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Exploring How White And Asian American Students Experience Cross-Racial Interactions: A Phenomenological Study, Thomas E. Robinson

Graduate Doctoral Dissertations

Interracial interactions between college students are responsible for important learning outcomes, however many colleges and universities have failed to purposefully encourage students to interact across racial backgrounds. As a result of a lack purposefully facilitated cross-racial interactions (CRIs), fewer interracial interactions occur on U.S. campuses and this has diminished the important learning outcomes that those interactions accrue. The purpose of this study was to qualitatively explore how 25 White and Asian American students, within two divergent campus settings, experienced interracial interactions. Findings demonstrated that environmental and individual characteristics shaped how students experienced CRIs. Environmental factors that influenced CRIs included the …