students should not be left to simply cope on their own during this transition. Counterspaces can bring minority students together in large enough numbers to mitigate feelings of being the sole representative of their group on campus.³

Positive relationships with faculty and administrators are critical to shaping how students manage their concerns about difference.⁴ But many faculty and administrators are often unaware of or insensitive to minority students’ transition experiences and needed supports.⁵ When those sources of support fail, minority students seek additional support in minority-focused offices and organizations. These counterspaces where they are not othered can provide social and emotional comfort, guidance, and understanding that enable them to process the social aspects of the college transition, as well as provide instrumental information about how to become a successful college student.

Throughout this chapter we will weave back and forth through the transition experiences of eight students. Their stories illustrate many of the common themes that emerged from students’ discussions about feeling othered—that is, made to feel out of place or deviant because of aspects of themselves that are identified as different from traditional college student norms.⁶ Their experiences also show how counterspaces enabled them to celebrate their differences as a positive contribution to campus diversity.

The Expected Ease versus Difficult Reality of Transcending Racial-Ethnic Boundaries

The first thing Lourdes mentioned when asked to describe herself was that she is a first-generation college student. “I’m the first person in my family to go away to college,” she said. “My mom and my dad, they would both always tell me how they wanted me and my sister to go to college.” Lourdes was aware she would be a minority in college but was motivated by the desire to serve as an example of upward mobility for her racial-ethnic group. “I wanted to [go] because I always hear how it’s most just Caucasian people who go.” She was also motivated by the desire to learn. “All my life I always got good grades,” she said. “I usually liked [school], so it’s not like I’m doing it just to have money. It’s also because I like it.”

Despite her convictions and love of learning, Lourdes was unprepared for the experience of being othered and the social isolation that came with being a minority in a historically White space. Lourdes was overwhelmed by feeling “like I was the only like Hispanic person there.” These feelings of social isolation have academic consequences, because schooling is, in large part, a social experience.⁷ Classroom learning is the result of many successful interpersonal interactions among teachers and students. Thus, when students feel disconnected or misunderstood, their learning is negatively affected.

The limited number of Latinx and Black students means that these young people are often in classes where they are the only member of their group in the class. As Lourdes noted, even after making a few friends on campus, classroom social interactions were still challenging. “In my classrooms I still feel [alone]. In classes I don’t really have any friends. It was just friends outside of the classes. So I still felt kind of uncomfortable.” As will be discussed later, this discomfort affected her willingness to contribute to discussions or ask questions in class.

Like many of his peers, Jerome, the valedictorian of his high school class and a Black man, was drawn in by his expectations of the quintessential college social experience.

As Jerome was learning to cope with the academic challenges of college, he had hoped to find solidarity with other students with whom he could share these struggles. His loneliness and isolation were undeniable the summer after his first year. He had not yet made any friends, which, he said, was disappointing. Jerome attributed much of his social isolation to his race-ethnicity, and was surprised at the sense of difference he felt, despite his efforts to bridge the gap.

While Jerome tried to sound confident, he didn’t quite understand why he could not make friends, and he felt the palpable social distance that stands between him and the image he had of college life—a place where people make friendships irrespective of their different social backgrounds.

Students’ experiences of social distance ranged from feelings of awkwardness or lack of understanding, to incidents of microaggression, to overt experiences of discrimination. As Sarah, a Black woman attending Suburban StateU, detailed, overt experiences of discrimination continue to occur, even if they are infrequent.

This curious but understandable dismissal of the personal impact of prejudice and discrimination occurred often among the students we interviewed. When students described such an incident, they often followed it with statements that negated its psychological and emotional punch, like “bad things happen, but I’ve got to keep moving forward.” Knowing the importance of obtaining their degree and believing that such incidents will occur wherever they go, students normalized discrimination as a nuisance aspect of their college experience.

The racial-ethnic aspects of the social transition were the most challenging for students like Sarah who attended diverse high schools. Sarah’s selective high school in Chicago was nearly evenly split: 32 percent Latinx, 27 percent White, and 26 percent Black students. As a result, she and her peers thought their new college peers would be sophisticated about issues of race-ethnicity and would be like-minded regarding building friendships across racial-ethnic boundaries. They were disappointed and often hurt to discover this was not the case.

