"Navigating Whiteness: African Immigrant Students, Racial Socialization, and Identity Formation at a Predominantly White University"

This project examines how African immigrant students at the University of Michigan navigate and cope with the complexities of a predominantly white environment. Specifically, it aims to assess the extent to which these students were socialized about race before attending the university, how prepared they felt to handle microaggressions and discrimination, and whether the lessons from their racial socialization now inform their behaviors, perspectives, and coping strategies. As an extension of my earlier work on "Strategic Racial Socialization," which explored how first-generation Nigerian immigrant parents confront and adapt to U.S. racialization, this study will delve into the next generation’s lived experiences, investigating how the socialization strategies used by African immigrant parents influence their children’s perceptions of race, social justice, and inequality in the U.S. context. Through this project, I aim to identify potential links, differences, and consequences of these socialization strategies, thereby expanding our understanding of how the children of African immigrants navigate racialization, microaggressions, and identity formation within a predominantly white academic setting. By focusing on qualitative interviews with African immigrant students, I hope to illuminate how these individuals negotiate their racial and ethnic identities, manage the unique challenges of being both African and Black in the U.S., and determine how their experiences and coping mechanisms intersect with broader issues of racial inequality and social mobility. This research offers a critical lens on the lived experiences of African immigrants in the U.S., with the potential to inform broader discussions on race, education, and immigrant integration.

keywords: African immigrants, racial socialization, identity formation, microaggressions, discrimination, predominantly white institutions (PWIs), race and ethnicity, higher education, coping strategies, social mobility.