Rethinking Diversity Frameworks in Higher Education 9780367279523, 9780367279530, 9780429298929

Citation preview

Rethinking Diversity Frameworks in Higher Education should be required reading for anyone involved in—or interested in—academic governance. It not only provides a comprehensive overview of the disturbing situation in our institutions of higher education, it provides practical yet visionary suggestions for effecting real and sustained change and creating more inclusive environments for all members of campus communities. Santa J. Ono, President and Vice Chancellor, The University of British Columbia Through Rethinking Diversity Frameworks in Higher Education, Chun and Feagin have produced the next classic work for higher education leaders who care about and seek to articulate the import of diversity on (predominately white) college campuses. A stunningly comprehensive book, it provides clear and innovative guidance on how to enact transformational change while navigating hurdles such as discriminatory speech and actions, microaggressions, implicit bias, asymmetrical power relations, and unhealthy environments. The real triumph of the book is that it is so much more than a roadmap to change. Rather, Chun and Feagin seek to reframe the conversation around these hurdles, asking if the terms to describe these barriers and the solutions devised to address them are still useful today. Significantly, the authors rely on first-person narratives to shine a light on the current higher education and political climate, and to mine those narratives for new and innovative approaches to intervention. After reading this book, with its frank and honest interrogation of diversity impulses in higher education, readers will be equipped to work toward creating a campus culture that is built on a foundation of empowerment, organizational awareness, and real inclusion. Dr. Robin R. Means Coleman, Vice President and Associate Provost for Diversity, Texas A&M University Rethinking Diversity Frameworks in Higher Education is a very timely book. Most work on racism in college campuses is extremely focused on implicit bias and individual-level prejudice, which misses the elephant in the room: the whiteness of institutions of higher learning. Chun and Feagin provide a toolkit of concepts and analyses that will serve general readers as well as help students, faculty, and administrators understand why racial issues in their campuses are not merely “isolated incidents.” Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, James B. Duke Professor of Sociology, Duke University

Rethinking Diversity Frameworks in Higher Education is an important contribution to the conversation on how we make our colleges more accessible, more diverse, more equitable, and more inclusive. After having been a chief diversity officer for five years at a major research institution, this is the book that I wish I had read before taking on the task. It will be on my bookshelf within my reach for as long as I am in the position. Dr. Robert M. Sellers, Vice Provost for Equity and Inclusion & Chief Diversity Officer, University of Michigan

Rethinking Diversity Frameworks in Higher Education With the goal of building more inclusive working, learning, and living environments in higher education, this book seeks to reframe understandings of forms of everyday exclusion that affect members of nondominant groups on historically white college campuses. The book contextualizes the need for a more robust analysis of persistent patterns of campus inequality by addressing key trends that have reshaped the landscape for diversity, including rapid demographic change, reduced public spending on higher education, and a polarized political climate. Specifically, it offers a critique of contemporary analytical ideas such as micro-aggressions and implicit and unconscious bias and underscores the impact of consequential discriminatory events (or macro-aggressions) and racial and gender-based inequalities (macro-inequities) on members of nondominant groups. The authors draw extensively upon interview studies and qualitative research findings to illustrate the reproduction of social inequality through behavioral and process-based outcomes in the higher education environment. They identify a more powerful systemic framework and conceptual vocabulary that can be used for meaningful change. In addition, the book highlights coping and resistance strategies that have regularly enabled members of nondominant groups to address, deflect, and counteract everyday forms of exclusion. The book offers concrete approaches, concepts, and tools that will enable higher education leaders to identify, address, and counteract persistent structural and behavioral barriers to inclusion. As such, it shares a series of practical recommendations that will assist presidents, provosts, executive officers, boards of trustees, faculty, administrators, diversity officers, human resource leaders, diversity taskforces, and researchers as they seek to implement comprehensive strategies that result in sustained diversity change. Edna B. Chun is an educational leader and award-winning author with more than two decades of strategic human resource and diversity leadership experience in higher education. Among her co-authored books are Leading a Diversity Culture Shift in Higher Education (Routledge 2018) and The Department Chair as Transformative Diversity Leader (Stylus 2015). She currently serves as Chief Learning Officer for HigherEd Talent, a national diversity and human resources consulting firm. Joe R. Feagin is Distinguished Professor at Texas A&M University. Among his books are Systemic Racism (Routledge 2006) and (with Kimberley Ducey) Racist America (4th edn, Routledge 2019). He is the recipient of the American Association for Affirmative Action’s Fletcher Lifetime Achievement Award and the American Sociological Association’s W. E. B. Du Bois Career of Distinguished Scholarship Award. He was the 1999–2000 president of the American Sociological Association.

New Critical Viewpoints on Society Series Edited by Joe R. Feagin

Violence Against Black Bodies Edited by Sandra Weissinger, Elwood Watson and Dwayne A. Mack Racism in the Neoliberal Era A Meta History of Elite White Power Randolph Hohle Leading a Diversity Cultural Shift in Higher Education Comprehensive Organizational Learning Strategies Edna B. Chun and Alvin Evans Killing African Americans Police and Vigilante Violence as a Racial Control Mechanism Noel A. Cazenave When Rape was Legal The Untold History of Sexual Violence During Slavery Rachel A. Feinstein Latino Peoples in the New America Racialization and Resistance Edited by José A. Cobas, Joe R. Feagin, Daniel J. Delgado and Maria Chávez Women and Inequality in the 21st Century Edited by Brittany C. Slatton and Carla D. Brailey Rethinking Diversity Frameworks in Higher Education Edna B. Chun and Joe R. Feagin For more information about this series, please visit www.routledge.com/ New-Critical-Viewpoints-on-Society/book-series/NCVS

Rethinking Diversity Frameworks in Higher Education

Edna B. Chun and Joe R. Feagin

First published 2020 by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business  2020 Taylor & Francis The right of Edna B. Chun and Joe R. Feagin to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this title has been requested ISBN: 978-0-367-27952-3 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-367-27953-0 (pbk) ISBN: 978-0-429-29892-9 (ebk) Typeset in Adobe Caslon Pro by Swales & Willis Ltd, Exeter Devon, UK

CONTENTS

Foreword by Santa J. Ono Introduction

xii 1

Research and Policy Questions We Attempt to Answer  6 Organization of the Book  7 Acknowledgements 10 Chapter 1 Campus Turmoil: The “New Normal” of Racist Speech and Actions

The “Coming White Minority”: Backdrop of Campus Change  17 Demographic Change: Contexts and Consequences 19 Politicizing Racial Change: Contemporary Realities 20 “Whitopias”: Persisting Residential Segregation 25 “Colorblindness” and Racial Segregation 27 Maintaining White Dominance in the Midst of Change  29

vii

12

viii

contents

Reactions to Racial Integration: Maintaining White Dominance in Higher Education  31 Reduced State Spending on Higher Education: Racially Grounded 32 Dramatic Increases in College Tuition 34 Contemporary Racial Channeling: De Facto Segregation in Higher Education 38 Rejecting Reparative Programs in Higher Education  43 A Note on Privatization: Seeking Corporate funds and Connections 44 Systemic Racism and Systemic Sexism: A Better Conceptual Approach 46 Some Illustrative Examples  47 Conclusion 49 Chapter 2 Discriminatory Experiences from Academic Frontlines: Limits of Organizational and Legal Redress

Painful Tenure Hurdles for Faculty of Color  57 More Evaluation Hurdles: Racist and Sexist Framing in Operation  60 Long-term Impacts on Targets of Discrimination 61 The Cumulative Effects of Emotional and Cognitive Labor  63 Active Resistance by Underrepresented Faculty Members  67 Using the Legal System: Success and Failure  68 The Slim Odds of Proving a Claim of Discrimination  72

56

contents

ix

Professional and Individual Costs of Complaining about Discrimination 75 Conclusion 78 Chapter 3 Questioning “Implicit Bias” and “Microaggressions”: Toward Better Terminology and Concepts

83

Implicit Racial Bias: The IAT  84 Problematizing the IAT Test and Approach 85 The IAT and the Biologization of Racism  86 IAT’s Tenuous Link to Discriminatory Behavior 88 The Issue of Conscious and Unconscious Bias  91 Rethinking the “Micro” Concepts: An Overview  93 Beyond Implicit Bias and Microaggressions: Systemic Racism and the White Racial Frame  98 Systemic Sexism and the Male Sexist Frame  103 Far More than Prejudice: Contemporary Racial Framing  104 Questioning the Popularity of Implicit Bias Diversity Training  109 Conclusion 112 Chapter 4 Reformulating the Concept of “Microaggressions”: Everyday Discrimination in Academia

The Academic Playbook: Much Discriminatory Decision-making  120 Performance and Promotion Discrimination 122 Isolation and Glass Ceilings in the Workplace 124

117

x

contents

Lack of Support and Failure to Allocate Resources  125 Bullying and Harassment  126 Reframing Microaggressions: A Better Conceptual Vocabulary  127 Conclusion 130 Chapter 5 Imposed Racial Identities: Another Essential Concept

133

Naming and Conceptualizing the “Imposed Identity” Process  135 Identities: Political and Psychological Dynamics of Discrimination  139 Day-to-Day Realities of Imposed Identity 141 Identity Issues: Prevalent Asian American Stereotypes  145 Identity Issues: Negative Latino/ a Framing  149 Imposed Racial Framing: Native Americans 151 Identifying as Multiracial American  154 Conclusion 157 Chapter 6 Resisting and Coping with Everyday Discrimination 162

Stress and Coping with Everyday Discrimination 165 Types of Coping Responses  166 Everyday Discrimination and Career Costs  170 Seeking Career Alternatives: Knowing Your Academic Value 174 Proactive Coping Strategies  182 Developing Complex Coping Strategies 183 Positive Use of Marginality: The “Outsider Within” 185 Positive Communication Strategies 188

contents

xi

Drawing on Social Support Systems 190 Conclusion 192 Chapter 7 Moving Forward: Issues, Strategies, and Recommended Solutions

196

Accenting a Better Analytical Framework: Systemic Racism and Sexism  199 Solutions for Two-Tiered Apartheid in Higher Education  203 Diversity Leadership Strategies  206 Conduct an Institutional Diversity Audit 207 Establish Top-Level Strategies and Expected Outcomes Based on Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Principles 208 Call Out the Difficult Issues 209 Proactively Address Underrepresentation of Nondominant Faculty 212 Monitor Institutional Processes for Equitable Outcomes 214 Invest in Systematic and Sustained Diversity Education 215 Create an Institutional Safety Net 216 Assess Impact of Admissions Criteria and Financial Aid on Underrepresented Students 217 Critically Evaluate Faculty Workforce Models 220 Conduct Research on Demographic Changes and Inclusion 222 Conclusion 222 Index 229

FOREWORD

In 2013, I wrote an article for The Chronicle of Higher Education (“Why So Few Asians Are College Presidents”) in which I noted the lack of Asians in the ranks of higher education leaders. In that article, I surmised that though meritocracy is more or less assumed in academe, where everything is analyzed, interrogated, held up to the light, biases – whether conscious or unconscious – still exist. Six years on, those biases still exist, and not just with regard to Asians, but also to women, people of color and other nondominant groups, as Edna B. Chun and Joe R. Feagin make clear in this perceptive and timely book. Rethinking Diversity Frameworks in Higher Education should be required reading for anyone involved in—or interested in—academic governance. It not only provides a comprehensive overview of the disturbing situation in our institutions of higher education, it provides practical yet visionary suggestions for effecting real and sustained change and creating more inclusive environments for all members of campus communities. Their goal is to help educational leaders “create a campus environment characterized by empowerment, solidify safeguards against process-based inequalities, increase awareness of behavioral and organizational forms of oppression, and build a participatory culture of real campus inclusion.” xii

foreword

xiii

This book can go a long way to helping us achieve that goal. Thank you, Edna and Joe, for this frank, insightful, and constructive contribution to the conversation about diversity in higher education. Santa J. Ono President and Vice Chancellor The University of British Columbia

INTRODUCTION

College campuses today are at the center of a maelstrom of resurgent hate crimes, white nationalism, and anti-Semitism in U.S. society. The normalization of exclusionary and nativistic political rhetoric has, in turn, exposed deep ideological fissures within the campus landscape. The dilemmas faced by nondominant administrators, faculty, and students who have long been unsure of their status and footing on historically white campuses have been accentuated by the polarized national climate and underlying demographic changes. Even before these disturbing events, consider how Lisa, a high-ranking African American administrator in an elite eastern university, described the tenuousness and uncertainty of her role: You know, even in my position . . . I am not sure . . . if they are taking seriously what I need to do here or that my job, my position is taken that seriously. I don’t know that. I have got to feel my way around until I get some clues either pro or con. And I’m an African American female. We do that every day, feeling around for pro’s and con’s. Does that happen to some other people? I’m sure it does, but not to the rate that we are doing it. Trying to feel our way around. Is this an important position? Is it a real position?1 Given the increased reality of unabashed hostility toward racialized, gendered, and other nondominant groups in U.S. society today, this 1

