Awareness of Marginalization Among College Students

Introduction

Today with Generation Z, there are new ways to learn about what is going on the world though new technology such as with smartphones and computers, that older generations did not have. Some Baby Boomers, Gen X, and Millennials may have only had to learn through experiences and dialect. Now with newer generations to come, there is social media, podcasts, etc. for them to learn about issues from outside of themselves. The article, "Reframing marginalization and youth development: Introduction to the special issue" by José M. Causadias and Adriana J. Umaña-Taylor states that marginalization is multidimensional, dynamic, a diverse web of processes, rooted in power imbalance, systemic, and has probablilistic implications for development. In the idea of these various concepts, we conduct our research. Our research purpose is to understand how the age range of college students are exposed to the marginalization that is apart of society today. We would want to learn about how these students learn about issues facing minorities and through what mediums. We would also like to know if college students have experienced marginalization themselves and what effects it had on their social interactions. We believe that this research may give insight on the college student population, how they feel about inequalities, and how they learn about the world around them.

Methods

We will gather our information through a 21 question survey that is runned by Qualtrics. Due to concerns with the Coronavirus, the survey will be done and shared entirely online. Since almost all students have to use D2L to go on to online classes, finding a way to post it there would be best, as well as posting this on the CCGA phone app. Through this process, the survey would be taken by a random selection of students.

We kept the survey presentation simple. Terrica created a graphic to include with the posts. She created it from the website, Canva. It has a pink background with a black and white photo of a woman posing. The graphic includes the title “Marginalization and College Students”, a description of our purpose, criteria, an IRB approved sticker, and the identification of our lead investigator, Katherine Diestel. The caption for the post includes “Please take our survey if you can!” with the link to the survey. Promotion for the survey began on November 10th and the survey was closed on November 21st, giving around an 11-day period for the survey to be taken.

In the survey, we wanted to create questions that address a variety of things. With our first question, “Do you feel that you are aware of marginalization based on the definition?”, We provided the definition of marginalization, so respondents can take it into account with their questions. We want to know if participants have been aware of this concept before and how much they know based on previous knowledge. We’d also wanted to know if how they view marginalization fits the definition. Our second question, “Where do you think you learn about inequality the most?”, we want to know where people get their information and what sources they deem reliable. The given choices were Social Media, News, Friends, Family, Work, and write-in response with other choices. We’d also like to know, with this question, in what places people may experience the marginalization. The third question is “Which of the following concepts can be found related to marginalization the most?”, we want to see how participants view our given choices of race, gender, disabilities, and indingenous cultures (as well as concepts they can enter with a type-in choice), in which ones, in their views, are most depreciated. The fourth question we have in the survey is “Do you think that the government has done something about these inequalities?”, in which we are interested in where people stand and want to know how minority groups feel like the government has affected. Our fifth question focuses on participants' willingness to learn about other social issues with the question, “Do you think it would be beneficial to learn about marginalization and its effects on others?”. We’d like to see if participants are willing to listen and sympathize to others' issues. Our sixth question is “Have you ever experienced marginalization yourself?”, the purpose is clear, we want to know how many people have gone through the experience of marginalization in general. The seventh question follows up the previous one with, “If yes, what kind of social exclusion have you experienced?” where we want to know what type of marginalization participants have experienced because we believe that they may have effects, refering to the 'probabilistic implitcantions for development' that was mentioned previously.

We got back 77 responses. All participants said they were US residents, 65 participants being from Georgia while there was one participant from each states of Florida, Texas, and Virgina. 96% (95.59%) percent of the participants confirmed they were students at the College of Coastal Georgia and on the other hand, there were only three participants who weren’t (4.41%). With gender identity, we had 46 female participants (67.65%), 19 male participants (27.94%), and 2 non-binary participants (2.94%). When it came to age groups, 41 entrants (60.29%) fell under the 18-24 age range, 12 (17.65%) fell under the ‘25-34’ category, 4 (5.88%) were in the 35-44 group, another 4 (5.88%) in the 45-54 group, another 4 (5.88%) in 55-64 age group, and only three entrants (4.41%) in the 65-74 age group. There were zero participants that were 75 and older. A majority of the participants were Caucasian, leading with 55 participants and 80.88%. There were 5 African American participants, making up 7.35%, 4 multiracial participants (5.88%), 3 Hispanic/Latino participants (4.41%), and 1 Hispanic Caucasian (1.47%)., There were no Asian/Pacific Islander entrants nor any Native American entrants. There were 44 people who identified as heterosexual (64.71%), 5 as bisexual (7.35%), 5 as homosexual (7.35%), another 5 as pansexual (7.35%), 4 as lesbisan (5.88%), and 2 as asexual (2.94%). Two write in answers were aceflux and queer.

