"Dream like the Whites": Disjunctures in Racial Experiences and Interpretations of Low-Income First-Generation Students of Color and Their Parents.

This article examines how low-income first-generation (LIFG) college students of color and their families navigate racial dissonance and racism at socioeconomically elite, predominantly white institutions (PWIs). Drawing on in-depth interviews with 15 LIFG students of color and 13 of their parents at a private northeastern research university, the study highlights significant intergenerational disjunctures in perceptions of race and racism. While parents often emphasize individual behavior and proximity to whiteness as protective or advantageous, students describe experiences of racial marginalization, hypervisibility, and reliance on solidarity with other students of color for emotional support. The findings underscore the necessity of race-conscious analyses in understanding educational mobility, revealing that familial support is complicated by parents' limited familiarity with predominantly white elite environments and differing cultural and racial socialization experiences.