PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY: CADY HERRING
One student recalled his classmates mocking their Asian professor. Another recalled a group of young men hurling sexist remarks at her sorority sisters. Yet another recounted a peer who dropped a class because the professor was a black woman.
These are just a few of the diary entries from a sociology study launched in August to measure the racial climate on campus. More than 400 students have already recorded their on-campus experiences with racism, sexism, homophobia and Islamophobia.
The study, called “Everyday Racial Experiences of College Students,” is being led by three University of Mississippi sociologists: Professor Kirk Johnson, Professor James Thomas and Professor Willa Johnson.
The study requires student volunteers to keep a diary of their on-campus racial experiences, good or bad. Students can write about any type of ethnocentric behavior that they witness or experience. Ethnocentrism is judging other cultures or groups as inferior to one’s own.
Kirk Johnson hopes the study will help them to figure out underlying causes of racial issues.
“So, there may be a lot of randomness that people link as connected with, say, the noosing of the James Meredith statue or some racial slur that somebody hears in class or some racist graffiti somebody sees on the way to their dorm,” Johnson said. “But we’re trying to understand what kind of underlying patterns give rise to what may seem to be chaos or disorder.”
Willa Johnson said the idea for the project evolved out of a conversation with the chancellor after a meeting.
“The question came up out of this conversation:‘Is race measurable? Do we have a race problem on this campus?’” said Johnson.
The study is not focusing on crimes or widely reported incidents of racism. Instead, the sociologists’ focus is to use these diary accounts to gain insight into backstage racism, which hinges on the idea that white people are more likely to express racial tendencies when they are not directly in the public eye.
“I think the extent to which racism is occurring in dorm rooms and in student housing and in student organizations is something that we don’t have a good grasp of, and it’s something we need to do a better job at figuring out,” said sociology professor Jeff Jackson. “I think a lot of the incidents that occur on this campus never get reported, and that’s because we don’t do a good job when they are reported.”
Kirsten Dellinger, chair of the sociology department, said she believes this study will help students understand the extra work that minorities have to go through when they are put in discriminatory situations.
“When you look at those diaries, and you look at that empirical evidence, and get a glimpse as a white person, get a glimpse of what a black person might be going through, that’s one step further towards acknowledging the problem,” Dellinger said.
Participants in the study confidentially submit diary entries online on a data collection website, and the sociologists will analyze their experiences.
The diary entries submitted by students cover a wide range of topics, and the students must tell when and where the incident happened.
In one excerpt, a student wrote about witnessing some males yelling derogatory words at a black female bending over to get something from her car and then getting cola thrown at her after looking up.
In one diary entry, a student expressed feeling disgusted after overhearing some guys joking about the desecration of the James Meredith statue last February.
In another excerpt, a student expressed that his or her whole hometown feels he or she is racist because the student attends Ole Miss.
Diary entries are divided into six types of incidents: racism, anti-Semitism, homophobia, Islamophobia, sexism, other. Out of the 336 incidents reported so far, 77 percent of the incidents chronicled so far have fallen into the racism category, 11 percent in the Islamophobia category, 8 percent in the homophobia category and 4 percent in the sexism category.
Willa Johnson believes it’s important to address the various experiences people face.
“Some of these issues haven’t ever been really confronted,” she said. “So, confronting these issues is really important to me. And unless we do that, these things will continue to happen.”
She said the university has taken important steps such as creating the new Center for Inclusion and Cross-Cultural Engagement and creating a position for a vice chancellor for diversity.
Kirk Johnson said they also want to know what components make a pleasant atmosphere on campus, so they do not want students to only write about the bad things.
“Tell us about maybe unexpected good things, places where you see maybe a Christian student and a Muslim student working together on some class project or a black student and a white student who are best friends,” he said. “Tell us about that, too, so that we can think about whether any of these situations have some common threads that we can develop and encourage.”
Last year there was a pilot study, but this is the first official year for the study. The study, which is approved by the Institutional Research Board, launched in late August and currently 448 students from many backgrounds, ethnicities and religions are enrolled. There are 263 white participants, 62 blacks, 14 Asian/Pacific Islanders and the rest are mixed-race and mixed-ethnicity students.
The study will conclude in May, and the findings will be analyzed, summarized and sent to administrators to inform them of the types of incidents occurring at the university. Eventually the findings may be published in a scientific research paper.
Kirk Johnson believes the project will be a benefit to administrators.
“We think that there are lots of ways they can use this data to think about good policies and good practices that they can put in place to make the campus environment more livable,” he said.
He hopes this study will help make the university a more inclusive and welcoming environment to all students.
“Not just across racial lines but also ethnic lines,” he said. “So, we want to make this place welcoming and inviting to Jewish students, Muslim students, gay and lesbian students.”
There is still an open call for more participants. Some sociology professors are offering their students extra credit if they participate in the study. Participants can submit entries as often or as seldom as they like. Students wishing to participate in the study can refer to the link embedded in theDMonline.com version of this story.
