“I Have to Change Sometimes Little Pieces of Me so That I Don't Come Off a Certain Way”: Managing Black and Brown Identities at the White University

Black and Brown students report feeling isolated and out of place in U.S. universities, especially in predominately white institutions (PWIs), and there are a host of reasons for this. Because they are the numerical minority, Black and Brown students are highly visible others whose presence and behaviors stand out. As numerical minorities, Black and Brown students at PWIs often feel that they are made to be representatives of their race and that their behaviors may be taken as evidence to support racialized stereotypes that threaten their academic and social success. This study uses the counter‐narratives of 31 self‐identified Black and Brown students, collected during nine focus group meetings in 2014, at a white university in the Southeast United States. Findings are interpreted through the lens of Impression Management Theory, which posits that individuals make goal‐directed attempts to influence how others perceive them. Participants describe feeling forced to devise strategies to present themselves in ways that negate or avoid fulfilling racialized and intersectional stereotypes, as well as make whites more comfortable. They learn to use impression management techniques that must shift with the setting and audience. In particular, participant strategies of impression management sought to avoid cultural assumptions of academic inferiority, criminality, and hostility and aggressiveness. Taken together, the experiences of students who participated in this study reveal how microaggressions help (re)construct academic spaces as white spaces and academic belonging as an intrinsically white characteristic. Specifically, we argue that microaggressions serve as a mechanism that not only serves to protect the whiteness of PWIs and white public space, but also to help define the appropriateness of expression of racial identity within these spaces. We conclude with a discussion that explores the emotional and cognitive effects of participating in impression management, as well as the overall academic and social implications for the extra, often invisible, burdens of being Black or Brown in a white institution.