Graduation Year
2020
Document Type
Thesis
Degree
M.A.
Degree Name
Master of Arts (M.A.)
Degree Granting Department
Sociology
Major Professor
Elizabeth Hordge-Freeman, Ph.D.
Committee Member
Beatriz Padilla, Ph.D.
Committee Member
Jennifer Sims, Ph.D.
Keywords
family, higher education, involvement, racialization, racial socialization
Abstract
Drawing from in-depth, semi-structured interviews with 21 Black multiracial students, this project explores the extent to which processes of racial socialization and racialization can differentially inform how Black multiracial students navigate and experience involvement in
Black student and activist organizations. It unpacks the ways that anti-Black racialization and racism, experienced in the college setting, can motivate Black multiracial students’ involvement in student organizations. Moreover, it highlights the ways in which involvement in anti-racist activism and Black student organizations can impact Black multiracial students’ understandings of blackness, multiraciality, and identity more broadly. To operationalize the long term impacts of Black organizational involvement, specifically within the context of multiracial families, I introduce a concept called reflective resistance, which I define as the negotiations and interventions Black multiracial students employ, post-organizational involvement, to confront and actively resist family members’ colorblind and/or antiblack racism. The data presented in this project suggests that Black multiracial students become politicized through their involvement in Black student organizations, developing more salient Black racial identities, nuanced understandings of race and racism, and invested commitments to anti-racist activism.
Scholar Commons Citation
Loblack, Angelica Celeste, "“I woke up to the world”: Politicizing Blackness and Multiracial Identity Through Activism" (2020). USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations.
https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/etd/8243
