Monoracial Normativity in University Websites: Systematic Erasure and Selective Reclassification of Multiracial Students

It is well-documented that multiracial college students experience microaggressions in their everyday schooling experiences. However, little research has gone on to place these individual experiences in the overall organizational structure of educational settings. Using a racial formation theoretical frame, we explore how institutions make use of various racial projects when representing multiracial students. By applying a critical discourse analysis approach to the examination of 271 university website representations of student body diversity, we found that university websites erase and selectively reclassify multiracial students in representing their student bodies. These practices mirror multiracial microaggressions that occur routinely at the individual level, but are situated at the institutional level and perpetuate monoracial normativity, the assumption and centrality of monoracial identities.