The Push and Pull into Segregated Peer Networks

Feelings of social awkwardness and distance push students toward segregated peer groups, and the need for social belonging further pulls them in. Students noticed the structural diversity of the student body and conceded that they were now living in close proximity with students of other racial-ethnic groups, but were also aware that they still lacked meaningful interactions with these peers. Rosa chose Urban StateU because it was diverse. However, her previous schooling contexts, like those of most students, were segregated, and she did not have the social skills or social comfort needed to build a diverse friendship network.

People’s understanding of who is “like me” is elusive and malleable. It is elusive because it is usually determined in an instant and is based on implicit biases rather than thoughtful considerations of commonalities. It is malleable because research consistently finds that interventions that create sustained opportunities for intergroup contact are “vital to reducing racial bias,” according to Nida Denson, who focuses on understanding the effects of college diversity experiences on student development.⁸

Many institutions like Urban StateU have made considerable progress advancing structural diversity. However, these efforts generally stop once these students arrive on campus. Gary Pike and George Kuh, two higher education researchers, conclude that “attracting diverse students should be seen as a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for positive diversity outcomes. Learning to function effectively in a diverse society also depends on the types of diversity experiences a student has and the commitment of institutional leaders to creating the conditions needed for positive and productive interactions among diverse groups of students.”⁹

Like Rosa, many minority students do not find the classroom to be a space to form diverse friendships. Most efforts seemed “forced,” they reported. And yet opportunities outside the classroom were limited. Like Rosa, Raul, a Latinx man attending Urban StateU, thought the university was “a big bunch of racial cliques.” But he added, “I think that’s anywhere you go, though. People like to hang around people that look like them, near them, that have their same background and things like that.”

Students do not necessarily understand the causes of campus segregation, but they certainly pick up on patterns of distance and othering. Raul and Rosa echo the voices of many students who were surprised at the difficulty of forming friendships that crossed racial-ethnic boundaries within the classroom. And, because there were few opportunities to build friendships outside the classroom, despite intentions to do otherwise, they often ended up re-creating the social segregation that is found in broader American society.

Raul was one of several students who chafed at feeling pushed into same race-ethnicity peer groups, like a “Latino help group,” which he did not feel represented his primary interests and identities.

Students for whom race-ethnicity was not central to their identities focused on forming activity- and interest-based friendships, and some were successful in creating their campus social network as a result. Raul was recruited through the swim team, which provided a built-in social network, and several of his high school peers also enrolled at Urban StateU.

Consequences of Othering and Vulnerability in the Classroom

Because many students from historically marginalized groups attended lower-resourced public high schools and are first-generation students, they harbor legitimate fears that they are less well prepared for college than many of their classmates. Many Americans continue to implicitly associate lower levels of preparation with an ability gap rather than a resource gap in K–12 institutions and a consequent lack of curricular offerings, academic rigor, discursive teaching styles, and instructional technology.¹⁰ Students’ self-doubt, coupled with their feeling scrutinized by White classmates and faculty, heightens anxiety and self-consciousness in the classroom. Lourdes expressed these sentiments.

These initial fears were compounded by the othering they experienced in class. Many believed that peers and faculty assumed they were accepted to meet “diversity requirements” and doubted their academic abilities. Sharon Fries-Britt and Bridget Turner found these same experiences among Black students attending a predominantly White college, and that having to confront these stereotypes eroded students’ academic identity.¹¹

Students in our study also reported instances when faculty and teaching assistants made them feel “dumb” when they sought help, which discouraged future attempts to seek support. As Rosa said, “Like when you go get help, certain TAs, they’re kinda like, I don’t know, rude. Or where you go get help for math, it’s so stressful. Some of them just look at you like, ‘You don’t know this? You’re so dumb.’ ”

Despite awareness that this hesitance to speak up in class or go to teaching assistants for support may negatively affect their learning and grades, students can still be paralyzed by feelings of inadequacy. Many said they were reluctant to ask questions and contribute to the discussion out of fear of being judged ignorant. This reluctance has academic consequences. Classroom participation often matters for students’ grades and for professors’ perceptions of students’ level of engagement.

