A recent comment from a Black student at the University of Virginia (UVA) that there were “too many White people” at a multicultural student center brought forward long-simmering racial grievances on campuses around the country, but a new book says that such centers help reduce stress for minority and underrepresented students.
In the book, Campus Counterspaces: Black and Latinx Students’ Search for Community at Historically White Universities, Dr. Micere Keels, associate professor of comparative human development at the University of Chicago, says that minority-focused spaces help students validate their cultural identity, which, in turn, leads to positive personal growth.
For her book, the author, who has written extensively on the experiences of students of color at predominantly White campuses (PWIs), conducted in-depth interviews with 70 students. These students were part of the 500 Black and Latinx students who had been tracked since they enrolled at one of five historically White colleges and universities in Illinois in the fall of 2013, for a longitudinal study called the Minority College Cohort Study, which Keels directed.
“Access to counterspaces promotes minority student college persistence and their psychological, emotional and cultural-wellbeing, thereby lessening the psychological costs of college,” says Keels on the website about her book.
“The psychosocial costs of college are greatest for students who need to juggle both school and paid employment, are experiencing financial distress, do not see themselves reflected in the larger student body and faculty, are less integrated into campus life and experience a cultural gap between their precollege and college contexts,” the website explains.
Keels told Diverse her research found that “when minority students feel cultural stress due to isolation and marginalization, their ability to engage in majority campus activities is strengthened by them also having minority-focused spaces that validate their cultural identity.”
According to Keels’ statement about her book, “The students I interviewed were asking for access to counterspaces, safe spaces that would enable radical growth.” She explained that “radical growth is the development of ideas and narratives that challenge dominant representations of and notions about their marginalized identities.”
