What Do U See When U See Us?...A Pointillist Perspective

The researching of African and African American college student relations do not abound in multicultural literature. Using a phenomenological-case study approach to data collection and analysis, the study explored the experiences of four African and seven African American final year college students. It investigated the values and perceptions that framed their worldview before and during college years. Also, the study explored phenomena experienced in college that influenced a possible change in perception, as well as, how, why and when the phenomena experienced resulted in change within the four years of college life. The study used Seurat's pointillism as a conceptual framework in addition to Dewey's instrumentalism as the theoretical framework in the analysis and interpretations of data. Together, the two frameworks were developed into the Pointillist-Multicultural Activation Model, P-MAM, to provide a deeper insight into the analysis, interpretations and understanding of phenomena experienced and their influence on African and African American college students' social relations.