Sense of Belonging and Racial Diversity at the U.S. Service Academies

On college campuses, access does not equal inclusion as students of color have to navigate through a predominately White space as they struggle to feel like they belong (Jack, 2019). This dissertation focuses on racial experiences and belonging within a total institution (Goffman, 1961): the U.S. service academies, colleges that are part university and part military. Across three separate papers, I explore the institutional factors that impact the disparity between Black and White students’ belonging. In Chapter 1, I apply Allport’s contact theory (1954) alongside the concept of relative deprivation (Stouffer, 1949) to systematically compare the experiences of Black and White college students using meta-analytic methods. In Chapter 2, I again apply contact theory to service academy cadets while taking into consideration the negative feelings associated with interracial contact. Negative cross-racial interactions at a service academy impact Black students’ sense of belonging more intensely than White students. In Chapter 3, I apply social identity contingency threat theory (Purdie-Vaughns, 2004), aversive racism (Dovidio & Gaertner, 2004), and research on diversity ideologies to explore how cadets at a different service academy may be interpreting institutional diversity efforts. By considering how diversity messages act as cues for both White and Black students, I investigate how identity contingency theory can apply to cadets and their sense of belonging. In these studies, I am interested in documenting some of the disparate experiences that Black cadets experience compared to White cadets and find the extent to which sense of belonging manifests in those disparities