My experience is just one: The voices of four racialized women at Queen's University

Abstract

Silence around ideas of racial diversity in public settings has become normative. Colourmuteness allows for the culture of Whiteness to remain unchallenged, and reinforces attitudes of assimilation and tolerance. This culture manifests itself in institutions of higher learning, and positions these places as sites of cultural domination, such as Queen’s University, site of the current study. The purpose of this thesis was to offer insight into the educational experiences of four female self-identified racialized students at Queen’s University. Together these participants contributed their stories about their thoughts, motivations, and experiences at Queen’s University, and their experiences as members of the student body. The inductive process was used as an analytical framework to allow the experiences of the participants to be the main focus of the work, and the voices of the participants were used as a guide for analysis. Results of this study indicated that the exploration of identity is a complex and layered phenomenon, and that interrelations between different aspects of identity make categorization of individual experience problematic. Each participant presented her personal story of her experiences as a racialized student within the Queen’s context, and together these stories revealed a need for open dialogue around constructions of difference, rather than a silencing of diversity.