“You Only Want Us Here So It's Not a 100% White School”: Black College Students Negotiating, Coping with, and Resisting a White Institutional Space

Predominately White institutions of higher education are academic environments deeply entrenched in White cultural ideologies. Understanding how Black college students cope with this reality and the role that college campuses play in promoting inclusive and equitable environments is imperative. Using White institutional space as a theoretical framework, we explored how Black students enrolled in a predominantly White institution construct meaning of, cope with, and resist their everyday experiences. The student's normative encounters with Whiteness made them feel invisible and excluded. They responded to and countered the culture of Whiteness on their campus through strategies that resisted and reproduced racism. Findings highlight the need for campus administrators to understand the critical role of dismantling Whiteness when addressing the racial climate of their institution.