2

introduction

book examines the long-lasting impact of patterns of behavioral and “process-based” exclusion that persist within the higher education environment. Here we often accent the process-based decisions made in the course of higher education’s institutional processes such as recruitment, appointment, promotion, tenure-attainment, compensation, and evaluation. In this context, we critique and reassess some of the prevalent language and concepts such as “microaggressions,” “micro-inequities,” “implicit/unconscious bias,” and self-chosen “identities” as conceptually limited and inadequate to address the contemporary prevalence of overt and blatant patterns of racial discrimination and other racial oppression. Ironically, in the political environment during which we wrote this book, even timid diversity attempts by colleges and universities have been subject to hostile scrutiny and rejection by conservative officials in the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ). Consider the brief filed on June 11, 2018 by then Republican Attorney General Jeff Sessions in support of a lawsuit that challenged a modest anti-bullying code of student conduct designed to reduce racial and gender harassment at the University of Michigan campus. The DOJ’s legalistic brief called the university’s modest code “unconstitutional,” alleging that it did not offer clear and objective definitions of the violations viewed as racial or gender harassing or bullying. The DOJ brief further challenged the constitutionality of the university’s Bias Response Team, consisting of administrators and law enforcement officers to deal with these issues. In response, the university had to revise its policies to eliminate its generalized definitions of campus harassment and bullying and to incorporate specific definitions from Michigan’s state laws.2 Conservative Attorney General Sessions’ broadside attack on such modest racial and gender diversity efforts in higher education suggests that he was guided by both a deep white racial framing and a male sexist framing of society. His weak understandings of the scale, severity, and impact of racial and gender discrimination indicate that today a more powerful theoretical framework is needed, inside and beyond policymaking circles, that exposes and deconstructs the truly deep-rooted and systemic forms of discrimination in U.S. society that are constantly replicated within

introduction

3

higher education across the country. Such a critical theoretical framework certainly needs to address the normalization of extreme racist hostility and framing in this country. In this book we seek to offer more accurate constructs that account for and better interpret the contemporary patterns of exclusionary and other discriminatory actions that substantially alter the life and career trajectories of members of nondominant groups inside and outside of higher education. We focus primarily on the impact of centuries-old asymmetrical power structures on men and women of color and discuss how these structures replicate and normalize pre-existing socio-racial hierarchies and other inequalities with this country’s educational institutions. We also provide illustrative examples of the impact of the dominant male sexist frame on white women as well, particularly in terms of the challenges faced by women faculty in higher education. Their voices provide insight into the persistence of patterns of exclusion and marginalization within academe and the stress deriving from both individual and institutional process-based forms of discrimination. While our central focus is on racial and gender-based inequality, certain concepts and analyses that we present do apply to other nondominant groups, including LGBTQ Americans. On occasion, we will note these important parallels, as well as some differences. Throughout the book we offer important personal narratives from a diverse array of college and university faculty, administrators, staff, and students in order to provide concrete evidence of forms of differential treatment that include lack of support, failure to empower and provide resources, recurrent bullying and other harassment, much avoidance, and other discriminatory practices and behaviors. As a result, we focus on the social, career-related, material, and economic impacts of discrimination as well as the underlying causes. Patterns of exclusionary and other discriminatory acts also often require further analysis as to whether and how they are conscious, half-conscious, or unconscious and as to how underlying dominant white-racist and sexist/heterosexist frames are disguised within established organizational hierarchies, norms, and processes. In addition, central to our analysis is the commonplace lack of racial and gender diversity in presidential and other top leadership positions in higher education,

4

introduction

which major deficiency serves to reinforce dominant norms that generate or reinforce differential treatment for faculty, staff, and students who are members of nondominant groups. We have noted how pressures, whether from concerned student groups or because of egregious racist demonstrations, have jolted some institutions of higher education into action. However, racial change in much of historically white higher education is often slow, elusive, and characterized by piecemeal remedial responses to systemic issues of subtle, covert, and overt racial discrimination. Madeleine, an African American faculty director of diversity at an eastern liberal arts college, explains this reality: I think we’re like most predominantly white institutions in that we don’t fully get it, we don’t engage in a way that’s always productive. I feel like it’s a piecemeal patchwork of trying to solve and find easy answers to things that are really not solving the long-term issues. I think that at any institution it is more about image more than substance, you can count off what we are doing, but are we being effective?3 Racist acts and incidents on most college campuses tend to be viewed by top officials as isolated incidents, as individualistic exceptions to the rule. Unsurprisingly, thus, white silence and indifference to overtly racialized language and racist actions that marginalize and target people of color—often solidified by the passivity of white bystanders—are too often the hallmark of the frequently toxic racist environments at our colleges and universities.4 A similarly difficult reality is true for sexist framing and actions. Consider the example of Julie, a white female administrator in a large research university who attempted to discuss with a male supervisor her potential for advancement there once she had completed her doctoral degree, as well as the current lack of equitable pay compared to her male counterparts. Each year she was advised that in order to receive a pay raise she needed to meet certain administrative goals. After she had completed the degree and met the goals, she was told repeatedly to wait yet another year and also given new goals. In a meeting with the white

introduction

5

male dean to discuss potential advancement, he bluntly advised her that he would not even read her proposal, stating “I will tell you this right now; you have no future in this school . . . . You have no future career here.” When Julie asked for clarification, he described another woman who had supposedly gotten “too big for her britches.” Julie viewed this as a message that women only had a finite and subordinate place there and that she was trying to overstep that limited reality. As Julie explains, the dean’s perspective was that you’re fine as long as you know your place, and as long as you can do what I need you to do. But there is never a sense of recognition, there is never a sense of opportunity, promotion, valuing. As a matter of fact . . . he [the dean] teased me a little bit . . . he did tell me that my degree . . . was basically useless in that school, and that I needed to be in . . . another field . . . .5 As shown by the examples in this and succeeding chapters, the reader can see that our goal is to identify a more powerful systemic framework and conceptual vocabulary that addresses the continuing impact of these persisting major hierarchies of social inequality on many individuals in our higher education environments. And then we propose to demonstrate how this understanding can be used for meaningful change. In summary, in this book we lay the groundwork for rethinking the current too-tame language of racial microaggressions, implicit/ unconscious bias, colorblind ideology, and (self-chosen) racial identities. It seeks to offers a more reality-based terminology. Like some other scholars,6 we too have come to the conclusion that the prefix micro-, when attached to realities like recurring racist and sexist aggressions, can help to maintain existing power dynamics by invalidating the major (i.e., macro) hurt and long-lasting pain caused by these acts and enabling perpetrators to believe their actions are not serious. We suggest instead that terms like “microaggressions” be abandoned for the overt and relatively conscious or intentional forms of racism and sexism. We underscore the point that “micro” literally means small or minor, and most actions labelled “microaggressions” are too often viewed, especially by white outsiders, as of lesser or little

6

introduction

consequence to those thus targeted. However, such events frequently have major damaging and lasting impacts. Our focus is both conceptual and quite practical—i.e., to provide concrete approaches, concepts, and tools that will enable leaders in higher education to identify, address, and counteract persistent structural and behavioral barriers to inclusion. At the same time, we share personal accounts of strategies of coping and resistance that will help racialized and other nondominant individuals develop a better repertoire of responses and actions in situations of marginalization and other discrimination that involve racial, gender, and similar power differentials. Such strategies may provide a measure of psychological support and safety to those who experience everyday forms of exclusion. Further, the book shares structural recommendations that will promote sustained change within the historically white higher education environment and create more inclusive environments for all members of campus communities. Research and Policy Questions We Attempt to Answer

Although discriminatory behaviors and actions impact all nondominant individuals on college and university campuses, this book specifically focuses on expansion of the taxonomy of racial and gender discrimination and seeks to reframe understandings of these classifications through some answers to the following research questions: 1. What is the impact of the normalization of discriminatory speech and actions on college campuses since the Donald Trump era? 2. In what ways is the current taxonomy of discrimination, such as “microaggressions” and “implicit bias,” seriously lacking? Are there better terms and concepts? 3. Are acts of discrimination conscious or unconscious, or what? 4. What theoretical framework will better address the aggregation of racial and gendered behaviors and attitudes as seen in asymmetrical power relations within higher education? 5. What are the long-term effects of repeated and varying discriminatory acts upon targeted individuals in higher education? From whose perspective should the impact be evaluated?

introduction

7

6. How do these acts of racial and gendered framing and discrimination affect the health outcomes of those targeted? 7. What coping and resistance strategies are, or might be, exercised by the targets of discriminatory patterns in higher education? 8. What strategies will assist administrators and others committed to real change at higher education institutions in overcoming discrimination that lead to differential educational and health outcomes for nondominant individuals, and that create more inclusive and supportive learning and working environments? Organization of the Book

With the framework of this first introductory chapter in mind, we begin by describing the landscape for change on college campuses, one driven by a polarized political context coupled with circumscribed administrative diversity efforts. Against this landscape, we highlight major trends including rapid demographic change in the U.S. population and the “coming white minority,” residential resegregation, reduced state spending on public education, de facto segregation in student access to higher education, increased corporatization, and rejection of major reparative programs such as affirmative action. We identify the need for a broad theoretical framework to address both current and past histories of exclusion in higher education and introduce the conceptual approaches of systemic racism and systemic sexism that underpin many organizational realities. The second chapter contextualizes academic discrimination patterns and begins our critique of widely used concepts like microaggressions and implicit bias in assessing higher education issues. These concepts are problematical because they are usually used to describe what are in fact very consequential discriminatory events (that is, macro-aggressions) and racial inequalities (that is, macro-inequities). The chapter then counteracts the “micro” (minor or small) vocabulary with examples of acts of recurring exclusion of nondominant faculty, staff, and students on college campuses that are in fact “macro” (major or overt) in character and which demonstrably have long-term effects on educational outcomes, academic and administrative careers, personal health, family relations,

8

introduction

and life choices. Our first-person narratives shed light on the cumulative and long-term socioeconomic and psychosocial effects of differential exposure and vulnerability to discriminatory stresses for members of nondominant groups in higher education. This chapter highlights the lack of official legal remedies for much discrimination in light of the provisions of the major civil rights laws and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) regulations that are today interpreted by mostly white legislators and judges to require documentation of specific blatant and overt expressions of racial or gender bias in contending the existence of discrimination. Here we share research on the outcomes of federal discrimination lawsuits filed by faculty and administrators as well as efforts to introduce “implicit bias” arguments in courtrooms. Throughout the chapters, as noted previously, our main focus in this book is on the reality and conceptualization of racial oppression that is faced by Americans of color within our institutions of higher education. However, the concepts and analyses we offer in this regard often have important parallels in the treatment of other nondominant groups, and we will use some examples of them in our discussions of diversity problems and challenges in U.S. higher education today. The third chapter focuses on an in-depth critique of contemporary analytical ideas such as implicit and unconscious bias and the ways in which the prevalent emphasis on them can be problematic by overlooking and minimizing explicit racial framing, blatant discrimination, and macro-inequalities. Focusing on a central issue that has obtained scant attention, the chapter addresses how the emphasis on implicit and unconscious bias can overshadow an understanding of asymmetrical power relations and the several ways in which exclusionary acts often unfold in higher education settings. The chapter provides specific examples of how implicit bias has gained wide currency in higher education such as in faculty search committee briefings and diversity education programs. Even some researchers working in the area of implicit bias consider this approach to diversity education to be a relatively ineffective intervention. Without a broader understanding of how systemic racial and gender inequality is regularly reproduced within

introduction

9

higher education’s organizational processes, the exaggerated emphasis on implicit bias can short-circuit a deeper understanding of the reality and impact of an array of exclusionary and other discriminatory relations on institutional decision-making. In the fourth chapter, we further describe specific ways in which discriminatory decision-making occurs and emphasize the framework of systemic racism and systemic sexism as providing a major basis for understanding the ways in which discriminatory actions routinely unfold and are normalized within higher education. We unpack recurring themes in the differential treatment of members of nondominant groups, including lack of support and failure to allocate resources, isolation and glass ceilings, performance and promotion discrimination, as well as behavioral oppression through bullying and harassment. The chapter proposes an alternative taxonomy to “micro-aggressions” and “micro-inequalities” to address the significant educational impacts of repeated exclusionary and other discriminatory behaviors and actions that arise within the context of commonplace asymmetrical power relationships in higher education. The fifth chapter delves into thorny issues around the concept of racial “identities” and develops more fully the concept of imposed racial identity. It explores the ways that socially imposed identities can stereotype, denigrate, and exclude individuals from nondominant groups in higher education settings. Using examples from a number of different identity groups, the chapter explores the identity crisis faced by individuals from these backgrounds that is affected by racialized physical determinations. The chapter shares first-person narratives that illustrate how marginalization takes shape based on physical appearance and external markers that often denote a “foreign” identity. The sixth chapter provides an overview of important individual and small-group costs, coping, and resistance strategies based upon research findings and narratives of those who have faced persistent racial and/ or gender-based macroaggressions in college and university environments. It focuses on specific strategies and tactical approaches that can be leveraged by nondominant individuals and small-groups within the context of asymmetrical and racial and gender-based power relations,

10

introduction

approaches that can help offset and counterbalance behavior-based and organizational forms of oppression. In the final chapter, we provide a synopsis of the overall findings of the book and share specific strategies and recommended solutions both from the perspective of higher education as a whole as well as in terms of campus-based approaches. We identify the need for a more honest and critical framework for understanding systemic oppression that addresses the foundation of U.S. macroinequalities and the dynamic processes that perpetuate and reify these inequities. Specifically, we identify successful leadership practices in higher education that enhance accountability for an institution’s process-based diversity outcomes, create a campus environment characterized by empowerment, solidify safeguards against process-based inequalities, increase awareness of behavioral and organizational forms of oppression, and build a participatory culture of real campus inclusion. Acknowledgements Both authors wish to thank Jennifer Reyes, Ruth Thompson-Miller, and Carly Jennings for their important comments on earlier drafts of our manuscript. We are also indebted to Melissa Ochoa, Joe Feagin’s research assistant, for library and other research assistance. We also gratefully acknowledge the long-term support from our Senior Editor at Routledge, Dean Birkenkamp, for our research generally and especially for this book project. Edna Chun wishes to acknowledge the love and support of Alexander David Chun (“Alex”) whose unflinching and courageous vision continues to guide her on her own path. Alex’s insistence upon research integrity and rigorous scientific analysis coupled with his passionate critique of social inequity is a model for our journeys. As his many friends attest, Alex taught us to believe in ourselves. His vivacious spirit and sense of humor infuse us with enthusiasm and alert us to the many ironies and interesting turns that life presents. We are reminded of his compassion, generosity, and genuine interest in others as qualities we all seek to embody in our daily lives. We miss him immeasurably.

introduction

Notes

11

1 Chun, E., and Evans, A. (2013). Diverse administrators in peril: The new indentured class in higher education, Boulder, CO: Paradigm, p. 38. 2 Jaschik, S. (2018, 12 June). Bullying and free speech. Inside Higher Ed. Retrieved June 14, 2018, from www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/06/12/justice-department-opposesuniversity-michigan-bullying-policy 3 Chun, E., and Evans, A, (2018). Leading a diversity culture shift: Comprehensive organizational learning strategies. New York, NY: Routledge, p. 169. 4 See Picca, L. H., and Feagin, J. R. (2007). Two-faced racism: Whites in the backstage and frontstage. New York, NY: Routledge, for a description of the bystander phenomenon. 5 Chun and Evans (2013) Diverse administrators in peril, p. 90. 6 Minikel-Lacocque, J. (2013). Racism, college and the power of words: Racial microaggressions reconsidered. American Educational Research Journal, 50(3), 432–465.

