The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 43, No. 3 - 71

Resident Assistants and White Racial Identity

grained into the psyche of White people and
there is no way for it to not develop (Sullivan,
2006). Fourth, White privilege cannot be given
back. It is not something White people can
consciously choose to avoid or give up (Wise,
2008c). Finally, privilege for one group can
only exist if there is a group that is correspondingly disadvantaged, such as People of Color
(Wildman & Davis, 2008; Wise, 2008c).
Contemporary racism looks different than
the racism of the Jim Crow Era when it was
overt, socially encouraged, accepted, and was
directed specifically at individual People of
Color (Forman, 2004). Contemporary racism
is covert, subtle, and largely directed at maintaining social inequalities based on race. It indicates that White people in the United States
believe race does not matter, and does not play
an important role in determining either their
successes as White people or the failure and
hardships of People of Color (Bonilla-Silva,
2010). Colorblindness is the "ideology that
race is not a factor in how people are perceived
by others" (McCoy & Rodricks, 2015, p. 89);
whereas, people of color do not claim race is
inconsequential to their experience (Bush,
2004). This denial of race allows White people
to continue to ignore their Whiteness, and the
privileges that come with identifying as White,
but also the role race plays in the daily lives of
People of Color. This study grew out of a need
to understand how White RAs made meaning
of their racial identity based on their participation in a diversity and social justice training.

METHODS
This critical qualitative study employed a single-site case study approach (Flyvbjerg, 2006;
Jones, Torres, & Arminio, 2014). Case study

methodology was chosen because it allows for
the "intense focus on a bounded system, which
can be an individual, a specific program, a
process, an institution, or a relationship" (Jones
et al., 2014, p. 93-94). In addition, this approach
is particularly appropriate because it focuses on
the context as an integral part of a particular
case or bounded system (Patton, 2015).
The bounded system in this study is the
Northeast State University (NSU) Department
of Residential Life's RA Diversity and Social
Justice Training. The following questions
guided the study: 1) What beliefs do White RAs
have in regard to the presence or absence of
racism on their campus?; and 2) Does the training curriculum affect their attitudes toward
creating socially just living communities?

CASE STUDY METHODS
The participants' perspectives, the specifics of
the training content, and the training context
encapsulate a case that can yield lessons for the
department, student affairs, and White racial
identity development in contemporary college
students. This type of case study is an instrumental case study, meaning the case focus is on
understanding an overall issue more so than
it is about the specific case (Jones et al., 2014).

CONTEXT
Northeast State University (NSU) is a small,
public land-grant institution located in the
northeastern United States. At the time of
the study, total enrollment (undergraduate,
graduate, and professional) was approximately
13,500 students. Ninety-two percent of the students enrolled identified as White. The NSU
Department of Residential Life employed 131
RAs and was one of the most diverse campus
units. Ninety-six (96) of the RAs identified as
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The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 43, No. 3

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