“The Great Reveal” - Covid-19 Impacts on Students of Color

Abstract

We are living through unprecedented times due to the COVID-19 pandemic, although the consequences and impacts of structural violence upon historically marginalized and excluded communities remain the same- inhumane and inequitable. Intersectional factors related to identity perpetuate this disparity; overwhelmingly, these divisions are at racial and ethnic lines. Even though COVID-19 is indiscriminate in its transmission, its proliferation within a systemic racist society leads to disproportionate suffering of the marginalized. This study bears witness to the impact the COVID-19 pandemic has had on students of color within institutions of higher education.This research seeks to uncover the protective and risk factors encountered by participants on their mental and physical well-being, using intersectionality as an analytic tool to assist in seeing beyond a class-only or race-only lens, and establish a more thorough understanding of social inequality based on interactions among various identities and categories. Focal participants were undergraduate and graduate students who identified as a ‘person of color’ and were at least enrolled at the University of Arizona (UArizona) during the period of time of Spring 2020, when the pandemic began, until the Spring of 2021 when systems began to return to in-person full time. This qualitative research had the following objectives: 1) Understand the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on students of color related to changes endured on personal, social, professional, and institutional levels, 2) Identify intersectional factors that may have served as protective or caused higher risk of exposure to COVID-19, 3) Solicit ideas on how social support structures can address the needs of students of color related to the impacts of COVID-19, and 4) Document the performance of social structures during this global pandemic. This mixed methods study recruited UArizona students of color to participate in focus groups. The outcomes and feedback from the six focus groups I facilitated informed the one-on-one interviews, both facilitated remotely through Zoom, to minimize COVID-19 exposure. Additionally, participants were offered a $20 honorarium for each session. Questions used in the focus groups were designed to measure intersecting themes and issues, document the lived experiences and testimonies of students of color during the COVID-19 pandemic, explore institutional COVID-19 response and support accessed by students of color, and highlight which resources were effective or negligent. Ten one-on-one interviews were collected and are providing a deeper understanding of which resources are helping and available to students of color to guide others to support and use these resources and, at the same time, mapped out individual timelines and testimonies around COVID-19 lockdowns, transitions from in-person to online modalities, workloads, familial support, and pressures.