Results

Our results consist of many different topics. To go into deeper detail we will be explaining each question and the results. Question 9, “Do you feel that you were aware of marginalization based on the definition?'' the answer choices were Yes, I am aware with 73.68%, Partially aware 15.79%, No, I was not aware with 7.02%, I am unsure 3.51%, and Partially unaware was 0%. Question 10 is “Where do you think you learn about inequality the most?” Social media as the top answer choice with 58.93%, Other with 14.29%, News with 10.71%, Friends with 7.14%, Family 5.36%, Work with 3.57%. Question 12 “Do you think it will be beneficial to learn about marginalization and its effects on others?” 78.95% said Yes, 12.28% said No, and 8.77% said Not sure. Question 13 “Have you experienced marginalization yourself?” 43.8% said Yes, 24.5% said No, 31.58% said Somewhat. Question 13 is “What is the highest level of the education you have completed or the highest degree you have received?” the answers were Some college but no degree with 47.06%, Associate degree in college with 22.06% High school graduate (or equivalent) with 14.71%, Bachelor’s degree in college with 10.29%, Masters degree with 2.94%, Professional degree with 2.94%. Question 14 “If yes, what kind of social exclusion have you experienced?” out of the 7 answers being ignored and verbal harassment were tied with 21.38%, bullying with 20.69%, being picked last for groups with 13.79%, threats of violence 8.79%, violence with 6.21% and others with 7.59%. Question 16, “Which of the following concepts can be found related to marginalization the most?” for these questions there were 5 main answers and then the people answering the survey were able to rank them. So for Race 27 people ranked it number 1, 9 ranked it 2nd place, 4 ranked it 3rd place, 7 ranked it 4th place and 5 ranked it 5th place. For Gender 8 people voted 1st place, 22 voted 2nd place, 12 voted 3rd place, 8 voted 4th place and 2 voted 5th place. For Disabilities 5 people said 1st place, 12 said 2nd place, 15 said 3d place, 19 said 4th place and 1 said 5th place. For Indigenous cultures 5 people ranked it 1st place, 8 ranked it 2nd place, 17 ranked it 3rd place, 16 ranked 4th place and ranked it 5th place. Question 17, “Debriefing StatementData collected in this survey is anonymous and confidential. It will be used for the final two projects in our ENGL 1102 course and may be submitted to scholarly conferences or published in scholarly journals. We will be submitting a poster to the College of Coastal Georgia's SOURCE Undergraduate Research Conference. Do you wish to withdraw your consent?” 3.51% said Yes and 96.49% said No. Lastly we have question number 19 which was “Number of people that linked their identity” and only 13 individuals did this.

Discussion

From the conclusions drawn from our data, we can say that, overall, the questions we had were answered. We were able to learn about where college students may learn about social issues, if they have experienced social exclusion, ahd what they feel is most connected to the idea of marginalization. We were first and foremost shocked to see that we got as many responses as we did. We were expecting a smaller number of responses but were happy to see it nonetheless. Some of our participants were able to give us good ideas and personal experience with the write in options. We would note the following results to be aligned with ideas we found with our scholarly articles.

