“My School Could Have Done More”: Black Students' Reflections of Educators' Interventions on Peer Discrimination

Abstract

Black students in K-12 settings are facing heightened rates of discrimination from their peers. Although discrimination may primarily be racial in nature, other aspects of students' racialized experience (e.g., wealth status, gender, nationality, etc.) are often targeted as well. Despite rising issues of peer discrimination toward Black students and their intersecting identities, few works have investigated how school personnel distinguish such discrimination and/or deploy intervention practices as a response. This study interviewed Black (n = 15) and Biracial/ethnic (n = 2) high school graduates (ages 18–21) about their experiences with peer discrimination, educators' approaches to such discrimination, and participants' insight on preferred intervention approaches. An intersectional framework and the Transformative Social Emotional Learning framework were used to phenomenologically analyze the data. Results indicate that participants experienced intersectional discrimination from high-school peers, and school personnel rarely intervened on peer discrimination in a culturally responsive manner. However, participants' preferred intervention responses mirrored more actionable, culturally responsive intervention approaches to peer discrimination.