ScienceDaily (Nov. 20, 2008) — A new article in the journal Communication, Culture & Critique illustrates the ways some college students bear the costs of silence-mediated racialized communication in their everyday classroom activities. Specifically, the essay shows that White privilege enables racially laden communication that regenerates, albeit unintentionally, the social exclusion of American Indian students.
Moreover, as the essay argues, this exclusion results not only in myriad unearned stresses for American Indian students but sometimes also in their ultimately abandoning their academic objectives.
Patricia Olivia Covarrubias, M.A., Ph.D., of the University of New Mexico combines interpretive approaches from the ethnography of communication and critical Whiteness theories to draw on data collected from 35 American Indian students in a western U.S. university.