Unmarked Privilege and Marked Oppression: Analyzing Predominantly White and Minority Serving Institutions as Racialized Organizations

The categorization of predominantly white institutions (PWIs) and minority serving institutions (MSIs) affects the distribution of resources, privileges, and inequities in higher education. As PWIs increasingly tout having “majority-minority” student bodies and take on enrollment-based MSI statuses due to demographic shifts, it remains unclear how these institutions will disrupt the dominant ideologies of privilege and whiteness that have been pervasive throughout their history in order to create positive campus environments for people of color. Using Ray’s (American Sociological Review, 84(1), 26–53, 2019) theory of racialized organizations as a sociological framework to test these dynamics, we aimed to interrogate the organizational identity of PWIs transitioning to MSI. Through a comparative content analysis of existing PWI and MSI literature, we established the dominant features of each institution type and provided implications of the power dynamics as PWIs increasingly take on MSI characteristics. Given that enrollment-based MSIs gain eligibility to apply for federal grant funding, regardless of intentions to better serve students of color, the ways that PWIs are privileged throughout the literature have implications for institutional actors, policymakers, and scholars alike.