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Peculiar Students Of A Peculiar Institution: A Historical Analysis Of Racial Minority Students And Race Relations At Brigham Young University As Presented In The Banyan From 1911-1985, Grace Ann Soelberg

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This thesis examines the yearbook for Brigham Young University which ran from 1911-1985. It analyzes the ways in which white students not only asserted and defended their whiteness, but how they superimposed narratives and identities upon other groups. Black students were largely ignored and their inclusion depended upon the schools need to defend itself against accusations of racism and for white students to remain in racial innocence. White students also exhibited various anti-Black behaviors in an attempt to distance themselves from blackness to attain whiteness. Native American students were homogenized and forced to fit into the white students and administrations …