The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 43, No. 3 - 73

Resident Assistants and White Racial Identity

sion of White culture, and to practice interrupting and dismantling oppression. An additional
goal of the White affinity group was for the RAs
to learn "at the expense" of other White people,
not at the expense of People of Color, and to
support their racial identity development.

DATA COLLECTION & ANALYSIS
Data collection occurred via face-to-face one
hour semi-structured interviews with each participant, and were recorded with a digital voice
recorder (Merriam & Tisdale, 2016). An example
of the interview questions included: "How
would you describe the influence the diversity
and social justice training has had on you?
Data analysis focused specifically on the
context and setting of this particular case (the
RA training program). Interview transcripts
were transcribed verbatim and coded. We
engaged in the constant comparative method
of data analysis (Merriam & Tisdale, 2016).
Merriam and Tisdale (2016) articulated the appropriateness of engaging in the constant comparative method for case study data analysis.
Our coding techniques resulted in the emergence of three prominent themes: "Exposed,"
"Incongruent Messages," and "The Department's Agenda." In this paper, we focus specifically on the "Incongruent Messages" because
the incongruence between what the RAs were
taught growing up and the training messages
caused them a great deal of angst and confusion. This was critical to the their White racial
identity development and promoting the social
justice goals of the department.

TRUSTWORTHINESS
We developed trustworthiness through multiple methods, including triangulation, peer
debriefing, and member checking (Merriam

& Tisdale, 2016). Triangulation, the process
of using multiple data collection methods
to substantiate and corroborate data trustworthiness, included collecting data via the
semi-structured interviews and reviewing the
training program's goals. To further strengthen the data's trustworthiness, a student affairs
practitioner-educator with expertise in residential life and racial identity development
peer debriefed (Merriam & Tisdale, 2016)
the findings. Peer debriefing challenged our
analysis and assumptions in a way that led to
stronger findings and implications. Finally, the
interviews were member checked (Merriam &
Tisdale, 2016). We forwarded the transcripts
and findings to each participant for their
review to ensure we had accurately transcribed
their responses.

FINDINGS
As the themes emerged, it became clear there
were incongruent messages between what the
training content and format conveyed to RAs
about diversity and social justice, and the messages the RAs received growing up. Throughout the training, there were four messages the
RAs believed were presented, either explicitly
through content or implicitly through format:
1) segregation is necessary; 2) White people
need to learn from other White people; 3)
being "colorblind" is bad; and 4) racism continues to exist. These messages fundamentally
contradicted earlier messages the RAs believed
to be true about diversity and social justice: 1)
segregation is bad; 2) White people can only
learn about diversity from People of Color;
3) it is good to be "colorblind;" and 4) racism
no longer exists (or at minimum "things" are
better for People of Color. We combine the
messages the participants believe were preV O L U M E 4 3 , NO. 3 * 2 0 1 7

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

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