Interestingly, when participants were asked where inequality was learned about the most 58.93% of them said social media. That seemed inlight with our thoughts, that social media is as easily obtainable. This correlates with the findings of Faye Mishna et al. in the article “Social media, cyber-aggression and student mental health on a university campus,” It is stated that although information and communication technologies (ICTs) allow youth in marginalized communities to connect with their communities it can also provide a target for cyber-bullying (6). A direct quote from Mishna et al. is “Qualitative studies, however, have also highlighted the risks of bias-based cyber-aggression for marginalized youth (Kosciw et al., 2010; Rice et al., 2016). Bias-based cyberbullying is ‘a pattern of behavior motivated by intolerance towards others due to real or perceived aspects of their identity’ (Mishna and Van Wert, 2015, p. 38)”(6). With the increased use of ICTs among youth it is no surprise that negative outcomes are prominent.

We also received other places people may have learned about inequality from the type-in responses. There were responses such as mission work, homelessness, and neighborhoods. Two responses related back to the college campus and classes. And with these responses, there were two ideas: from learning through core curriculum or through a discriminative experience in an academic setting. Both have the ability to occur. With the article, “Critical race theory, racial microaggressions, and campus racial climate: The experiences of African American college students” for example, notes on racial microaggressions that can occur in the campus climate but african American students admitting that their experiences were distorted and stereotyped within their core curriculum (65).

Reported by the article, "Reframing marginalization and youth development: Introduction to the special issue." by José M. Causadias and Adriana J. Umaña-Taylor, marginalization is systematic. When participants of the survey were asked if they thought the government had tried to stop the discrimination against minorities an overwhelming 78.95% of them either said “Somewhat”. An example of why this might be can be found in the article “‘We Need to Make Action NOW, to Help Keep the Language Alive:” Navigating Tensions of Engaging Indigenous Educational Values in University Education” written by Michelle M. Jacob et al. Jacobs et al. explains that “Summer language institutes, such as the one described in this article, are often marginalized and underfunded, called on to be self supporting financially despite their important service to university campuses, and local and Tribal communities. This is due, in part, to the undervaluing of language revitalization work... it is rare that a school district, particularly one that serves a high proportion of Indigenous students, has the resources to fully fund teachers to attend the summer institute...” (9) This proves that the government has not worked to reverse the effects of government-caused assimilation.

Also with the answer of somewhat, there may be a different connection. Although the options of “Yes” and “No” were similar in percentage, “No” led with 26.32% with a 5.27% difference. Luke Keele’s article “The authorities really do matter: Party control and trust in government.”, notes that some citizens may be “disenchanted with a political process they viewed as unresponsive and broken regardless of who was elected” (874). But as said before, the lead answer was “Somewhat”, which all may be held up to the participants’ views and more specifically to their political party. It is not to say that political parties made up the participants’ choices, but it is a noted factor in discussion and possible distrust of government. When it comes to evaluating the trustworthiness of the government, the economy and presidential approval are considered important (Keele 883). These factors can be linked to the perspective of the government’s efficiency and essentially their reliance on a political party. “Moreover, when a party controls either the Congress of the presidency, it sends a signal to its partisans about trust in government.“ Keele observed. ”A signal that the party they trust controls some part of the government, and therefore, the government is now more trustworthy” (875-6). In conclusion, distrust in the government can be dependent on the identification of a political party and could be a possible reason for the majority of participants being on the fence.

The survey asked participants to rank concepts of marginalization from most to least given the options: Race, Gender, Disabilities, Indigenous Cultures and a write in option. The results from this survey reported that 51.92% of participants ranked Race first, 42.31% ranked Gender second, 32.69% ranked Indigenous Cultures third, 36.54% Disabilities fourth, and over 70% ranked another option fourth.

We could expect that Race could be put in the higher ranks due its prominence. This can be especially said for the recent climate with the Black Lives Matter movement as well as its importance in history and culture. Racial stereotypes are an example of what can be woven into the fabric of U.S. society. Students may have chosen this option because of these things. Considering that most of the respondents were of Caucasian descent, it could be because of society evolving and growing ways for non people of color to learn of discriminative experiences they don’t experience and educate themselves. We may have expected a more diverse respondent pool to discuss more on what a college racial climate can create. It is however, good that even though the majority of the participants were not people of color, that they still acknowledged the existence of racial issues.

