“I just chill and keep quiet ya’ know”: understanding Black college students’ silence during in-class racial conversations at an AANAPISI/HSI

ABSTRACT

Communication scholars have considered silence in (higher) education as indicative of a range of cultural attitudes and an exercise of power. Some communication scholars consider student silence in classrooms as problematic, wherein a lack of participation in the learning process via student voice constitutes an act of resisting educators and education. Others conceptualize it as a way to challenge oppression or as a part of students' cultural identity. This study examines 21 Black college students' impetus for communicating silence during in-class discussions at a large Asian American Native American Pacific Islander-serving institution (AANAPISI) and a Hispanic-serving institution (HSI) 4-year university on the U.S. West Coast. Given the anti-Black phenomena in recent years (e.g., police violence, anti-Black education laws, Black Lives Matter protests), this study investigates the reasoning behind Black students' reasons for communicating silence within in-class discussions of race/racial phenomena. This study found Black students communicate in-class silence for three overarching reasons: (1) silence due to feeling underrepresented, (2) silence to avoid (negative) peer attention, and (3) silence due to fear of instructor retaliation. Findings inform how instructors can better approach racial discussions by mitigating Black student racial labor, foster civility, and move toward improving cross-racial learning during in-class interactions.

KEYWORDS:

• Asian American Native American Pacific Islander-serving institutions (AANAPISIs)
• Hispanic-serving institution (HSI)
• Black college students
• classroom silence
• race and critical pedagogy

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Dr. Yea-Wen Chen for advising me, her silence piece as inspiration, and her many hours spent reviewing and making suggests on this paper. I would also like to thank Dr. Stacey Connaughton for advising me, and her edits and suggestions on this piece, as well as my gracious anonymous reviewers, and Dr. Kyle Rudick, as you all helped to bring out this paper’s potential.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 In decolonial and antiracist engagement, this study uses a lowercase “w” when referring to white individuals and capitalizes Black when referring to Black individuals to combat historical writing conventions that perpetuate white supremacy (see Bauder, 2020; Lanham & Liu, 2019).

2 The research site from which data were culled held dual MSI status (e.g., AANAPISI and HSI). When referring to the dual designation, I use the AANAPISI/HSI form, as compared to focusing on AANAPISIs and HSIs as mutually exclusive MSIs. I also use the AANAPISI/HSI form to connect to broader contexts of dual-serving MSIs.

3 States to restrict education on racism: AL, AK, AZ, AR, CO, FL, GA, ID, IN, IA, KS, KY, LA, ME, MI, MS, MO, MT, NE, NH, NM, NY, NC, ND, OH, OK, PA, RI, SC, SD, TN, TX, VA, VI, WA, WV, WI

4 Large lecture courses (e.g., 100–400 students) can utilize team-based approaches in breakout teams/groups that may vary on class size. Rotating, swapping, or changing groups can occur at the instructor’s discretion.