1 CAMPUS TURMOIL THE ≈NEW NORMAL∆ OF RACIST SPEECH AND ACTIONS . . . the spark in Charlottesville—taking down a statue of Robert E. Lee—doesn’t have to do with civil war. People are not debating the Civil War. They’re debating American society and race today.1 On August 12, 2017 in Charlottesville, Virginia, angry crowds of neoNazis and other white nationalists wielded Tiki torches, and chanted the Nazi slogan, “Blood and Soil,” as well as “White Lives Matter,” and “You will not replace us” as they marched on and near the University of Virginia campus. The group was part of a “Unite the Right Rally” led by numerous prominent white nationalists. The nationalist groups’ leaders and members, mostly white men, protested the city of Charlottesville’s plan to remove a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee. Their “Blood and Soil” chant invoked the old German Nazi philosophy of “Blut und Boden” that emphasized the blood lines of racial identity and national pride arising from the connection with the land that was supposedly not true for the merchants and workers in the German Jewish population.2 Just as deeply disturbing as this overt racial hostility in Charlottesville were the reactions of President Donald Trump and his then Chief of Staff, former general John Kelly. Both created a moral equivalency between the white neo-Nazis and other white nationalists and their 12

campus turmoil

13

anti-racist counter-protesters. Trump insisted that there were “very fine people” in the white nationalist group, stating, “You had a group on one side that was bad. You had a group on the other side that was also very violent.” He further claimed that a (largely fictional) “altleft” was also responsible and “very, very violent” and accused them of “charging at the alt-right” and operating without a permit.3 John Kelly, then widely expected to be a moderating force in the Trump White House, instead deepened the controversy by arguing that “the lack of an ability to compromise led to the Civil War” and by dubbing the slaveholding Confederate general Robert E. Lee “an honorable man who gave up his country to fight for his state.”4 The reaction to Kelly’s comments was swift in terms of his suggesting that black slavery was a matter for national compromise. Kelly’s views are clearly ahistorical white fictions. In response to the Charlottesville incident, Marcia Chatelain, a professor of history at Georgetown University, recalled how she grew up as the lone black girl in her integrated classes from first to eighth grades and as one of the few young black women in an integrated high school. In both settings racially discriminatory behavior by whites was then attributed to mere ignorance. Even when she was called by the viciously racist term “Aunt Jemima,” whites in charge of her educational institutions assumed that it was sheer white student ignorance. Yet in response to the “Unite the Right Rally” at the University of Virginia, Chatelain acutely observes, “over the years, I’ve found that the learned racist can be the most dangerous one.”5 She refers to the reality of numerous white nationalists being college graduates, indeed some in their leadership with graduate degrees from prominent universities. In Chatelain’s view, when senior university officials respond in carefully written statements to incidents such as in Charlottesville, their silence about white nationalism can embolden white student nationalists elsewhere. She faults (mostly white) faculty, advisers, and mentors who are often complicit in white supremacist events when they discount African American and other student voices and encourage “both sides” arguments that create false moral equivalency. In her words, “I hope we can reflect on how some of our practices—subtle

14

campus turmoil

and overt—may be perceived by students who are vulnerable to racist and destructive ideologies.”6 The muted, cautious statements of the president of the University of Virginia (UVA), the prominent social scientist Teresa Sullivan, reflected the reluctance of college administrators to immediately call out sensitive, racial issues. At UVA, despite the campus encroachment of hundreds of neo-Nazis and other white nationalists bearing white supremacist banners and symbolic Tiki torches, in her initial responses given by the morning of August 13, 2017, Sullivan said she was “disturbed” about “the hateful behavior displayed by torch-bearing protesters.” The words “white supremacist” and “racism” were notably missing from this official statement. Later that day, as criticism of her inadequate response mounted, President Sullivan did add references to the racist, anti-immigrant, homophobic, and misogynistic chants of the white nationalists, yet for some reason she still omitted mention of their aggressively anti-Semitic chants.7 Just a few months later, Sullivan announced her retirement from the university after seven years of otherwise successful service. The University of Virginia administration subsequently indicated it would invest $20 million in matching funds to establish endowed faculty chairs in academic areas that will help respond to such racist incidents, including the areas of racial justice, emergency medicine, and early childhood education. They also signaled that several million dollars would be provided for bridging projects that bring together individuals from different racial groups and backgrounds and $5 million in scholarships for first-generation students and those in need of financial aid.8 UVA’s reactive investment only after pressures from protesting students and explicit racialized incidents on campuses is typical. For example, a similar reaction can be seen in Brown University’s commitment of $100 million to diversity issues in November 2015, just three days after the presentation of a list of unmet demands by Concerned Graduate Students of Color—an investment that was amplified months later to $165 million. Or consider Yale University’s belated investment of $50 million for faculty diversity and development in the midst of growing campus racial tensions in fall 2015.9

campus turmoil

15

We also need to set these events at elite universities in their larger higher education context, past and present. Racial issues have always been central on U.S. college campuses, in one form or another. Thus, racial violence, hate speech, and racist hate crimes have long been found on our college campuses, and they have increased in recent years. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, some 1094 incidents of hate or bias occurred just in the first month after the 2016 election of Donald Trump. Altogether, some 1863 incidents—including 330 on college campuses—occurred between November 9, 2016 and March 31, 2017.10 By May 2017 more than 140 instances of racist posters and fliers had been reported on campuses in 33 states.11 A growing epidemic of incidents involving whites’ racist framing spread across a broad swath of institutions of higher education. The latter included, to mention just a few, American University, Boston College, Cornell University, Cabrini University, Drake University, Hebrew Union College, Texas A&M University, Spring Arbor University, Old Dominion University, Oklahoma State University, Purdue University, St. Cloud State University, St. Olaf’s College, Southern Illinois University, Stockton University, the University of Florida, the University of Louisville, the University of Michigan, the University of Minnesota, the University of Texas (Austin), and Westfield State University.12 In a single week in fall 2017, a rash of racist incidents broke out on college campuses—at Drake University, Duke University, Purdue University, Southern Illinois University, the University of Michigan, the University of Louisville, among others.13 Nooses have frequently been discovered at a number of college campuses, including American University, Amherst College, Duke University, Kansas State University, the University of Denver, and the University of Maryland. In May 2017 on the same day that a black woman became the first African American student body president, bananas were found hanging from nooses at American University in Washington, DC. The bananas were carved with “AKA FREE” referencing Alpha Kappa Alpha, the predominantly African American sorority to which the new student body president belonged, and also with

16

campus turmoil

“HARAMBE BAIT” referring to the gorilla killed at the Cincinnati Zoo after a child fell into the gorilla’s enclosure.14 Student protests and demands for change in the campus climate immediately ensued, in this case in a city where African Americans are a very large percentage of the population. Contemporary white college students also engage frequently in racist partying, often targeting black, Latino/a, or Asian Americans. For example, white law students at the University of Connecticut had a Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday “Bullets and Bubbly” party at which they wore baggy clothes and had fake gold teeth and guns. Clemson students held a “ghetto-fabulous” party where white students there dressed up “in blackface, drank 40s, wore fake teeth grills, and flashed gang signs.” And white students at Santa Clara University had a “Latino-themed party” where “women feigned pregnancy, the young men played at being cholo and everyone reveled in the symbols and spectacle they associate with Latinos.”15 Some members of white Greek and other campus organizations have also engaged in racialized violence. In one incident at Cornell University, a black student was assaulted and punched in the face by white men, some of whom were thought to be connected with a white fraternity there. The black student was called racial slurs when he tried to intervene in an altercation near his driveway. A white student was later charged with attempted assault as a hate crime.16 In response to the assault, hundreds of students from Black Students United were joined by other students in a march to the Cornell Student Union. The student occupation was reminiscent of protests and occupation there decades earlier in 1969. The students presented a list of demands to the college president, which included increasing the enrollment of black students, establishing an antiracism institute on campus, and providing mandatory coursework on antiracism for all students and substantial diversity training for employees.17 Other incidents on campus included a report from a resident of the Latino Living Center who reported hearing white chants of “Build a Wall.” The university president responded by creating a taskforce on bigotry and intolerance, directing the development of diversity training by Greek fraternity councils, and not reinstating the offending white fraternity.18

campus turmoil

The “Coming White Minority”: Backdrop of Campus Change

17

Racial turmoil on college and university campuses has not occurred in a social vacuum. It is often directly or indirectly connected to underlying demographic changes that have been taking place for decades on and off our campuses, and to negative reactions of many whites to those changes. These changes are sometimes labelled “the browning of America” or the “coming white minority.” Whether whites like it or not, significantly increasing racial diversity will be this country’s reality for the foreseeable future. According to recent (2018) survey data, the post-millennial generation (Generation Z), young people now 6 to 21 years of age, is by far the most racially diverse generation. About half are white, with the other half being African, Latino/a, Asian-Pacific Islander, Native, and multiracial Americans. The implications for higher education are certainly clear, especially since a larger percentage of the older youth in Generation Z is already going to college than for the previous millennial generation.19 Unfortunately, most white Americans, and many others, have little accurate knowledge or understanding of this extraordinarily important societal change and its likely consequences, now and in the future. These uninformed Americans include, as suggested above, college and university faculty, administrators, regents and trustees, and students, principally those at historically white institutions. Even those who are somewhat informed about the “browning of America” trends, in our view, frequently underestimate the current and future impact of these trends on our educational institutions, including higher education, with too many pushing a frank discussion and substantial dealing with relevant educational issues into the distant future. Nonetheless, these demographic changes are already happening, often on a dramatic scale, in many areas of our educational system. According to recent U.S. Census Bureau projections, the U.S. is a rapidly changing country in terms of its population makeup. It is not only aging as the white birthrate and population percentage drops, but also seeing a very significant growth in the nonwhite population. Most of the country’s 3100 counties and hundreds of big cities have, over the last few decades, become less white, many much less

18

campus turmoil

so. This trend has expanded in the last decade or two to most areas of the country, and almost certainly will be continuing over coming decades. In 2011, for the first time in U.S. history, more babies of color than white babies were born, and by 2018 there were more whites 65 and older than white children under 18. A Census Bureau report notes that in 2020 a little more than half of U.S. children will be nonwhite—50.2 percent of an estimated 74 million children 17 years old and younger. Thus, the racial composition of younger birth cohorts will increase faster than that of older cohorts. By 2060 only a third of U.S. children under 18 are projected to be white, compared to about half of older adults.20 Especially important for the education-related arguments in this book is who these children are now and who they will likely be in the future. Currently, the white percentage among those Americans under 18 is about half, and this is estimated to continue to decline in the future. The estimated 2020 percentage for Latino/as among children under 18 is about 26 percent; and for black children, about 14 percent. Our rough 2020 estimate for Asian American children is about 6 percent; and for mixed-race children, nearly 5 percent.21 Indeed, already by 2014, for the first time in U.S. history, the white percentage of children in public elementary and secondary schools was slightly less than half, a significant decrease over previous decades. Latino/a children made up about half of the children of color there. By the year 2026, according to Census Bureau estimates, white students are expected to drop further, to about 45 percent. Latino/a and Asian/Pacific islander students are projected then to be about 35 percent of total public school enrollment, with African American students at 15 percent and American Indian/ Alaska Native children at one percent. Multiracial children will make up the rest. Additionally, some states have already seen more dramatic changes in public school enrollments—and will soon see yet more major changes over the next decade or so.22 We should note too that even many contemporary analysts who recognize the significance of these demographic changes neglect certain foundational and institutional realities that shape how demographic trends develop now and how they will likely play out in U.S. society’s

campus turmoil

19

future decades. For example, in an otherwise perceptive book, Diversity Explosion, the demographer William Frey offers a somewhat uncritical view of the larger racial context of these population trends. He speaks vaguely of whites now being “considered the nation’s mainstream . . . who fare better on economic measures than most minorities” and whites as becoming a “declining presence as their slow growth turns to population loss and accelerated aging.”23 While this is accurate as far as it goes, such an analysis also needs to recognize and factor in the foundational and systemic reality of this country’s racist patterns, and to assess how they relate to the way that these demographic trends play out in the present and future. That is, whites today are more than just “considered” as mainstream; they, especially the white elite, are mostly in control of the country’s still-racist institutions and of the possibilities for meaningful racial change. Too seldom do population analysts deal insightfully with the persisting reality of the major economic, legal, political, and educational institutions in all U.S. states still being largely white-shaped and white-controlled, no matter what the changing population mix is. This substantial white control—and white resistance to significant changes in it—has profound implications for continuing societal sluggishness, or backtracking, on meaningful societal desegregation along racial lines, including in secondary education and higher education. Demographic Change: Contexts and Consequences

Unfortunately, many whites have responded to their current or coming white minority status with fearful framing and resistance strategies that enhance and perpetuate systemic racism. We have noted the growth in white supremacist and nationalist protests and other events on and around our campuses. But these obvious expressions of white anger at demographic changes and their institutional impacts are just one small part of the relevant white reactions to these changes. Let us briefly consider a few other examples of how these and other racial diversity issues are very central to the present and future of U.S. society.

