Four Years of Data Reveal a Hidden Resilience in Black and Latinx Students’ Sense of Self
Fernández, D., & Hurd, N. M. (2026). An examination of ongoing associations between ethnic/racial discrimination and experiences of belonging among Black and Latinx students attending a predominantly White institution. Journal of Community & Applied Social Psychology, 36(4), e70281. https://doi.org/10.1002/casp.70281
Introduction
Black and Latinx students graduate from four-year colleges at markedly lower rates than their white and Asian peers, and a growing body of research points to campus belonging as one reason why. Fernández and Hurd (2026) note that most of this research treats belonging as a single construct, when it may actually operate along two distinct dimensions: an external sense that others recognize you as belonging, and an internal sense that you belong regardless of how others treat you. The authors set out to test whether ethnic/racial discrimination erodes these two dimensions differently across four years of college at a predominantly white institution (PWI).
Methods
The authors drew on five waves of longitudinal data collected from 170 Black and Latinx students (71% women) at an elite PWI, spanning their first through fourth years. Discrimination was measured using items from the National Longitudinal Survey of Freshmen; external belonging was assessed with the Psychological Sense of School Membership scale; and internal belonging (termed “school identity”) was measured with the University Attachment Scale. The authors used latent growth curve modeling, controlling for gender, economic disadvantage, multiracial identity, extraversion, and agreeableness.
Results
On average, students reported relatively infrequent discrimination, but the frequency ticked upward slightly across the four years rather than declining as students grew more embedded in campus life. Average levels of external belonging followed a mild dip-then-recover pattern across the four years, while average levels of internal school identity stayed essentially flat, never climbing the way prior research on college populations generally suggests it should as students accumulate time and investment at an institution. Discrimination was significantly and negatively associated with external belonging at every single time point. Its association with internal school identity was weaker and, at the first and final waves, not statistically significant at all. The authors found strong evidence that campus discrimination consistently damages students’ sense that others see them as belonging, and it does so at a stable, undiminished strength for four straight years. Their private sense of deserving to be there proves more resistant, and at times statistically indistinguishable from zero, but it is not fully immune, and its failure to grow over time suggests even this more resilient dimension is not escaping the cost of discrimination.
Discussion
The authors interpret this pattern as evidence that internal identification with an institution may function as a form of psychological resistance against stigmatizing treatment. The authors reason that when a student is targeted directly, that experience is easy to generalize into a broader belief that the whole institution devalues them, which explains why external belonging took the harder and more consistent hit. Still, average school identity did not increase over four years, as prior research suggests it typically should, hinting that even low, chronic discrimination may quietly stall internal identity development. The authors read this stagnation as a sign that even relatively infrequent discrimination, sustained over years, may quietly cap how deeply a student comes to identify with their school, even if it cannot fully strip that identification away. Notably, these patterns held after accounting for economic disadvantage, suggesting that ethnic and racial discrimination exerts an influence on belonging that is not simply a proxy for socioeconomic hardship, as even affluent Black and Latinx students remain vulnerable to it.
Implications for Mentoring Programs
Mentors working with Black and Latinx students at PWIs should treat external belonging, not internal identity, as the more fragile and immediate target for support, since it degrades consistently regardless of how resilient a student’s private sense of self may appear. Mentors can help students articulate and revisit their own reasons for belonging, their effort, their achievements, their right to be there, as a way of protecting the more resilient half of belonging from slowly eroding under years of low-grade discrimination. Programs should also resist the assumption that a student’s composed or confident internal identity means the external climate around them is fine: a student who seems privately secure may still be absorbing real damage to how supported they feel by the institution day to day. Finally, because these effects held regardless of income, mentoring programs should not assume that students from higher-income backgrounds are protected from this dynamic.
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