Using a Role Strain Adaptation Framework to Bridge Connections Between Racialized Stress, Microaffirmations, and Psychological Well-Being for Minoritized Students on Historically White College Campuses

Abstract

Higher education leaders, scholars, and practitioners argue that addressing educational opportunity gaps and promoting student success are critical to advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in US colleges and universities. Yet structural and systemic barriers, such as the 2023 federal ban on race-based affirmative action in college admissions, remain, thus making the genuine realization of DEI on college campuses untenable. With recent trends showing fewer persons who identify as Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) enrolling at highly selective and historically white colleges and universities, BIPOC students who do enroll in these institutions are even more susceptible to encountering racial microaggressions. Empirical studies profusely document racial microaggressions as a phenomenon and experiential reality for many BIPOC students that produces stress and harm to their racial-ethnic identity and psychological well-being. Many students have to cope with this reality, which ultimately strains their adjustment to campus life. This chapter describes Bowman’s Role Strain Adaptation (RSA) as a helpful framework that offers nuanced, strength-based understandings of BIPOC students’ successful navigation of racial microaggressions in their undergraduate experience. The authors also introduce the concept of microaffirmations or encounters that affirm marginalized persons’ identities and lived experiences and their importance in explaining the critical role of protective cultural strengths in student RSA on historically white campuses.