20

campus turmoil

Politicizing Racial Change: Contemporary Realities

One major consequence of the so-called “browning of America” is continuing political debate, reconfiguration, and turmoil. We can note briefly some of this political reality in recent years, as it too affects higher education. Clearly, as the aforementioned college campus turmoil suggests, many whites have come to fear such societal change. National opinion surveys signal this; one survey found that nearly half of white respondents were fearful and believed that whites “are currently under attack in this country.”24 Other surveys indicate significant white concerns over losing their dominant power and privilege. Contemporary political divisions reflect these concerns. This is vividly seen in the great demographic differences in current Republican and Democratic political parties. This division has accelerated since the 1960s civil rights movements, in large part because whites have moved into the Republican Party as it became the party of resistance to substantial racial integration in society. Since the time of the famous (white) “southern strategy” of the Barry Goldwater and Richard Nixon political campaigns of the 1960s and early 1970s, major Republican leaders have viewed their party as one that will be, as one leader put it, “primarily white and that is fiscally and morally conservative,” with only modest or superficial attempts “at an image of racial tolerance and moderation.” 25 Indeed, since the 1960s many working-class and middle-class whites have become regular Republican voters. By the time of the 2016 election polling data showed that 89 percent of Republicans identified as white, far higher than for Democrats.26 In the face of the whitening of the Republican Party, the Democratic Party has significantly increased the percentage of its voters, leaders, and congressional members who are people of color, especially black, Latino/a, and Asian Americans. An aggressive white-voter strategy has been essential in the election efforts of Republican presidents from Nixon to Donald Trump. For example, in the 2016 election the Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton won large majorities of all major groups of voters of color, and thus the majority of the popular vote, even as a majority of white male and female voters selected the electoral college winner Donald J. Trump.27 Much social science and other evidence indicates that Trump’s victory

campus turmoil

21

was significantly affected by the white majority’s fear of the increasingly diverse and multiracial character of the United States. For example, one national poll found that more than three quarters of Trump’s (overwhelmingly white) supporters publicly said they were concerned about the country’s growing racial diversity.28 Disturbingly, in another recent survey a significant majority of whites even indicated they would support a new political party strongly committed to “stopping mass immigration, providing American jobs to American workers, preserving America’s Christian heritage, and stopping the threat of Islam.”29 Unfortunately, the future of U.S. political parties may involve more of this process of white racial fear, nativism, and nationalism. However, recent U.S. elections also suggest that, as Americans of color become more powerful politically, they may well counter this white political trend by helping to create strong interracial coalitions that accent more fairness, social justice, and democracy for the United States. White racial anger over and fears of the aforementioned population changes have been politically manipulated, including in major speeches and commentaries by an array of white Republican and other conservative commentators and politicians. For example, in his articles and books, Patrick Buchanan, a leading conservative commentator, a speaker on college campuses, and one-time candidate for the Republican Party’s presidential nomination, has frequently argued that, in the face of these demographic and related social changes, “our Judeo-Christian values are going to be preserved and our Western heritage is going to be handed down to future generations and not dumped on some landfill called multiculturalism.”30 Moreover, following the 2016 primary and main election campaigns, President Donald Trump’s recurring rants, his racially provocative and stereotyped comments, and his periodic equivocation regarding overt white supremacy and Klan-type groups have energized his mostly white political base and normalized racist, nativistic, anti-Semitic, and anti-Muslim perspectives—thereby making it more socially acceptable for whites to bring such comments and actions once largely reserved for all-white backstage settings to mixed-race frontstage settings on and off our college campuses. The curtain hiding or disguising many

22

campus turmoil

acts of racist commentary and covert discrimination has been lifted. Implicit and explicit permission by Trump and other top white officials to express animosity towards racialized and other nondominant groups has led to increased numbers of speeches by an array of white supremacists and nationalists on colleges and university campuses. It has also encouraged overt acts of racial hostility on and around college campuses, including organized protests by groups of white supremacists there and at other sites. The coded language of “dog whistles,” a term used prior to the Trump era by scholars and mainstream commentators, has been demonstrated to be an often inappropriate term now, as we have observed the overtness of racist, religious, and homophobic hostility that was previously kept mostly in background discussions among dominant group members. The increasingly overt white nationalism and nativism in the U.S., including on our college campuses, has exposed what sociologists Leslie Houts Picca and Joe Feagin call “two-faced racism.” They contrast the backstage settings where whites openly engage in white-racist conversations and actions with the mixed-race frontstage settings where greater white circumspection has until recently been more typical. They had 626 white students from numerous colleges and universities keep diaries of racial events seen in their everyday lives. In relatively brief (6–12 week) diaries these students provided more than 7500 accounts of overtly racist events involving whites of various ages, many of them in and around their college campuses. Some were performed in diverse frontstage settings, but in such mixed-race settings whites frequently restrained themselves or presented themselves as unprejudiced. However, in backstage settings of all-white audiences of friends or relatives, they often more freely made blatantly racist comments, did racist actions, and expressed racist emotions. Such behavior was regularly “tolerated, if not encouraged—and sometimes even expected.” Racist joking and other comments often seemed a bonding ritual linking the whites there together.31 Moreover, in a study of mostly white Trump and Clinton supporters before and after the 2016 election, psychologists Chris Crandall and Mark White documented the increased level of acceptance for

campus turmoil

23

discriminatory hate speech toward the groups that candidate Donald Trump had targeted. One large group was asked how acceptable it was to say negative things about individuals in groups targeted by Trump (Muslims, immigrants, Mexicans, individuals with disabilities). Crandall and White found that the perceived societal norms on this matter had shifted from before the election in a negative direction and that Trump’s array of racialized and other negative assertions about various groups now allowed more covert prejudices and stereotypes to surface.32 In addition, the findings of a 2016 survey of 600 white adults offer a further glimpse into the normalization of white identity issues in the U.S. The participants rated, on a scale of 0 to 100 (the warmest), how warm they felt about the Ku Klux Klan and President Donald Trump. Somewhat surprisingly, 11 percent rated the Klan at 50 degrees or higher and nearly one quarter rated the Klan between 10 and 50. In the survey 40 percent also described being white as extremely or very important to their own identity, and just over half insisted that whites have a lot to be proud of as whites. Strong whiteidentifiers were more likely than others to believe that the population increase of certain nonwhite groups is having a negative impact on the country’s dominant, historically white-shaped culture and institutions. The strong white-identifiers also tended to believe that the country owes white people more opportunities than they currently have. These results are consonant with Trump’s lament about the “loss” of U.S. (white) culture at numerous political rallies.33 Unsurprisingly, these public and political expressions of white racial framing, nativism, and homophobia have had significant effects. Feelings of fear and lack of safety among people of color, immigrants, lesbian/ gay/bisexual/transgendered/queer (LGBTQ) individuals, and members of Muslim and Jewish groups reportedly increased in the first years of the Trump administration.34 In addition, a poll of 2037 millennials found that more than three quarters were concerned about the current status of U.S. racial relations. Most significantly, more than two thirds of the black millennials and nearly half of the Hispanic millennials reported that their racial group was now under racial attack from whites.35

24

campus turmoil

Discriminatory incident after discriminatory incident has reinforced feelings of fear, alienation, and lack of safety among nondominant individuals. This negative impact includes gender-related discrimination. A case in point on gender is Donald Trump’s sudden, unscripted announcement that transgendered people would not be allowed in the U.S. military due to what he alleged were military disruption issues and medical costs.36 Trump’s official memo in August 2017 indefinitely extended a ban against transgender individuals entering the military and required the military to discharge transgender members by spring 2018. The memo was resisted by military officials, who cited the “inherent inequality” of its provisions and lack of formal processes accompanying the development of this major policy.37 Nonetheless, early in 2019 the U.S. Supreme Court allowed his transgender military ban to go into effect, even as litigation at lower court levels continued. In addition, aggressive attacks by President Trump on immigrants of color and other nondominant groups continued to stoke the winds of racial division, and they were unchecked by a largely silent, Republicancontrolled congress. This political and epistemic crisis has been provoked by the silo-ization of conservative whites and reinforced by social media and selective reactionary news outlets such as Fox News and conservative radio talk-show hosts. And this crisis normalized much racist, anti-Semitic, anti-Muslim, and anti-immigrant speech, writing, and organized protests with a call for a return to what is deemed by many white conservatives to be (white) “American culture.” Take just three other important incidents as further examples of the normalization of racist speech and behavior. At a major White House meeting, Trump disparaged immigrants from Haiti and Africa, asking why the United States needed to accept immigrants from these “shithole countries” rather than from predominantly white countries “like Norway.”38 Fomenting a controversy with the National Football League over players “taking a knee” at the playing of the national anthem to protest racialized police brutality and other racial discrimination, Trump railed against the predominantly African American team members who protested, “Wouldn’t you love to see one of these NFL owners when somebody disrespects our flag, to say, ‘Get that son of a bitch off the field

campus turmoil

25

right now. Out. He’s fired.’” The overwhelmingly white NFL owners, in response to Trump’s invective, “knelt” to Trump’s demonization of the African American athletes, voting to fine football teams when players do not stand for the national anthem.39 Or consider the similar inflammatory remarks of Steve King, an important Republican congressman from Iowa elected nine times, who asked in a New York Times interview, “White nationalist, white supremacist, Western civilization—how did that language become offensive?” Referring to the number of women and minorities in the new (2019) Congress he added, “You could look over there and think the Democratic Party is no country for white men.” King, a former bulldozer operator who comes from a conservative district in western Iowa, has made racially nationalist and other provocative racist remarks for more than 15 years that were largely ignored by the Republican Party.40 For example, in 2006, King proposed a border wall ten years before Donald Trump made it a mantra in his campaign rallies. Demonstrating a model of a 12-foot border wall with electrified wire on top while speaking on the House floor, King stated “We could also further electrify this wire . . . . We do that with livestock all the time.”41 King became further emboldened during the Trump administration and its open white identity politics. However, belatedly and following his 2018 win in Iowa by only a 3 percent margin and the Democratic takeover of the House of Representatives, he was rebuked by some Republican members of Congress and removed by the new House minority leader from important committee assignments. “Whitopias”: Persisting Residential Segregation

Consider another major example of the effects of these ongoing demographic changes. A major countering strategy involving many whites is in the array of efforts they are making to maintain or extend residential segregation along racial lines. The U.S. has always been a racially segregated society, and it remains so today, especially in terms of the residential separation of most whites from most blacks and Latino/as. Even with modest overall declines in this residential segregation in the last two decades, significant racial segregation can still be seen within

26

campus turmoil

most cities, large and small. In the decade prior to the 2010 census, 42 of the 100 biggest metropolitan areas saw a white population decline, while most had significant increases in residents of color. In recent years many whites have moved from large cities with increasing populations of color to selected suburban, exurban, and rural areas where predominantly white populations are relatively stable or growing. Numerous counties, often in Rocky Mountain and Midwestern states, have had substantial growth from internal U.S. migration but little growth in the external immigrant population, and thus have become whiter and older in their populations. These have been termed “whitopias” by one savvy analyst.42 Residential racial segregation has serious and continuing consequences for most of those involved. Highly associated with this continuing residential segregation is very substantial elementary and secondary school segregation along racial lines. Most public school systems still remain racially segregated, especially in regard to white children being segregated from black and Latino/a children. This racialization is also generally true for most private schools. In turn, such primary and secondary segregation helps to ensure there is major racial channeling and segregation within our historically white public colleges and universities (see below). Moreover, social science research shows that whites who live racially segregated lives are often fearful of people of color with whom they have few sustained contacts. As a result, these whites do not view Americans of color with accuracy or sensitivity. As one education scholar, Gary Orfield, has put it, for decades whites in white residential enclaves often have had “no skills in relating to or communicating with minorities.”43 We have already noted one result of this in the resurgence of white supremacist protests in and around our college campuses. One sad irony of white fears of racial diversification and residential integration is that whites are often physically safer in more diverse areas. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control tabulated death-rate data that revealed whites were “safer in racially diverse areas—not only from violent deaths in general but specifically from guns, drugs, and suicides. . . . Fear-based White flight from ‘dangerous’ cities to the ‘safety’ of suburbs and small towns . . . actually increased the odds that Whites who fled would die violently.”44

campus turmoil

“Colorblindness” and Racial Segregation

27

In spite of this clear evidence of persisting political and residential racism, many mainstream media analysts and other social commentators still portray contemporary U.S. institutions and a majority of whites as being, for the most part, “colorblind” or the society as well the way to “colorblindness.” So, let us be more specific for a moment about what the words “colorblind” and “colorblindness” have actually meant, now over a substantial period of time. Significantly, powerful whites in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries employed the term and concept of “colorblind” in a system-justifying way, including as an important strand in U.S. jurisprudence on legal racial segregation (Jim Crow). After the U.S. Civil War there was a brief period called Reconstruction (circa 1866–1877) during which formerly enslaved African Americans gained new freedoms across southern and border states. Significant progress was made in desegregating politics and public facilities, including transportation systems. However, over the next few decades this changed as the old white Confederate elite, backed by violent Ku Klux Klan type groups, came back into political power and reimposed a system of extensive racial segregation (Jim Crow). This rapidly spreading segregation was legitimated in Supreme Court cases, perhaps the most famous of which was one involving racial segregation in transportation, Plessy v. Ferguson (1896). The “colorblind” legal perspective dates back at least to the dissenting opinion of Supreme Court Justice John Harlan in this Plessy railroad-car case. All but one of the white male justices ruled that a state’s law segregating African Americans from whites on trains was constitutional, in effect a precedent legitimating fast-growing Jim Crow segregation in many areas and across many states. However, John Marshall Harlan dissented from this majority opinion, making an explicit argument that the U.S. Constitution is officially “colorblind” (his word), with all U.S. citizens being legally equal under that Constitution.45 Nonetheless, Justice Harlan, a former slaveholder, did not believe in social equality for African Americans, just in abstract legal equality. In his famous dissent he also argued that the “white race” is the “dominant race in this country . . . in prestige, in achievements, in education,

