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In this conceptual paper, Diane Gusa highlights the salience of race by scrutinizing the culture of Whiteness within predominately White institutions of higher education. Using existing research in higher education retention literature, Gusa examines embedded White cultural ideology in the cultural practices, traditions, and perceptions of knowledge that are taken for granted as the norm at institutions of higher education. Drawing on marginalization and discrimination experiences of African American undergraduates to illustrate the performance of White mainstream ideology, Gusa names this embedded ideology White institutional presence (WIP) and assigns it four attributes: White ascendancy, monoculturalism, White estrangement, and White blindness.
President Obama's election signifies a "momentous milestone in the history of America's most persistent domestic problem" - racism (Pettigrew, 2009, p. 290) . Some media commentators and academics, as well as many Whites, believe the United States has made comprehensive progress in civil rights for minorities (Bobo & Kluegel, 1993; Kluegel, 1990) and deem this election as confirmation that the United States is now postracial (Wingfield & Feagin, 2010). This perception is advanced by the growing number of middle-class Black professionals (Allen & Farley, 1986) and an increasing number of Black elected officials (Sigelman, 1997). Though there have been significant racial changes in society, systemic, substantial, and racialized oppression has been sustained (Feagin, 2006) . Systemic racism, with racial hierarchy at its heart (Wingfield & Feagin, 2010), is revealed by housing segregation (Zhao, Onrich, & Yinger, 2005), inequitable opportunities in education (Walters, 2001), employment (Bertrand & Mullainathan, 2003; Pager & Shepard, 2008), and high rates of African American and Hispanic incarceration (Mauer, 2006; Pettigrew, 2008). Guess (2006) labels this systemic racism "racism by consequences" - a racism that has historically evolved and presently operates at society's macro level. She contends that even as individual racial prejudice declines, structural racist patterns persist and are attributable to the inertia of U.S. institutional cultures and practices.
The denial of racism ignores the continual reality of racial hostility and discrimination. The Federal Bureau of Investigation found that schools and colleges, the third most common setting for racial bias hate crimes, constitute 12.5 percent of the 4,704 reported offenses in 2008 (Criminal Justice Information Service Division, 2009). Post-Obama election reports included Black students at Appalachian State College proclaiming increased...