“How do we get White people to understand, this isn't a community for you”: critical perspectives on the impact of Whiteness on Black residential communities

Modern campus residence hall practice assumes that interracial residential experiences enrich all students’ experiences. A student’s residence hall floor should be their home and a place for them to let down their guard. Yet, populations of Black students who live on-campus at historically White institutions may find integrated residence hall spaces to be an extension of their everyday experiences with racism on campus, a result of institutional failures at confronting legacies of exclusion and modern effects of systemic oppression. Confronting racist systems, enduring racial bias, and continually educating White peers on concepts related to racial equity and justice lead to racial battle fatigue (Smith, Yosso, & Solórzano, 2011) and increased mental health concerns (Harper, 2013; McGee & Stovall, 2015), illustrating the need for places students can be free, even if temporarily, of racial oppression perpetuated by Whites.

In an effort to create a more positive residential experience for themselves, Black students have proposed and created residential communities for Black students to live together. These communities offer a place of respite for students who live there, an opportunity to step out of the everyday racism or tokenization of historically White campuses and share experiences with other students who understand what the daily reality is for Black students (Kneiss, Cawthon, & Havice, 2015). As these communities have grown in number, so has the need for research on their implementation. The purpose of this dissertation is to understand the ways Whiteness influences housing administrators and students in Black residential communities at historically White institutions.