The journal article “Represent the Views of Disabled People in Community Care Planning” by Cathrine Bewley and Caroline Glendinning is about how disabled people are excluded from current consultation procedures. The main focus of the journal article is to show different ways in which the views of disabled people are represented in a community care plan and also of the organisational and practical barriers that most disbaled people will likely encounter. Catherine Bewley and Caroline Glendinning claimed that, “People with learning disabilities, older disabled people, people with sensory impairments and disabled people from Black and ethnic minority communities are particularly likely to be excluded from current consultation procedures”(Bewley & Glendinning 301). The paper states that today's methods of representation place a significant burden on diabled people and their organisations.

This article “Hatred: The unacknowledgement dimension in violence against diabled people'' talks about how people with disabilities are more prone to be violated in a sexual nature. Having a disability asserts more violence and crimes against them. The author Barbara Faye Waxmen states, “The ultimate goal of the author is to argue for the inclusion of the disability community as a group at risk in the federal Hate Crimes Statistics Act, which is designed to track hate crimes”(Waxman 185).

The question is why these concepts were ranked as such and in the aspect of Indigenous Cultures author Ryan A. Brown offers an explanation. Brown states that, “the ones [AI/AN youth] that I’ve worked with...are having gangs, broken families, the loss of a biological parent. So they’re being raised by their grandparents. And in their communities, they’re not really recognized as Native American but being another ethnicity.” (4) This means that Indigenous people are no longer being viewed as Indigenous people causing the effects of marginalization to go unheard.

Participants were asked if they had experienced marginalization; out of the 77 participants 43.86% said Yes, 31.58% said Somewhat and 24.56% said No. For the 75.44% that said “Yes” or “Somewhat” the impact marginalization has on mental health is concerning. Beth Sapiro and Alison Ward explain in their article “Marginalized Youth, Mental Health, and Connection with Others: A Review of the Literature,” that those who are marginalized are at higher risk for negative health outcomes. Sapiro and Ward report, “One in 5 young adults have a mental illness, excluding substance use disorders, and 4.8% have serious mental illness (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, 2014). For marginalized youth, these rates are even higher” (2).

Followed up by the previous question, participants answer with what type of social exclusion they’ve experienced. Being ignored and Verbal Harassment led with a tieing 21.38% and Bullying coming at a close second with 20.69%. We actually expected the bullying option to be much higher to create the only majority, but expected a higher number either way. The writing, “Excluded from humanity: The dehumanizing effects of social ostracism” by Brock Bastian and Nick Haslam, social ostracism has been demonstrated to take subtle and everyday forms (107). This could be further confirmed with the verbal harassment and being ignored as well as some of the examples given by participants themselves like being told they don’t exist. One answer we obtained that surprised us was medical maltreatment. We were unsure of receiving responses about sexual harassment, but were surprised to see two.

From Bastian and Haslam’s article, participants may feel effects from these instances of social exclusion if they haven’t already. The whole experience can be determined to be dehumanizing on all parts. Those affected can feel less human, people who create social exclusion are looked at as less than human, as stated in their two studies (112). The authors observe that following social exclusion, there can be a lack of self-assertion and a reduced tendency towards action (Bastian and Haslam 108). These ideals can be further confirmed with the article, “Critical race theory, racial microaggressions, and campus racial climate: The experiences of African American college students”, where african american students felt they could not perform well under the exhaustion and discouragement of racial microaggressions, some even feeling the need to drop a class, change their major or even transfer universities (69). The students could also feel “drained” by the scrutiny and would even try to “avoid-in their interactions with some Whites in the academic setting” (67).

In the article “Disability, work, welfare: challenging the social exclusion of disabled people” by Colin Barnes it talks about how the social policy and disabled people are viewed. Recent developments from inside the disabled people's movement is the concept of independent living. Colin Barnes and Geof Mercer both state that “It is argued that hitherto, analyses of work and disability have failed to address in sufficient depth or breadth the various social and environmental barriers that confront disabled people”. It is suggested that reorganizing the meaning of work for disabled people can be done by drawing on and using social model analysis.

Conclusion

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