African-American Students' Assumptions About Blackness Or Whiteness, Explored In The Context Of College Selection: An Interpretive Analysis
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2017
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Higher Education Program
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Doctor of Philosophy
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This item is made available by Morgan State University for personal, educational, and research purposes in accordance with Title 17 of the U.S. Copyright Law. Other uses may require permission from the copyright owner.
Abstract
This interpretive qualitative study examined what the college decision-making process of African-Americans enrolled in Historically White Institutions (HWIs) instead of Historically Black Colleges, and Universities (HBCUs) would reveal about their ontological assumptions about blackness and whiteness. The study was framed using Frantz Fanon's postcolonial constructs of “epidermalization of inferiority and allegory of the white mask” (Fanon, 1967). America provides an important setting for this investigation because of its African-American population, (descendants of enslaved and colonized Africans) and the nation's major two-tiered institutional types, HBCUs and HWIs, which evolved from the historical contexts of slavery in the colonial period. In agreement with the conceptual framework applied to this study, I analyzed eleven themes with the intention of understanding in-depth, how race-related beliefs, which influenced African-Americans' college choice decisions, represent the legacy of American colonialism. The findings provide substantial evidence that African Americans hold diametrically opposing hegemonic and anti-hegemonic views of race. The unquestioned perspectives of race embedded in colonial race narratives influence African Americans to enroll in HWIs instead of HBCUs. Nevertheless, there is a measure of optimism. The meanings derived from the study also show that African Americans who hold racial views that are a shift away from colonial narratives on race also enroll in HWIs instead of HBCUs. These students' college choices are counter-narratives to stereotypical beliefs about blackness. Their college selection decisions served as a form of resistance to Anglo-American racial hegemony, which the participants believe, are preserved on HWI campuses.