28

campus turmoil

in wealth and in power . . . [And] it will continue to be for all time if it remains true to its great heritage . . .”46 As the scholar Phillip Hutchison has convincingly argued, Harlan failed to convince his white colleagues of his firm belief that legal (Jim Crow) segregation was not required to keep whites as this dominant U.S. race because a colorblind Constitution operates just as “well in trapping blacks in the maelstrom of political powerlessness and economic destitution.”47 That is, Harlan knew that whites had been so privileged by the U.S. socioeconomic system over several centuries that providing formal legal rights to African Americans would not prevent whites from maintaining their dominant political-economic and social position, as he said, “for all time.” (He was, so far, quite correct in this prediction.) Clearly, later twentieth-century realities like “colorblind ideology” and “colorblind racism” (e.g., whites insisting “I don’t see race”) aptly extend Harlan’s system-justifying perspective. Note, however, that in his period in U.S. history, even his system-justifying colorblind perspective was considered by most whites as too liberal; they still regarded official segregation of African Americans as necessary and quite acceptable. Decades later in the 1940s–1960s civil rights era, however, many African Americans and other Americans of color protested for real change in racial inequality, not only in the law (legal rights) but also in many other societal institutions. Their civil rights movements pressed hard for white Americans to stop using the physical characteristics of people of color to discriminate—that is, to treat them in nondiscriminatory ways across U.S. society. Increased white support for the abstract ideal of equality of opportunity and white rejection of legal racial segregation were not sufficient. Civil rights activists strongly believed that major government action to implement that real racial equality and to end all societal discrimination was essential, and many also pressed for significant redress and amends for centuries of past white oppression. Interestingly, this much more aggressive approach to racial fairness, justice, and equality also used the language of colorblindness, but with a substantially different meaning. For example, Dr. Martin Luther King, in his famous 1963 Washington, DC, speech stated that, “I have a dream that my four

campus turmoil

29

little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”48 In his famous speech he suggested strongly that whites should work to create a country where African Americans and other people of color would not face any discrimination on the basis of their skin color and would have full access to the opportunities and benefits of all major institutions. Furthermore, the whole of Dr. King’s speech about white people becoming truly colorblind showed that he had millions of white discriminators’ actions and associated insightful racism in mind. Accenting a colorblindness far more radical that the abstract legal liberalism of Judge Harlan, King was envisioning a future where whites’ racist framing, discrimination, and institutionalized racism would completely end. King also tied his much more radical view of a colorblind white America to major white redress and compensation for centuries of black oppression. Indeed, in the opening of his 1963 “I have a dream” speech that concluded with this famous colorblind language he had already argued that white America had “defaulted on the promissory note” of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” These were the redress goals he viewed as necessary for real change. Elsewhere, in his 1964 book Why We Can’t Wait King was even more specific; he accented there the necessity of reparative and remedial actions, the white-run country’s obligation “to pay a long overdue debt to its citizens of color.”49 His radical view of colorblindness clearly contrasts with that often articulated by whites, for centuries now, as we see throughout this book. Maintaining White Dominance in the Midst of Change

During and after the civil rights movements of the 1960s, key members of the country’s governing white elite, while accepting vague colorblind rhetoric, explicitly recorded their great concern with what many in that elite considered to be a seriously destabilizing “excess of democracy” in U.S. society. These white men clearly had in mind the civil rights movements of the 1960s, as well as the antiwar, feminist, and labor movements of ordinary Americans at that time. One major capitalistic group founded

30

campus turmoil

in 1973, The Trilateral Commission, issued a major 1975 report, The Crisis of Democracy. The leading members of the Western white elite argued that certain problems of governance in the United States and some other countries at that time resulted “from an excess of democracy” and that the solution would be “a greater degree of moderation in democracy.” As these elite men saw it, the 1960s democratic movements in the United States were wrongheaded because a “good democracy” requires significant “apathy and noninvolvement on the part of some individuals and groups.” Very explicitly, they named “the blacks” as one of the “marginal social groups” that was then too aggressively seeking to be “full participants in the political system.” This type of political expansion clearly worried these white leaders because such formerly marginalized groups were “overloading the political system” with too many democratic demands. As they conclude in their celebrated report, and with black rights movements clearly in mind, there must be “desirable limits to the indefinite extension of political democracy.”50 One of the socio-political solutions these elite men had in mind was a new kind of moderate racial integration somewhat like that of Justice Harlan in a previous century: some legal and opportunity desegregation that was intentionally maintained by powerful and ordinary whites at the modest level whites could tolerate. In the years between the 1896 Plessy decision and the present, most whites have come to accept some version of Harlan’s “colorblind racism” perspective—that is, a majority has been willing to support ending legal racial segregation and to accept an abstract legal doctrine of opportunity for individuals of color.51 But most twenty-firstcentury whites are unwilling to support aggressive government programs to dismantle and redress all patterns of racial discrimination and to eliminate racial inequality in major institutions. Among other things, ending racial inequality requires major government remedies and reparations for the continuing transmission of unjust racial enrichments (e.g., money wealth, land, houses, networking capital) inherited across many generations of whites who were racially privileged in the extreme (that is, under three-plus centuries of slavery and Jim Crow). In addition, for most whites today “colorblindness” means being polite in their racial language and some behavior in public settings and pretending to “not see” the still horrific

campus turmoil

31

reality and impacts of institutionalized racial discrimination. We say they are “pretending” because few Americans can actually be “blind” to the racial discrimination and inequality of a United States that is still foundationally and systemically racist. The commonplace colorblind (“I don’t see race” or “I am not a racist”) framing actually uses reality-concealing language. It cloaks the continuing presence of discrimination in the garb of supposedly innocent racial blindness and fails to acknowledge the deliberate centurieslong exclusion of racialized others from socioeconomic opportunities and resources offered to most European Americans.52 Significantly, when the first African American president, Barack Obama, was elected to two terms (2009–2017), many in the mainstream media aggressively played up the conventional notion of white colorblindness that they frequently linked to the country’s supposed movement to “post-raciality.” In doing this, they ignored the millions of verbal racial attacks and threats of violence against Obama and his family, before and after his presidency, in the conservative media and on numerous online websites.53 These overtly racist actions alone demonstrated then, and do now, the fallaciousness of the assertions of a post-racial America. Unsurprisingly, the election of Donald Trump, mainly by white voters (including white supremacists and neo-Nazis), has been viewed by more critical media and scholarly analysts as partly a white backlash against the Barack Obama presidency. With this in mind, the prominent journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates has dubbed Donald Trump “the first white president,” a man whose “entire political existence hinges on the fact of a black president” serving just before him. With the openly expressed goal of negating Obama’s major accomplishments as a key foundation of his presidency, Trump’s political ideology has been unapologetic in its white nationalist framing: “To Trump, whiteness is neither notional nor symbolic but is the very core of his power.”54 Reactions to Racial Integration: Maintaining White Dominance in Higher Education

As with racial segregation in U.S. society generally, the persistence of racial tracking and other informal racism in higher education is often

32

campus turmoil

excused by white leaders and ordinary whites as the result of individual choices in what they consider now to be a mostly colorblind America, one in which most whites are said to no longer be seriously racist. Let us consider this racialized educational reality in some detail. Reduced State Spending on Higher Education: Racially Grounded

We can now set critical issues in higher education in this larger context of persisting U.S. racism. From the 1930s to the 1960s our historically white public colleges and universities were considered by whites to be a very important public good, and most agreed that heavy government involvement in supporting them was necessary because the so-called free market could not deliver reasonably price higher education for white Americans. Indeed, expanded government funding for higher education during the New Deal era (1930s–1940s) and for the decades that immediately followed up to the 1970s was critical for the dramatic expansion of what became the huge white middle class. This major funding came from both state and federal governments—the former in the form of expanded college building and educational programs at historically white colleges and universities and the latter in the form of major post-World War II education funding programs like those for (mostly white) veterans. Numerous other New Deal government programs provided much important aid to (again, very disproportionately white) farmers and other businesses, enabling them to survive the Great Depression, to expand during World War II, to create goodpaying jobs mostly for whites, and to pass along their new resources to later generations in the post-war years. In this Jim Crow (and de facto) segregation period a majority of white individuals and families experienced relative affluence compared to people of color, the latter often with equivalent or longer ancestries in the country. And ever since their white descendants have greatly benefited, to the present day, from these openly segregated and discriminatory federal programs. As the historian Ira Katznelson has noted, this 1930s–1960s era of extensive government aid programs favoring white socioeconomic mobility was one when government “affirmative action was white.”55 Moreover, this dramatic increase in well-educated white workforces and family

campus turmoil

33

prosperity over time also provided great public returns, including higher tax revenues, better public health, and public investments in an array of valuable national programs such highway infrastructures and social security programs. However, with the rise of the civil rights movement of the 1960s and subsequent pressures for educational integration of people of color into historically white institutions, elite and ordinary white Americans became much more resistant to providing these substantial government (tax) funds to make and keep public colleges and universities as public goods open to all students and reasonable in costs. Unlike the previous all-white era, now these historically white institutions needed to be open and accessible for the fast-growing numbers of students from workingclass and lower-middle-class African American and other families of color, who since the 1960s have continued to be ready in ever larger numbers to attend these once all-white public institutions. Moreover, about the same time period during which most of these public colleges and universities were moving beyond token racial integration, in the 1980s and 1990s, conservative, mostly white legislators in most states began to make increasingly large cuts in their state budgets for the important public good of accessible higher education. This shift in funding was substantially intentional. Some conservative white state legislators have revealed their racist framing by openly admitting that this large-scale higher education defunding is linked to the growing numbers of students of color seeking good educations. For example, one recent media report of a Tucson, Arizona, town-hall meeting described how some local business leaders had discussed with state legislators the state’s extraordinarily poor legislative funding of their public colleges and universities. These local leaders apparently realized the workers of the future would not be majority white and were worried about having an educated Arizona workforce. Indeed, these leaders had previously met with state legislators and promised they would help defend those legislators politically if new educational funding required more state taxes. However, the Arizona legislators, likely mostly white Republicans, told these local businesspeople that they were not interested, with one of them saying, “Those kids don’t need

34

campus turmoil

college.” He likely meant the substantial majority of schoolchildren in Arizona who now are Latino/a or other students of color.56 This aggressive defunding reality has now affected public colleges and universities in most states. A recent higher education report summarizes the situation: a white “generation that enjoyed a generously funded system—one which in which the public took responsibility for public higher education, enabling students to fund college on a part-time job—has pulled up the ladder.”57 This massive educational budget cutting over recent decades has been conspicuous in many states, from New York to California. For example, reports from New York indicate heavy cuts to the major public SUNY and CUNY university systems, as well as major privatization efforts there, such as for student housing there.58 The same is true for the Arizona and California university systems. For example, there have been sharp cuts in California’s state’s funding for public universities since 1980, by about 43 percent for the huge California State University system and 55 percent for the large University of California system. At the same time there have been large-scale increases in student tuition and fees—which now account for nearly half the University of California budget, more than double the percentage in the late 1990s.59 For the last three decades this defunding has been a general phenomenon across most states and still persists into the present. As one statistical analysis put it, Despite steadily growing student demand for higher education since the mid-1970s, state fiscal investment in higher education has been in retreat in [most] states since about 1980. Based on the trends since 1980, average state fiscal support for higher education will reach zero by 2059, although it could happen much sooner in some states and later in others.60 Dramatic Increases in College Tuition

Conservative state policymakers have substantially reduced states’ higher education budgets but have allowed “colleges and universities to make up the gap in state funding by charging students more

campus turmoil

35

in tuition, fees, and other charges.”61 In the 1970s, inflation-adjusted college tuition and fees were actually declining, but since about 1980 they have increased dramatically. As one report has put it, since 1980 the “Inflation-adjusted tuition and fee charges have increased by 247 percent at state flagship universities, by 230 percent at state universities and colleges, and by 164 percent at community colleges.”62 Unsurprisingly, many public colleges and universities now aggressively seek students who can afford these significantly rising costs. These sought-after students tend to be disproportionately from white middle and upper class families and include out-of-state students from affluent homes who can pay the higher out-of-state tuition. Students of color and other lower-income students are among the hardest hit by rising tuition and other college fees. A U.S. Center on Budget and Policy Priorities report underscored the details of this impact: Rising tuition threatens affordability and access leaving students and their families––including those whose annual wages have stagnated or fallen over recent decades—either saddled with onerous debt or unable to afford college altogether. This is especially true for students of color (who have historically faced large barriers to attending college), low-income students, and students from non-traditional backgrounds.”63 This perceptive report accented the larger impact beyond students and their families: these high costs of education also jeopardize “the outlook for whole communities and states, which are increasingly reliant on highly educated workforces to grow and thrive.”64 Without a doubt, the significantly rising costs at public colleges and universities mean that their student bodies stay whiter and more middle and upper class than otherwise would be the case. Indeed, this sharp reduction in state involvement in funding public higher education brings up larger questions of who now controls these “public” institutions and whose interests are actually being pursued by them.65 The answers to these rhetorical questions are straightforward: whites do, especially those in the elite. At the same time that public college tuition and other fees have increased, there has been a shift in the availability of college scholarships

36

campus turmoil

and other financial aid. Over the last two decades college financial aid at public colleges and universities has generally shifted in the direction of so-called “merit” aid and away from “need aid,” a shift that benefits students who have the higher grade averages and conventional test scores. This changing aid situation has disproportionately benefitted white middle and upper class students, those who have had better access to first-rate secondary school resources because of their mostly well-off families. As a Georgetown University analysis has expressed it, this general shift from need-based aid toward merit aid in selective public colleges reallocates aid from low-income students to middle-income and even high-income applicants. The result is that the students with the greatest financial need are asked to pay steep bills for college, and this in turn makes colleges unaffordable for many such families.66 Today, most students must now find relatively more, and indeed much more, monetary support than those white students in previous generations did, especially to attend today’s more advantageous and selective four-year colleges. They do this by drawing on their family’s savings and other resources, or they can go into personal debt by borrowing for their education. Generally, the old idea from the 1930s–1970s era of “working your way through school” with part-time jobs is “an antiquated myth,” not only for these four-year institutions but also for community colleges where costs have also risen dramatically.67 Statistics reveal how different the present is from the earlier era of large-scale subsidization of white college students. “Nationally, the net price of a public 4-year college, after grant and scholarship aid, takes up one-third of median black family income and a quarter of median Latino family income, compared to a fifth of median white family income.”68 In many cases this figure rises to over half of an average black or Latino family’s income. The percentage of average family income necessary to pay for college educations was much lower in the earlier decades when whites made up almost all the students in historically white public colleges and universities.

