Culture of Exclusion
Social exclusion has been noted to be a subtle phenomenon, that often goes unnoticed, and when it is noticed, often the individual who is being excluded receives the blame and not the environment or those in it (Howarth, 2006). In educational settings, people of color are made to feel as if they do not belong, either knowingly or unknowingly (Howarth, 2006). Often enough, schools and universities think that discussing racial exclusion is either of no use, outdated, or already taken care of because of the measures that are currently in place by their administration, but they could not be more wrong (Kohli, 2008). Critical Race Theory (CRT) has often been ignored when it comes to analyzing higher education because the
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It goes without stating that those who do not participate in activities within an environment or with their peers feel excluded (Harrison & Narayan, 2003). In fact, when people feel excluded and do not participate in any given activities, they will have higher levels of stress, higher levels of suicide, higher alcohol and drug consumption, and a lower mental health than those who do engage in activities, and do not feel excluded (Harrison & Narayan, 2003). It has already been noted that serious mental illnesses on college campuses are on the rise (Mowbray et. al., 2006), but that statistic is even higher for people of color, mostly due to feelings of exclusion and a lack of positive relations with their white peers. Going back to CRT, the interactions that people of color have with their peers exist on a conscious and unconscious level and has institutional and individual forms (Solorzano, 1997). So, various studies have shown that people of color are actually made to feel excluded, where their peers perform microaggressions among other thing, which causes people of color to have an overall negative perception of the university and its climate. Racial microaggressions exist in mainly three forms which are microassault, microinsult, and microinvalidation (Sue et. al., 2007), and studies were done to see if racial microaggressions have a negative impact on the climate of a college campus, and a negative impact on African-American students (Solorzano et. al., 2000). It was found that microaggressions were in both the academic and social spheres of a college campus (Solorzano et. al., 2000). Microaggressions exist in both the academic and social spheres of a college campus (Solorzano et. al., 2000), affecting people of color outside and inside the classroom, showing that either their peers or