We would do minority students a disservice if we left the impression that their anxieties about being negatively stereotyped are solely a matter of their perceptions. These students’ inferences are correct; research does indeed show that members of low-status groups, such as Black Americans, have to do more than White Americans to prove their ability, and White Americans are allowed more latitude in making mistakes before people point to lack of ability.¹² Monica Biernat and Diane Kobrynowicz conclude that “the ultimate outcome for a low-status person is a longer, more difficult trek to document ability [because people ascribe to them] evaluations that are [subjectively] less positive than those awarded to similarly credentialed individuals from high-status groups.”¹³

Furthermore, although all college students feel anxious about their abilities, minority students feel especially self-conscious, as they often bear the burden of being the only representative of their group in the class. Consequently, minority students fear that any failures will affect not just how they are perceived but also how their racial-ethnic group is perceived. Mary Fischer finds that this performance burden is associated with heightened anxiety and decreased academic effort and outcomes.¹⁴

In response to being asked what advice she would give to college administrators working with students like herself, Aliyah, a Black woman attending Rural StateU, explained this burden.

The unstated aspect of this is that White students are advantaged by not having to struggle with the burden of marginalization.

As confirmed by numerous research studies, faculty members play a critical role in mitigating or exacerbating students’ self-consciousness, self-confidence, and belonging.¹⁵ As with most things, there are student and institutional factors that determine the types of faculty-student relationships that develop and how much support faculty can provide. Some of these institutional factors include the number of classes that are large lectures, the extent to which faculty are rewarded for mentoring students, and the level of diversity among the faculty. What is more important is that institutional and student factors interact to place subgroups of students at differing levels of risk for alienation.

Rosa noted how courses intended to “weed out” the unprepared only added to feelings of alienation and chipped away at her academic identity.

College courses are intended to be challenging in order to motivate learning and advance students’ understanding. However, without accounting for the varying levels of preparation and needs for support among a diverse student body, professors and teaching assistants risk reestablishing precollege inequalities.¹⁶ For students whose academic identity is already brittle, criticism when seeking support renders simple “access” to academic supports meaningless.¹⁷

Intervening Role of Critical Consciousness

Critical consciousness—the critical understanding of oppression—emerged as a mitigating factor in the difference between students who responded to feeling othered by minimizing their presence and voice in the classroom and those who spoke up during classroom discussions. Students who demonstrate critical consciousness are able to critically analyze their personal experiences in relation to larger social inequalities and advocate for themselves and others who experience these inequalities.¹⁸ For example, minority students demonstrated critical consciousness when they recognized that their professors’ low expectations of them was due to broader stereotypes and inequalities rather than their own merit as a student. Critical consciousness can serve as an active coping mechanism, particularly when one’s understanding of oppression creates a sense of agency.¹⁹ Students who demonstrate critical consciousness are often politically active, and that community engagement is positively associated with individual well-being.²⁰

The experiences of students in our study corroborate findings from previous studies that indicate that Black and Latinx college students are better able to cope with the challenges they face when they understand how these challenges are part of a larger struggle against racial-ethnic discrimination. With that understanding, they feel capable of advocating for themselves and taking action toward systemic change.²¹

Maria, a Latinx woman enrolled at Urban PrivateU-North, and Jerome, introduced earlier, at Urban PrivateU-South, often felt like outsiders on campus and experienced a gaping social distance with their new White peers. Jerome responded to his feelings of social distance by trying to figure out what was wrong with himself.

He also had to commute to school, which he thought impeded developing friendships, participating in clubs and organizations, and being part of study groups. This issue came up in his response to being asked what advice he would give college administrators trying to help a student like himself. Jerome blamed himself for not being able to stay on campus and felt ashamed by it. Consequently, he retreated from several opportunities to engage in activities that he believed were geared toward students who lived on campus.

In contrast, Maria’s critical understanding of the roles of privilege and power in her feelings of being othered provided a critical frame for her active coping strategies.

