“It Snows Year-Round Here”: A Counterstory about Mexican/Mexican American/Xicanx Students’ Experiences with Racism at a Predominantly White University in the Northeast

Abstract

Using critical race theory counterstorytelling, I tell a story about the experiences of Mexican/Mexican American/Xicanx (MMAX) undergraduate students at a private, predominantly white university in the Northeast. Drawing on in-depth interviews, participant observations, pláticas, and document analyses, I highlight the various ways MMAX students experience discrimination on campus. More specifically, discrimination and unsettledness are experienced by MMAX students through the following ways: 1) Racist Name Calling and Racial Slurs; 2) Discrimination by Professors; and 3) Class Discussions as Microaggressions. Through counterstories like this one, I argue that we can shed light on injustices while staying true to our ancestral ways of knowing and make our research accessible to communities historically excluded from academia.