campus turmoil

37

College student loan debt has been much discussed in the mainstream media. In one recent year just over 44 million Americans had student loan debt, altogether about $1.5 trillion. The average student loan debt for graduating college seniors at public and other nonprofit schools— two thirds of seniors have such debt—has been more than $37,000.69 However, mainstream media commentators rarely discuss how high student loan debt affects the racial diversity of colleges and universities. The impact of potentially having high student debt includes preventing or limiting access to much or all higher education for working-class students—who are very disproportionately students of color and whose families cannot afford these sharply increased college costs. In the current environment, a majority of the youth of color who do manage to go to a community college or four-year college, are forced to borrow much more (in inflation-adjusted dollars) than earlier generations of whites did for their college degree programs. This is particularly true for black and Latino/a students. This college borrowing, in turn, frequently creates other problems. Indeed, many students of color must also work long hours, which in turn affects their learning time and grade averages—and this can limit access to both graduate schools and better-paying jobs later on. And because of lack of funds many have to make unhealthy choices, such as paying fees but not having decent housing or enough food.70 In addition, many students of color drop out of public colleges of various types because of financial problems, including the burden of student loans. Indeed, even one small financial setback means that they likely have to drop out of their educational program. The majority do not have the economic backup and parental college know-how, which white families often do possess, that would enable them to cope with these temporary setbacks. In addition, student debt, and fears about repayment later on, often limit the variety of academic fields that students can major in. This, in turn, has a negative effect on whether they can choose an array of humanities and social science fields that they might prefer, but fields that will not lead to higher-paying jobs that facilitate paying off student loans. Additionally, the limitation on student choices has had a negative impact on society more generally, because it means that a lesser range

38

campus turmoil

of important knowledges is encountered and added to by many in the country’s younger generations.71 If students of color do manage to graduate, their typically large student loans create yet more hurdles. Because of their often less prestigious college degrees (see below) and persisting racial discrimination in the workplace—often creating lower salaries after graduation—they frequently have a harder time paying off their student loans. One report sums up the overall situation of students of color succinctly: “As more students of color and working-class students have begun to attend college, it has become a much riskier, much more expensive proposition.”72 Contemporary Racial Channeling: De Facto Segregation in Higher Education

As we suggested previously, college enrollments for African American and Latino/a students in public colleges and universities—the institutions where most U.S. college students still enroll—have increased significantly in recent years. So has their share of total college students. Yet they are still only half as likely as white students to get a four-year college degree. One reason is that these and certain other students of color disproportionately attend open-access, especially community, colleges that offer a two-year associate’s degree. Many must choose less costly, and thus less-resourced, colleges than they otherwise qualify for. By sharply reducing the funding of higher education, and forcing increases in tuition and other college costs, conservative legislators in most states have created a racialized channeling system in which more affluent white families generally get better quality educations for their children at the better-resourced and selective public colleges and universities. White students are much more likely than black and Latino/a students to be able to attend better-resourced public colleges that grant the usually more valuable bachelor’s and graduate degrees.73 As a result, the previously well-funded public system in the post-war decades—mostly reserved for whites (and often by law)—has been replaced by a two-tiered system that in its top tier still greatly favors white students over most students of color, if now in different ways.

campus turmoil

39

Supposedly, these better-resourced public colleges and universities are there to benefit the socioeconomic mobility of all college students, yet students from white families are much more likely to get access to these educational facilities and to secure first-class degrees than students from black and Latino families. A major Georgetown University study notes that black and Latino/a students are “primarily funneled into underfunded and overcrowded bottom-tier, open-access colleges.” Thus, state legislators’ better funding of selective public institutions “buys program quality and the student support services that drive student persistence and achievement of a degree or other postsecondary credential. . . . [state] spending is higher—and [now] increasing—at selective colleges that disproportionately enroll White students.”74 This added funding means better educational programs and student support services for the latter students. In effect, this is contemporary educational apartheid, this time in the form of a racialized sorting and channeling system in higher education. The bottom line on this reality is that white students have much more opportunity to get into betterresourced and higher-ranked public colleges and universities. They get this because of a racialized “political bargain among legislators, governors, selective public colleges, and affluent (mostly White) families.”75 How is this racial tracking implemented and maintained? Overt discrimination is not the main generating factor, but rather indirect and hidden racialized norms and routine decision-making are. That is, even as they typically operate from a colorblind ideology with equal opportunity rhetoric, predominantly white college officials “have created policies that, in effect, favor White applicants by creating standards that are exclusionary.”76 For instance, these racially biased admissions policies rely far too much on student scores on certain SAT/ACT type tests, even though these have been shown by significant research to be class and racially biased and are weak predictors of college success.77 In fact, these widely used testing procedures mainly measure the race, income, education, and social capital of students’ parents. These factors enable the majority of white children to reside in areas with better-resourced secondary schools and to get the private tutoring and other private resources that increase their college

40

campus turmoil

opportunities and funding. The economic resources of white parents typically get their children into more affluent neighborhoods and betterresourced secondary schools, while their own social capital makes sure these public (or private) schools have the necessary college-prep tracks and other major educational resources for their children. In turn, this racially privileged reality sets the stage for their children’s success in getting into the better-resourced colleges and universities. Today, many mainstream analysts look at this differentiated educational reality and argue that it signals just socioeconomic inequality not institutional racism. Operating from the colorblind-racism perspective, they frequently accent the supposedly inferior work ethic and culture of families of color as the real educational barrier for most students of color. However, centuries of systemic racism are the actual reason for this country’s huge and continuing economic and social capital inequalities between white Americans and African Americans and certain other groups of color. Consider the African American case. For 82 percent of this country’s history African American individuals and families were oppressed by white-imposed slavery and Jim Crow systems. These racial oppressions were so extreme that they generated many generations of unjust impoverishment for most African American families. In contrast, over many of these generations most white individuals inherited some or much unjust enrichment from their ancestors who had been racially privileged over those generations. Only the last two generations or so African Americans have been officially free of this extreme racial oppression, and that is not nearly enough time to catch up with white individuals and families that have had many generations of inherited white resources, privileges, and prosperity. These long centuries of white racial oppression and intergenerationally transmitted economic and social advantages are mostly covered up in conventional discussions of contemporary racial inequalities across the society. Clearly, the two-tiered apartheid in higher education today greatly favors students from white families, most of whom have benefited from unjustly gained economic and other social inheritances from their generations of privileged ancestors. Given this long history of unjust enrichment, it is not surprising

campus turmoil

41

that the test scores of relatively affluent white students seeking college admission are higher, on average, than those of much less affluent black or Latino/a students. Nonetheless, one major hidden feature of how the more selective public colleges and universities operate is that admissions officers use standardized test scores and related measures to turn away three quarters of those students whose test scores do indicate they are ready for college, including disproportionately large numbers of black and Latino/a students. That is, the latter students often do not have test scores that, while clearly adequate for college success, are on average not high enough to compete with the yet higher average test scores of racially privileged white students who get admitted to more selective public institutions in disproportionate numbers.78 Thus, one can envision how greater equality of representation in these public institutions might be easily accomplished. The Georgetown University report cited earlier underscores the point that “There are more than enough Black and Latino/a students who score above average on standardized tests to fill the seats that would be required to secure” fully representative student bodies in the now disproportionately white selective public colleges and universities.79 Many white legislators and senior college administrators ignore, often intentionally, the reality that many students of color who are excluded actually do reasonably well on college screening tests and are thus qualified for these historically white institutions. A critical part of this racialized two-tiered reality in higher education is that many conservative state and federal legislators do not want to the provide necessary funding for enough places in selective public colleges for all qualified students, including a great many students of color who have tested as ready for college. This too is frequently intentional, as these legislators often operate out of a white framing that fears the “browning” of educational institutions. It is not just chance that dramatically declining state and federal legislative support for public colleges and universities coincides with the very substantial increase in students of color in our college-age populations. Indeed, this response has been well-engineered by white conservatives since the 1960s civil rights movements. Over the period since then, the increase

42

campus turmoil

in neoliberal (“free market”) thinking and goals in the white governing elite has meant a general reluctance to adequately fund many “public goods” programs—including making public colleges and universities more available and affordable for students of color. This elite movement away from much government social spending has been aggressively assisted by a growing number of right-wing think-tanks and media outlets, especially since the 1970s. The placement of right-wing “experts” in both mainstream and arch-conservative news media has helped to legitimate these reactionary educational approaches for the general population, approaches that accent lesser government funding of higher education and more individual funding for education from loans and family sources. Working alongside other conservative intellectuals, these think-tank experts continue to be successful in their campaign aimed at shaping public views on higher education in an individualistic and privatizing direction that favors affluent white families.80 One last note on the impact of conservative legislators’ defunding of public higher education. These major cuts in government funding have yet other educational consequences that affect both selective colleges and universities and the community colleges. They have forced serious reductions in the college courses offered, substantial decreases in staff that support students, and major increases in lower-wage adjunct and temporary faculty. These changes affect the quality of the educations and the educational support that all students, but especially students of color, need and receive. Overall, the contemporary conservative movement and its predominantly white organizational leaders, media experts, and legislators have created an interconnected set of traps that significantly limit the educational options of students of color—the interrelated phenomena “of individual debt, expansive efforts to finance college tuition through loans, relatively low rates of college completion, and the slotting of poor students into the most underfunded institutions of higher education.” Understanding this substantially intentional conservative political plan is “essential to understanding how public policies intensify both individual struggles to attend and complete college and institutional struggles to adequately invest in classroom instruction.”81

campus turmoil

Rejecting Reparative Programs in Higher Education

43

In addition, again since the late 1970s and 1980s, the conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme Court has periodically blocked the active and direct recruitment of qualified students of color to many colleges and universities. They too have provided excuses to keep favoring the admission of privileged white students over students of color. The High Court has blocked even the modest affirmative action programs that white college administrators have implemented. Indeed, and perhaps unsurprisingly, the Court’s conservatives have used variations on Harlan-type colorblind language in their higher education jurisprudence. For example, a colorblind-constitution perspective was aggressively used in twentieth-century landmark Regents of the University of California v. Bakke (1978) decision that set unreasonable limits on remedial (“affirmative action”) college admissions programs designed to redress past and present discrimination affecting students of color. That Supreme Court decision by a white-male court majority, and principally authored by conservative white Justice Lewis Powell, reversed prior Court precedents that had correctly viewed the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution’s Fourteenth Amendment as protecting historically underrepresented black Americans and as remediating today the persisting impacts of extensive past discrimination (i.e., centuries of slavery). Instead, he and other conservative justices ignored these lasting impacts of slavery and Jim Crow—as seen in systemic racism in higher education we document in this book—and applied the equal protection clause to all racial groups, including the fictitiously “oppressed” whites currently applying in large numbers to historically white, and still disproportionately white, colleges and universities. A series of subsequent court cases by conservative Supreme Court majorities have pushed back the progress of racial justice and equality in higher education and other institutions that used modest affirmative action plans to partially desegregate their facilities. The dominant reasoning continues to make use of white colorblindness and postracial-America themes. In recent decades the Supreme Court’s conservative majority has moved away from “disparate impact” and remedial theories of social justice that focus on how white-crafted laws

44

campus turmoil

and institutionalized policies still oppress people of color to emphasize an individualistic “disparate treatment” theory that requires the usually impossible task of demonstrating white defendants’ subjective discriminatory intentions in racially limiting the educational or other societal progress of people of color. The naïve Court assumption is that historically white colleges and universities are now generally colorblind in their everyday operations, and only sullied occasionally by a few racist white individuals. Yet, as we demonstrate from faculty, staff, and student accounts throughout this book, historically white colleges and universities have long histories of pervasive and institutionalized racial discrimination that continue to the present day—to which reality many white college officials and other powerful white actors regularly contribute. Few such educational actors will admit in a court or other legal setting to the white racial framing that typically lies behind their actions implementing the discriminatory norms and procedures of their white-controlled institutions. They too will frequently insist they were “not racist” and “colorblind” in their decision-making and blame non-racial factors for the discrimination and inequalities that still do characterize their historically white institutions. A Note on Privatization: Seeking Corporate funds and Connections

Yet another result of the governmental defunding of public higher education by state legislators is an acceleration of college campus-area privatization in many states. States’ defunding has been accompanied by the privatization of much student housing on and off campus, of campus bookstores, of food and janitorial services, and of other campus services. Across the country, top college and university administrators are not only seeking increases in tuition to replace their major budget cuts but also aggressively pursuing major corporate contributions, corporate and federal research grants, and patent royalties. Yet, the corporate contributions at numerous colleges and universities have been highly problematical, such as when that money is given to set up specific educational programs directly reflecting the conservative business and political interests of these corporate donors.

campus turmoil

45

In addition, for some years top college administrators have themselves sought yet more corporate connections. They have regularly served on the boards of major corporations, sometimes raising questions about major conflicts of interest. One recent case involved the chancellor of the University of California (Davis), who served on two corporate boards that some argued involved a conflict of interest with that of the university. One board was that of a corporation that runs for-profit schools that compete with public higher education; the other was a major textbook publisher. In addition, while faculty in the sciences and engineering there viewed the chancellor as supporting their educational programs well, many of the humanities faculty viewed the chancellor as unsupportive and committed to the “privatization of the public university,” as they put it in a letter of protest to a local newspaper.82 The contemporary conservative efforts to control higher education no longer need to use overt racial action to restrict a disproportionate share of quality higher education to white students, but now do make greater use of certain capitalistic market forces. These market forces regularly favor those, like most white parents and students, who have inherited socioeconomic resources and privileges unjustly gained by white ancestors under the centuries of slavery and Jim Crow. One expert on higher education, Christopher Newfield, has argued against numerous current market-centered schemes in regard to who gets society’s public goods: In reality, goods like clean air, sanitation systems, mass transit, vaccination, and education should be distributed according to individual need and general benefit, not according to ability to pay. . . . price signals don’t work. They give an oversupply to rich people and an undersupply—or much lower quality—to the poor. He adds that “market-driven allocation of high-quality college is a main reason why U.S. attainment has fallen steadily over the last 4 decades from first to about sixteenth in the world.”83 As a result U.S. society as a whole has lost much of its educational achievement, national standing, and future progress.

