Recounting Racism, Resistance, and Repression: Examining the Experiences and #Hashtag Activism of College Students with Critical Race Theory and Counternarratives

This article offers a qualitative examination of one predominantly white university in the Midwest. Racist epithets and threats targeting African Americans were painted on buildings. While faculty and staff struggled to compose a collective written response, researched state law and the University's Code of Conduct around hate speech, and waited for words of encouragement from the administration, students collectively rallied to demonstrate their status as full members of the University, to reaffirm their humanity through tweets, Facebook PSAs, Snapchat videos, and with walk-outs and sit-ins. Employing Critical Race Theory, specifically counter-storytelling as an analytic tool, this case study uses interview data to historicize the racial violence and document students' civil disobedience, activism, and subsequent administrative actions in that moment.