Meaning-making around ethnicity-race and identity among students of color in a historically White middle school

Efforts to regulate the teaching of ethnicity-race and other "divisive concepts" in schools pose a threat to the affirmation and well-being of students with racially marginalized identities. Guided by phenomenological variant of ecological systems theory (PVEST), we examined the salience of ethnicity-race and ethnic-racial identity for five students of color from different ethnic-racial groups in a historically White middle school. Group experiential themes generated through interpretive phenomenological analysis (IPA) revealed continuity and variability in students' meaning-making accounts. Students recognized ERI as a potent dimension of self, and school ethnic-racial diversity as a source of learning and peer connection, yet the salience of each varied according to ethnic-racial positionality. Ethnicity-race was named as a source of differential treatment within the peer group and curriculum, yet students' strategies for coping were not uniform. Implications for teachers who aim to stand in solidarity with youth in challenging hegemonic Whiteness in schools are discussed.