46

campus turmoil

Systemic Racism and Systemic Sexism: A Better Conceptual Approach

In our view, given these continuing racial issues in higher education and related institutions, as well as the changing U.S. racial demography, a broader and profounder conceptual framework accenting systemic racism (and often related systemic sexism) is necessary for committed reformers of our educational institutions if they are to make much greater progress toward social justice. We recognize these are tough issues for a great many Americans, especially white Americans, to face candidly and forthrightly, but they are our current and past societal realities, whether we recognize those realities or not. For example, to characterize one impactful historical reality succinctly, we residents of the United States still live under a U.S. Constitution that was made only by 55 elite white men, about 40 percent of whom were or had been slaveholders. Less than 5 percent of the total population was represented at this very undemocratic convention. No people of color or white women participated. The elite white male “founders” built into that Constitution protection for the massive U.S. slavery system, which for about 60 percent of this country’s total history greatly shaped most major institutions, both in the South and the North. Researchers Joe Feagin and Kimberley Ducey have demonstrated the long history and pre-eminence in U.S. society of this hierarchical system of elite-white-male dominance that encompasses and integrates the racist and sexist subsystems of social oppression in the U.S. case. This overarching dominance system was put into place by powerful European men with their invasion and colonization across the globe from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries onward—and certainly in the North American colonies. As this extensive dominance system developed, the leading white men put into place several major subsystems of oppression, which they and their white (especially male) descendants have maintained well ever since.84 Two of these major subsystems are systemic racism and systemic sexism, which we principally examine in this book. Consider systemic racism, to which we give central attention. It has both surface and deeper societal structures. Today, as in the past, they include well-institutionalized discriminatory practices targeting

campus turmoil

47

nondominant populations; unjustly gained white privilege and power imbedded in a racial hierarchy; and large-scale socioeconomic and other unjust resource inequalities along racial lines.85 To preserve these oppressive hierarchical arrangements a strong rationalizing and legitimating white racial frame was developed early on. Over several centuries this pervasive racial framing of nondominant racial groups has been consciously and actively created and utilized by whites, in all socioeconomic classes but most powerfully by those in top institutional positions. This concept of a white racial frame offers a broader perspective on, and deeper explanation for, the motivation and legitimation of many millions of everyday acts of white racial exploitation and other discrimination characteristic of this country now for centuries.86 We will further develop the details and dimensions of this white frame concept in Chapter 3 (see p. 100ff ). Additionally, as we also show throughout this book, this old white racial frame has long been accompanied by, or closely intertwined with, a still dominant male sexist frame. In the seventeenth century the European colonists in North America were led by powerful white men who envisioned and called themselves “patriarchs” and thus also brought to the colonies a heavily gendered, masculinist, and patriarchal framing. The second author has termed this the male sexist frame.87 Over the last several decades numerous scholars have suggested that, as with racism, the analysis of gender (sex) discrimination needs to move beyond individualistic prejudice-centered conceptualizations to accent systemic sexism and its broad sexist frame.88 As we see it, both racial discrimination and gender discrimination, on and off college campuses, cannot be adequately assessed and remedied just within an individualistic framework. As we demonstrate in later chapters, these well-institutionalized discriminations involve major asymmetrical interpersonal relationships that are part of larger racist and sexist systems within which more powerful individuals routinely impose their interests on those who are much less powerful. Some Illustrative Examples

Let us now share a few accounts of troubling incidents from research that brings this reality, and often intersecting and interlocking character, of racist discrimination and sexist discrimination and their impacts within higher

48

campus turmoil

education environments into a clear and specific focus for people of color. These commonplace discriminatory realities have both institutional and deeply personal impacts. Take, for example, the experiences of Tamara, an African American assistant professor in her third year, who recognized that any misstep in the academic tenure process could be over-magnified and used as an excuse for her disqualification by white colleagues: The rules of the tenure game keep changing. As a faculty of color, I hoped and prayed that I had every “I” dotted and every “T” crossed while going through the process for promotion and tenure. I did not want to give my colleagues an opportunity to question anything in my dossier.89 Or consider the invisibility of women of color in higher education workplaces, as underscored by Linda, an administrator of color in a predominantly white northeastern University. Linda describes how she was routinely ignored and not acknowledged by whites in the upper administration and her white co-workers: [This colleague] just walked right past me and couldn’t even say hi. . . . That is a normal procedure where this person simply does not acknowledge my existence. . . . I [also] feel marginalized by people in upper administration in my college every day. . . . Marginalization is . . . when I’m simply ignored. . . . It feels very disrespectful.90 Additionally, the scholar Nicole West records these reactions of a female African American student affairs administrator attending the African American Women’s Summit. She realized that her experiences of racialized marginalization as a woman of color were not unique: For me it reaffirmed that even though their situation may not have been the same as mine, it reaffirmed that there were other women who felt marginalized, or who felt like they were an island by them self. You know, sometimes you wonder, “Am I being overly sensitive and am I looking at this in the wrong way? . . . Am I on the right track? Am I overreacting?”91

campus turmoil

49

These examples of women of color in academia illustrate the impact of the white-male-dominated hierarchy in higher education that routinely imbeds and activates the often interlocking oppressions of racism and sexism. This complex everyday reality reflects what sociologist Patricia Hill Collins has described as a complex matrix of overlapping layers of oppression (also termed intersectionality).92 The substantial pain of these racialized and gendered events is plainly demonstrated here, as well as the high level of emotional labor and cognitive labor required of those targeted by systemic racism or sexism. Conclusion

Without a doubt, current patterns of slow change, tokenism, and much backtracking on racial matters in our institutions of higher learning are insufficient to achieve the great humanitarian goals stated in the U.S. Declaration of Independence (e.g., “All men are created equal”). Or the famous humanitarian goals stated in preamble to the U.S. Constitution: We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, . . . promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do . . . establish this Constitution for the United States of America. Equality, liberty, and justice are the founding ideals that guide us in this book, and they should be made real and not just be deceptive rhetoric by all those interested in eradicating all forms of discrimination and inequity in higher education. In the next chapter and those that follow we will continue to provide much evidence of contemporary racism and sexism across the country’s educational institutions. Notes

1 Foner, E., cited in Wright, R. (2017, August 14). Is America headed for a new kind of civil war? The New Yorker, para 16. Retrieved December 12, 2017, from www.newyorker.com/ news/news-desk/is-america-headed-for-a-new-kind-of-civil-war 2 Wager, W. (2017, August 12). “Blood and soil”: Protesters chant Nazi slogan in Charlottesville. CNN. Retrieved November 25, 2017, from www.cnn.com/2017/08/12/us/charlottesvilleunite-the-right-rally/index.html

50

campus turmoil

3 Shear, M. D., and Haberman, M. (2017, August 16). Trump defends initial remarks on Charlottesville; Again blames “both sides.” The New York Times. Retrieved November 26, 2017, from www.nytimes.com/2017/08/15/us/politics/trump-press-conferencecharlottesville.html?_r=0 4 Astor, M. (2017, October 31). John Kelly pins civil war on a “lack of ability to compromise.” The New York Times. Retrieved November 26, 2017, from www.nytimes.com/2017/10/31/ us/john-kelly-civil-war.html 5 Chatelain, M. (2017, August 17). How universities embolden white nationalists. The Chronicle of Higher Education. Retrieved November 28, 2017, from www.chronicle.com/ article/How-Universities-Embolden/240956 6 Ibid. 7 Stripling, J. (2017, November 20). ‘Et tu, Teresa?’ How pressure built for U. of Virginia to condemn racists. The Chronicle of Higher Education. Retrieved November 29, 2017, from www.chronicle.com/article/Et-Tu-Teresa-How/241833 8 Gose, B. (2018, April 13). How to respond to racist incidents. The Chronicle of Higher Education, 64(31). Retrieved June 7, 2017 from www.chronicle.com/article/How-toRespond-to-Racist/243045 9 Chun, E., and Evans, A. (2018). Leading a diversity culture shift in higher education: Comprehensive organizational learning strategies. New York, NY: Routledge. 10 North, A. (2017, June 1). The scope of hate in 2017. The New York Times. Retrieved October 19, 2017, from www.nytimes.com/2017/06/01/opinion/hate-crime-lebron-james-collegepark-murder.html?smprod=nytcore-iphone&smid=nytcore-iphone-share 11 White supremacist activity on the rise on college campuses since election (2017, May 3). CBS News. Retrieved October 19, 2017, from www.cbsnews.com/news/white-supremacistactivity-on-the-rise-on-college-campuses-since-election/. 12 See, for example, Jaschik, S. (2017, February 22). Incidents roil campuses. Inside Higher Ed. Retrieved October 19, 2017, from www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/02/22/ racial-incidents-upset-students-several-campuses. See also Jaschik, S. (2017, September 22). A September of racist incidents. Inside Higher Ed. Retrieved October 19, 2017, from www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/09/22/racist-incidents-colleges-abound-academicyear-begins 13 Jaschik. (2017, September 22). A September of racist incidents. 14 Fortin, J. (2017, May 3). FBI helping American University investigate bananas found hanging from nooses. The New York Times. Retrieved June 9, 2018 from www.nytimes. com/2017/05/03/us/bananas-hang-from-black-nooses-and-a-campus-erupts-in-protest.html 15 King, C. R., and Leonard, D. J. (2007, October 5). The rise of the ghetto-fabulous party. Colorlines Magazine. Retrieved May 22, 2009 from www.diverseeducation.com/artman/ publisharticle_9687.shtml 16 Mangan, K. (2017, September 21). White student at Cornell U. charged in attack on black classmate apologizes. The Chronicle of Higher Education. Retrieved November 29, 2017, from www.chronicle.com/article/White-Student-at-Cornell-U/241257; Harris, E. A. (2017, November 14). Cornell student accused in attack is charged with a hate crime. The New York Times. Retrieved November 29, 2017, from www.nytimes.com/2017/11/13/ nyregion/cornell-assault-hate-crime.html?_r=0 17 Jaschik, S. (2017, September 22). A September of racist incidents. 1 8 Harris, A. (2017, September 18). Cornell U. announces steps after apparent hate crime. The Chronicle of Higher Education. Retrieved November 29, 2017, from www.chronicle.com/blogs/ticker/cornell-u-announces-steps-after-apparent-hatecrime/120115

campus turmoil

51

19 Geiger, A. (2018, December 13). 18 striking findings from 2018. Pew Research Center. Retrieved January 14, 2019, from www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/12/13/18striking-findings-from-2018/ 20 Older people projected to outnumber children for first time in U.S. history (2018, September 6). United States Census Bureau. Retrieved April 4, 2019, from www.census.gov/newsroom/ press-releases/2018/cb18-41-population-projections.html 21 Racial and ethnic composition of the child population. Child Trends, Retrieved January 14, 2019 from www.childtrends.org/indicators/racial-and-ethnic-composition-of-thechild-population 22 Racial/ethnic enrollment in public schools (May 2017). U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics. 23 Frey, W. H. (2014). Diversity explosion. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution. Kindle location 30.9. 24 Jardina, A. (2017). The role of white identity and white consciousness in contemporary electoral politics. Unpublished research paper, Duke University. See also Reuters/ Ipsos/UVA Center for Politics Race Poll. Retrieved October 30, 2017 from www. centerforpolitics.org/crystalball/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/2017-Reuters-UVAIpsos-Race-Poll-9-11-2017.pdf 25 Quoted in Sack, K. (1998, March 16). South’s embrace of G.O.P. is near a turning point. The New York Times, p. A1. We are indebted here to suggestions from Chandler Davidson. See also Phillips, K. (1969). The emerging Republican majority. New Rochelle, NY: Arlington House. 26 Frostenson, S. (2016, July 29). Half of the democratic delegates were people of color. For Republicans, it was only 6 percent. Vox. Retrieved November 20, 2017 from www.vox. com/2016/7/29/12295830/republican-democratic-delegates-diversity-nonwhite 27 Frey, W. H. (2017, May 18). Census shows pervasive decline in 2016 minority voter turnout. Brookings Institution. Retrieved November 20, 2017, from www.brookings. edu/blog/the-avenue/2017/05/18/census-shows-pervasive-decline-in-2016-minorityvoter-turnout/ 28 Key surveys are summarized in Kilgore, E. (2016, June 23). Trump fans really want a less-diverse America. New York Magazine. Retrieved September 19, 2016, from http:// nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/06/trump-fans-really-want-a-less-diverseamerica.html?mid=twitter_nymag%20percents%20of%20trump%20supports%20 who%20don%E2%80%99t%20want%20diversity 29 Gest, J. (2016, August 16). Why Trumpism will outlast Donald Trump. Politico. Retrieved January 22, 2019, from www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/08/why-trumpism-willoutlast-donald-trump-214166#ixzz4N4wM4lsr 30 Buchanan, P., as quoted in Clarence Page (1991, December 27). U.S. Media should stop abetting intolerance. The Toronto Star, p. A27. 31 Picca, L. H., and Feagin, J. R. (2007). Two-faced racism: Whites in the backstage and frontstage. New York, NY: Routledge, p. 91. 32 Crandall, C. S. and White, M. H. (2016, November 17). Trump and the social psychology of prejudice. UnDark, November 17, 2016, Retrieved October 15, 2017, from https:// undark.org/article/trump-social-psychology-prejudice-unleashed 33 Jardina, A. (2017, August 16). White identity politics isn’t just about white supremacy: It’s much bigger. The Washington Post. Retrieved November 28, 2017 from www.washingtonpost. com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2017/08/16/white-identity-politics-isnt-just-about-whitesupremacy-its-much-bigger/ 34 Phillips, K. (2016, November 14). After Trump’s win, some minorities feel unsafe. Now thousands want to protect them. The Washington Post. Retrieved November 28, 2017, from www.