The political climate, she said, was forcing her to speak up. While she hated that the political issues “were a thing,” at the same time they were “empowering because it’s forcing me to speak up. Obviously, it’s not the same for everyone, but for me in particular it’s a fun challenge.”

Her critical understanding of privilege enabled her to interpret experiences of othering within a frame of structural inequalities, and place the responsibility for feeling othered on her environment, rather than on herself.

Students like Maria, who were able to situate their experiences of difference within an understanding of cultural bias, were more confident in their own values and in their minority status and demonstrated higher levels of well-being overall. As research shows, this perspective is an important coping resource.²² Students with critical understandings suffer less from feelings of inadequacy and self-doubt than those who, like Jerome, search for what is wrong with themselves when they feel othered.

While some students arrive at college experienced in adaptively coping with cultural marginalization, many others do not. Thus, it is important that students have access to campus counterspaces that enable them to collectively process experiences of marginalization.

Counterspaces Facilitate Critical Understanding

Minority students made friends in a variety of counterspaces, from social spaces to clubs, organizations, and offices oriented toward minority students.²³ Lourdes’s feelings of isolation and homesickness that resulted from her struggles fitting in and making friends with the predominantly White student body diminished substantially once she began attending events sponsored by a Mexican coeducational fraternity. “I was like, oh, OK, this is where they’re hiding… . And then I talked to [my new friends] there a little bit, and we just started talking like forever, and from there, we became really close.” These connections improved Lourdes’s outlook. “I actually really like [college] now,” she said.

Contrary to what many assume, in racially-ethnically oriented counterspaces, race-ethnicity often recedes into the background, enabling minority students to relax and lower their cultural defenses.²⁴ In addition to social support, many minority-focused clubs offer academic support. Students who felt embarrassed or self-conscious asking for help in the classroom were emboldened by academic support provided in minority-focused counterspaces. Rosa described the difference she experienced when she started going to tutoring sessions offered at the Latino Center.

Apart from the formal academic support that these organizations offer, students benefited from the informal networks of solidarity and mutual recognition provided by students facing similar challenges. In this case “like me” meant people who would not link one’s race-ethnicity with intellectual stereotypes.

One of the primary functions of counterspaces is creating a critical mass of students of a particular marginalized social identity to help them form social bonds.²⁵ This enables marginalized students to move beyond relying solely on individual coping resources. Students revealed how counterspaces provided opportunities to share institutional knowledge that was critical in dealing with administrative difficulties. Maria had problems with her contract for student housing and some questions on available financial resources. A mentor in a Latino organization pointed her in the right direction. “I told [a friend I met through Colectiva Chicano] what happened, and I [had] just met her. And she told me, she was like, ‘Oh, you should talk to Andrea,’ which is the person who got my big help. And, so everything was like on, just from friends. Hearing from friends.” For first-generation students whose families lack insider information, campus information networks are especially important.

Although all students face challenges as they adapt to college life, the transition can be particularly stressful for minority students transitioning to historically White institutions. These challenges are not only due to their lack of experience and comfort with being in a mostly White space; White students and staff are often equally, if not more, inexperienced and uncomfortable building bridges across racial-ethnic boundaries. Both microaggressions and overt discriminatory acts leave minority students feeling unwelcomed. As these experiences accumulate, minority students often begin to feel self-conscious, self-critical, and alienated from the college life they imagined.

Minority students long for their colleges to move beyond structural diversity and become brave enough to ensure that they have both counterspaces and spaces that actively foster interactional diversity. This is not an either/or proposition; as shown throughout this book, minority students arrive on campus expecting and wanting to build relationships with peers who are “not like me.” All college students need institutionalized help to understand the dynamics of prejudice and how those dynamics play out in their daily interactions. They also need institutionalized help making connections that increase intergroup communication and reduce anxiety.²⁶ Institutional support is also critical in promoting frequent and sustained intergroup interactions. These sustained interactions can reduce prejudices, increase tolerance for diverse perspectives, and ultimately increase acceptance of racial-ethnic others.²⁷