‘This school is too diverse’: fragile feelings among white boys at elite independent schools

ABSTRACT

As U.S. elite independent schools become more racially inclusive, white students may perceive a shift in their social position. Using qualitative data from school climate surveys at 10 such schools, 2014-2018, we explore how white adolescent boys experience these shifts emotionally. We find that a subset of particularly vocal white boys express key characteristics of white fragility and colorblind racism both in the negative feelings they report and the frames they use to explain race relations in their social worlds. Other boys, in contrast, show signs of a developing critical consciousness around race and racism in school. The findings underscore adolescence as a critical period for intervention on the developing perspectives and emotions of white boys. We conclude with a discussion of the necessity of a closer examination of how independent schools reckon with structures of whiteness in their culture as they attempt to engage in diversity and equity efforts.

KEYWORDS:

• Boys
• adolescence
• independent schools
• racism
• emotions
• school climate

Acknowledgments

We are grateful to Dr. Peter Kuriloff and Dr. Michael Reichert for their support of this research and feedback on earlier drafts, and to the anonymous journal reviewers for their insightful suggestions. Thanks also to the partner schools who participated in this study for their willingness to make themselves vulnerable to critique and their deep investment in improving the lives of all their students.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Students are generally 14–19 years of age.

2. The fact that our data represent unsolicited responses to a generic question means respondents felt strongly enough to go out of their way to share their responses, but it is also a limitation of the study in that we do not know how representative these views are.

3. All racial and gender designations are self-reported.

4. The 51 responses included in our final sample represent 14.5% of all white boys’ (unsolicited) comments about school culture across all schools, 5.4% of all total comments on school culture, 2.6% of all white- and male-identified students taking the survey during this time period, and less than 1% of the total number of student survey-takers. Though the final sample represents a minority of white male students, and an even smaller minority of all students, at the participating schools, we believe it is still an important dataset because of what issues it illuminates.

5. Email corresponding authorfor complete codebook.

6. ‘Republican’ refers to the United States political party with views that are generally socially and fiscally conservative and in favour of less government intervention.