“‘I Was Gonna Go Off, but My Best Friend is White.”: Hispanic Students’ Co-Cultural Reasoning in a Hispanic Serving Institution

Abstract

The researchers engaged in a qualitative analysis (using journaling and focus group methodology) of the communicative behaviors of Hispanic students with White institutional members at a medium-sized, Southwest HSI. Utilizing Co-Cultural Theory and Elaborative Coding analysis, the authors mapped how Hispanic students narrated their co-cultural communication and reasoning (i.e., why they engage in one strategy rather than another). The findings show that, although Hispanic students used almost all co-cultural strategies, their responses were clustered primarily around assimilationist strategies – indicating that they engage in a high degree of self-monitoring and self-censorship when interacting with White institutional members in an HSI. These results suggest that even when Hispanic students constitute a large or majority part of the institution’s population, they still feel the need to engage in behaviors that navigate White norms. The study concludes by examining the findings for co-cultural theorizing as well as providing insights for instructors who wish to engage in inclusive teaching practices.

Keywords:

• Hispanic students
• Hispanic serving institutions
• co-cultural theory
• qualitative research

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank Folu V. Oduba (M.A., Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi, 2017) and Olumide Adeoye (M.P.A., Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi, 2018) for their assistance with coding focus group data. A version of this study was presented at the annual meeting of the National Communication Association in 2016.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. To be consistent with past literature and governmental documents, we use the term “Hispanic” throughout the document. However, the authors recognize how this term is an imposed linguistic and ethnic identity. Although many of the participants in the study stated that they have adopted the term, others identified as Spanish, Mexican American, and Latin@. Where appropriate, participants’ preferred identifiers are used.

2. As White instructors who work at HSIs and PWIs, we try to advance research about how higher education professionals (including ourselves) can transform their pedagogy, classrooms, and institutions to be radically inclusive of traditionally marginalized racial and ethnic groups. Although we study critical whiteness literature and seek to reflexively interrogate the ways in which we (un)consciously reproduce white supremacy and racism, we believe it is also important for us to use our research as a vehicle to sensitively and empathetically listen to the stories, experiences, and knowledges of students of color in order to be better advocates for social justice in institutions of higher education. This project is an invitation to other White instructors, and a challenge to ourselves, to engage in the hard work of reflexively challenging white racial privilege and supporting racially/ethnically marginalized members of higher education.