Intersectional Uncertainties: Race, Class, Gender, and College‐Enrollment Anxieties

ABSTRACT Following rational choice frameworks, past scholarship often points to economic calculations and uncertainties informing college‐enrollment decisions of marginalized students. I contribute by examining heterogeneous messages shaping Black high‐school students' anticipated college uncertainties. Drawing on intersectionality theory, I connect those messages to prevailing racial, gendered, and classed ideologies within the context of a racially and economically stratified school and surrounding neighborhoods. I use multiple interview waves with 21 working‐ and middle‐class Black 9th‐ and 11th‐grade girls and boys and triangulation through interviews with parents/guardians and teachers/counselors during 2007–2010. I identify what I call intersectional uncertainties —the college‐related anxieties reflecting how students existing at the intersection of multiply marginalized positions make sense of future uncertainties within systems of power. I argue that past research on college information and messages often miss intersectional systems of power that are embedded in college‐enrollment messages. I demonstrate how 4‐year college‐enrollment messages translate to salient uncertainties that working‐class Black adolescent girls and boys negotiate at the intersections of race, class, and gender. Lastly, I employ the community cultural wealth (CCW) framework by examining Black student responses and social relationships as they manage college‐enrollment uncertainties.