Underreporting Discrimination Among Arab American and Muslim American Community College Students

Abstract

Using a mixed methods approach, the researcher gathered a set of narrative responses from focus groups that supported the claim of underreporting campus discrimination on a survey. Multiple studies have shown that underrepresented minority students are likely to bond with same-ethnic peers in a racially tense campus climate. This mixed method is a follow-up investigation into, why, in a post-9/11 environment, Arab and Muslim American community college students demonstrated less variation in the level of perceived discrimination in relationship to the percentage of same-ethnic and/or same-faith campus friendship groups. Post hoc comparisons revealed that Arab and Muslim students exhibited significantly higher mean scores on a perceived discrimination scale than other ethnic groups.