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Abstract
While racist aggressions are not new on U.S. college campuses, there is evidence that the frequency of such acts has increased dramatically in recent years—a trend that threatens to exacerbate Students’ of Color previously documented experiences with racist campus environments. Current research about Students’ of Color racialized experiences in higher education largely confine their focus to the campus environment without considering how it is affected by broader socio-political contexts, do not examine whiteness and their white peers as a root cause behind their racial marginalization, and do not explore the role of white racialized emotions as a part of white college students’ racial framing and meaning-making. The purpose of this grounded theory study was to understand: 1) white college students’ processes for making meaning of race and racism (in their on- and off-campus environments and within broader U.S. socio-political contexts), 2) how these processes connected to their emotional responses to issues of race and racism, and 3) how these processes served to continually (re)construct whiteness and/or disrupt racism in their environments. This study was informed by Cabrera, Franklin, and Watson’s (2017) critical analysis of whiteness in higher education. Data were collected over two phases through anonymously submitted participant diaries and analyzed using the constant comparison method (Charmaz, 2014). Findings from the study generated theory concerning how white undergraduate students make meaning of and evade issues of race and racism in their environments, which consists of nine interrelated components:1) triggering events, 2) prior racial frames and contexts; 3) meaning-making strategies; 4) evasion strategies, 5) constructing racial climates, 6) emotional responses, 7) emotional coping strategies, 8) evasive actions, and 9) actions towards racial justice. The theory generated from this study is presented as a composite counter-narrative (Solórzano & Yosso, 2002) that draws upon Students’ of Color experiences with racism and the racial climate on their campus to highlight how whiteness also functions as a pathology that perpetuates cultural trauma (Thompson & Watson, 2016). Findings from the study challenge, confirm, and extend the literature concerning white college students’ racial frames, emotions, and behavior and produced several implications for practice and research.