52

35 36 37

38 39

40

41 42

43 44

45 46 47

campus turmoil washingtonpost.com/news/inspired-life/wp/2016/11/14/after-trumps-win-someminorities-feel-unsafe-now-thousands-want-to-protect-them/?utm_term=.1e91bd809e61 Two-thirds of youth fearful about America’s future, prefer Democratic control of Congress, Harvard youth poll finds. Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics. Retrieved December 13, 2017, from http://iop.harvard.edu/youth-poll/fall-2017-poll Davis, J. H., and Cooper, H. (2017, July 26). Trump says transgender people will not be allowed in the military. The New York Times. Retrieved November 28, 2017, from www. nytimes.com/2017/07/26/us/politics/trump-transgender-military.html De Vogue, A. (2017, October 30). Judge blocks enforcement of Trump’s transgender military ban. CNN. Retrieved November 28, 2017, from www.cnn.com/2017/10/30/politics/judgeblocks-trump-transgender-military-ban/index.html; Lopez, G. (2017, November 28). Federal judge: military must allow transgender recruits starting on January 1. Vox. Retrieved November 28, 2017, from www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/11/28/16709494/judgetrump-transgender-military-ban-recruits Davis, J. H., Stolberg, S. G., and Kaplan, T. (2018, January 11). Trump alarms lawmakers with disparaging words for Haiti and Africa. The New York Times. Retrieved June 7, 2018 from www.nytimes.com/2018/01/11/us/politics/trump-shithole-countries.html Editorial board, (2018, May 23). The NFL kneels to Trump. The New York Times. Retrieved June 7, 2018 from www.nytimes.com/2018/05/23/opinion/nfl-protesttrump-anthem.html. See also Chun, E., and Evans, A. (2018). Leading a diversity culture shift in higher education: Comprehensive organizational learning strategies. New York, NY: Routledge. Gabriel, T., Martin J., and Fandos, N. (2019, January 14). Steve King removed from committee assignments over white supremacy remarks. The New York Times. Retrieved January 27, 2019, from www.nytimes.com/2019/01/14/us/politics/steve-king-whitesupremacy.html Gabriel, T. (2019, January 15). A timeline of Steve King’s racist remarks and divisive actions. The New York Times. Retrieved January 27, 2019, from www.nytimes.com/2019/01/15/us/ politics/steve-king-offensive-quotes.html Frey, W. H. (2011). The new metro minority map: Regional shifts in Hispanics, Asians, and Blacks from Census 2010. Washington, DC: Brookings, 1–4; Frey, W. H. (2003, October 1). Metropolitan magnets for international and domestic migrants. Brookings Institution. Retrieved June 19, 2009, from www.frey-demographer.org/reports/Brook3–2.pdf; Frey, W. H. (1997, January 22) Domestic and immigrant Migrants: Where do they go?” Current, January 22, 1997, n.p.; Benjamin, R. (2009). Searching for Whitopia: An improbable journey to the heart of white. New York, NY: Hachette Books. Quoted in Church, G. J. (1987, June 15). The boom towns. Time, p. 17. This section draws on discussions with Gregory D. Squires. Quotes are from Males, M. (2017, August 21). There’s a myth that white people are safer among other whites. Yes! Magazine. Retrieved January 1, 2018, from www. yesmagazine.org/peace-justice/the-myth-of-white-safety-in-white-numbers-20170821. Our italics. Kahn, J. (2017). Race on the brain: What implicit bias gets wrong about the struggle for racial justice. New York, NY: Columbia University Press. Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896). Retrieved January 16, 2019 from http://chnm.gmu. edu/courses/nclc375/harlan.html Hutchison, P. (2015). The Harlan renaissance: Colorblindness and white domination in Justice John Marshall Harlan’s dissent in Plessy v. Ferguson. Journal of African American Studies, (19), 426–447.

campus turmoil

53

48 “I have a dream. . . .” The Nobel Prize. Retrieved January 14, 2019 from www.nobelprize. org/prizes/peace/1964/king/26141-i-have-a-dream/ 49 King’s quotes are in Rieder, J. (2014, July 15). MLK’s case for reparations included disadvantaged whites. The Root. Retrieved January 14, 2019, from www.theroot.com/ mlk-s-case-for-reparations-included-disadvantaged-white-1790876391 50 Crozier, M., Huntington, S. P., and Watanuki, J. (1975). The crisis of democracy: Report on the governability of democracies to the trilateral commission. New York, NY: New York University Press, p. 114. 51 See Bonilla-Silva, E. (2010). Racism without racists: Color-blind racism and the persistence of racial inequality in America (3rd ed.). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. 52 Bonilla-Silva. (2010). Racism without racists. Neville, H. A., Lewis, J. A., Poteat, V. P., and Spanierman, L. B. (2014). Changes in white college students’ color-blind racial ideology over 4 years: Do diversity experiences make a difference? Journal of Counseling Psychology, 61(2), 179–190. 53 Wingfield, A. H. and Feagin, J. R. (2012). Yes we can?: White racial framing and the Obama presidency. New York, NY: Routledge. 54 Coates, T-N. (October 2017). The first white president. The Atlantic. Retrieved December 3, 2017, from www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/10/the-firstwhite-president-ta-nehisi-coates/537909/, para 6. 55 Ibid., pp. 38–39; Roediger, D. (2005). Working toward whiteness. New York, NY: Basic Books. 56 Caryn (anonymous). Comment on “When college as a public good.” Oregon State University. Retrieved January 14, 2019 from http://blogs.oregonstate.edu/differencepowerdiscrimination/2017/10/17/college-public-good/ 57 Huelsman, M. (2018, February 22). The unaffordable era: A 50-state look at rising college prices and the new American student. Demos. Retrieved January 14, 2019 from www. demos.org/publication/unaffordable-era-50-state-look-rising-college-prices-and-newamerican-student 58 R. Hohle (December 2018). Personal communication. 59 Ibid. 60 Mortenson, T. G. State (2012). State funding: A race to the bottom. American Council on Education. Retrieved December 30, 2018, from www.acenet.edu/the-presidency/columnsand-features/Pages/state-funding-a-race-to-the-bottom.aspx 61 Huelsman. (2018, February 22). The unaffordable era: A 50-state look at rising college prices and the new American student. 62 Mortenson. (2012). State funding: A race to the bottom. 63 Mitchell, M., Leachman, M., Masterson, K., and Waxman, S. (2018, October 4). Unkept promises: State cuts to higher education threaten access and equity. Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Retrieved December 27, 2018, from www.cbpp.org/research/state-budget-andtax/unkept-promises-state-cuts-to-higher-education-threaten-access-and 64 Ibid. 65 Mortenson. (2012). State funding: A race to the bottom 66 Carnevale, A.P, Van Der Werf, M., Quinn, M., Stroh, J., and Repnikov, D. (2018). Our separate & unequal public colleges: How public colleges reinforce white racial privilege and marginalize Black and Latino/a students. Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce Washington DC: Georgetown University, p. 9. 67 Huelsman. (2018, February 22). The unaffordable era: A 50-state look at rising college prices and the new American student. 68 Ibid.

54

campus turmoil

69 Friedman, Z. (2018, June 13). Student loan debt statistics in 2018: A $1.5 trillion crisis. Forbes. Retrieved January 14, 2019 from, www.forbes.com/sites/zackfriedman/ 2018/06/13/student-loan-debt-statistics-2018/#789e42097310 70 For documentation see Newfield, C. (2018, November 21). Student debt is a continuous drain on college students. Remaking the university blog. Retrieved January, 2019, from https:// utotherescue.blogspot.com/2018/11/student-debt-is-continous-drain-on.html (accessed April 4, 2019) 71 Huelsman. (2018, February 22). The unaffordable era: A 50-state look at rising college prices and the new American student. 72 Ibid. 73 Carnevale, Van Der Werf, Quinn, Stroh, and Repnikov. (2018). Our separate & unequal public colleges: How public colleges reinforce white racial privilege and marginalize Black and Latino/a students. The pattern for other students of color, especially Asian Americans, is complex. The common assumption that Asian American youth only attend selective public institutions is mistaken, since 45 percent of them attend openaccess institutions. In addition their share of those enrolling selective colleges has dropped in recent years 74 Ibid., p.1. 75 Ibid., p. 9. 76 Ibid., p. 3. 77 See, ibid., passim. 78 Ibid., p. 43. 79 Ibid., p. 5. 80 Blumenthal, S. (1986). The rise of the counter-establishment. New York, NY: Times Books, pp. 4–11, 133ff; Steinfels, P. (1979). The neoconservatives: The men who are hanging America’s politics. New York, NY: Touchstone, pp. 214ff. 81 Fabricant, M., and Brier, S. (2016). Austerity blues: Fighting for the soul of public higher education. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, p. 128. 82 Hiltzik, M. (2016, June 3). When universities try to behave like businesses, education suffers. The Los Angeles Times. Retrieved January 14, 2019 from www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/ la-fi-hiltzik-university-business-20160602-snap-story.html 83 For documentation see Newfield (2018, November 21). Student debt is a continuous drain on college students. 84 Feagin, J. R., and O’Brien, E. (2003). White men on race: Power, privilege, and the shaping of cultural consciousness. Boston, MA: Beacon Press. 85 Feagin, J. R. (2006). Systemic racism: A theory of oppression. New York, NY: Routledge. 86 Feagin, J. R. (2013). The white racial frame: Centuries of racial framing and counter-framing (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Routledge. 87 Feagin, J. R., and Ducey, K. (2017). Elite white men ruling: Who, what, when, where, and how. New York, NY: Routledge. See Chapter 1. 88 Feagin, J. R., and Feagin, C. B. (1978). Discrimination American style: Institutional racism and sexism. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. See also Benokraitis, N., and Feagin, J. R. (1986). Modern sexism: Blatant, subtle and covert discrimination. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. 89 Patitu, C. L., and Hinton, K. G. (2003). The experiences of African American women faculty and administrators in higher education: Has anything changed? New Directions for Student Services, 104, 79–93. 90 Mena, J. A., and Vaccaro, A. “I’ve Struggled, I’ve Battled”: Invisibility microaggressions experienced by women of color at a predominantly white institution. NASPA Journal about Women in Higher Education, 10(3), 301–318, p. 303.

campus turmoil

55

91 West, N. M. (2017). Withstanding our status as outsiders-within: Professional counterspaces for African American women student affairs administrators, NASPA Journal About Women in Higher Education, 10(3), 281–300, p. 292. 92 Collins, P. H. (1993). Learning from the outsider within: The sociological significance of black feminist thought. In J. S. Glazer-Raymo, E. M. Bensimon, and B. K. Townsend (Eds.), Women in higher education: A feminist perspective (pp. 45–64). Needham Heights, MA: Ginn Press. Hill Collins, P. (2000). Black feminist thought: Knowledge, consciousness, and the politics of empowerment. (Rev. ed.). New York, NY: Routledge.

2 DISCRIMINATORY EXPERIENCES FROM ACADEMIC FRONTLINES LIMITS OF ORGANIZATIONAL AND LEGAL REDRESS People of color and their white allies who endure these environments [in higher education] experience a level of mental and physical anxiety that like diabetes, hypertension, and other chronic health conditions if untreated can be personally and professionally fatal.1 As we further explore the reality and impact of exclusionary practices on the careers of women and men of color and white women in higher education, we now examine how certain structural conditions in the workplace affect career outcomes and regularly exact a substantial emotional and cognitive toll on the targets of discrimination. This will provide more empirical detail that presses us toward a deeper and more systemic approach to making sense of this country’s racialized and gendered oppressions. Before we turn to major concepts like “implicit bias” and “microaggressions” that are often used to discuss discrimination and diversity issues in academia, let us first examine some critical and persisting patterns of discrimination as they affect faculty of color and white women faculty within our historically white colleges and universities. 56

discriminatory experiences

57

Painful Tenure Hurdles for Faculty of Color

First and foremost, the academic and administrative hierarchy in historically white colleges and universities remains largely white and male, from the president to department chairs. According to a 2017 American Council of Education (ACE) survey of all colleges and universities, only 17 percent of presidents are men and women of color, and just 30 percent are women. Women of color hold only 5 percent of presidencies. These ACE statistics are deceptive since they include presidents of institutions mainly serving students of color. When these institutions are excluded, only 11 percent of the presidents are men and women of color.2 Only 11.8 percent of Chief Academic Officers (e.g., provosts) are people of color, and 41 percent are women.3 In addition, studies indicate that more than 80 percent of department chairs are white. The racial/gender hierarchy in higher education typifies the overarching elite-white-male dominance system that, as we discussed in Chapter 1, is commonplace in Western societies and generally controls decision-making authority in major institutions.4 Consistent with the aforementioned ACE survey findings, Keisha Blain, a history professor at Bennington College, has noted that that all women do not have equal access to higher academic positions. Undeniably, white women have been the primary beneficiaries as opportunities for women in academic leadership have expanded: Today women of color still face barriers when they pursue leadership positions. These barriers include the inability to see women of color as leaders, the refusal to acknowledge women of color’s intellectual value and contributions, the rampant discriminatory practices that seek to bar women of color from tenure and promotion, and the presumption of incompetence by those who question their ability to think—let alone lead.5 Within the context of omnipresent white-male dominance, wellinstitutionalized, process-based forms of marginalization and exclusion regularly derail the professional careers of many women and men of color. Consider, for example, tenure hurdles experienced by

58

discriminatory experiences

Patricia Matthew, an African American woman. Her department committee, department chair, interim dean, and external reviewers all recommended tenure, but the white male provost denied it. The provost’s faulty reasoning was that her accepted scholarly papers and her co-edited journal issue were forthcoming, but not yet in print. The in-print requirement, however, was not articulated in the tenure review guidelines that she had followed.6 At the same time in that year, Matthew learned that five assistant professors (four women of color and one white man) with joint appointments in the same department at the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor) had just been denied tenure. After reviewing the academic vita of one of the Michigan women, who had been nominated for a Nobel Prize and spoken to the United Nations General Assembly, Patricia Matthew burst into tears. She realized “that as faculty of color we can never be good enough to gain tenure if someone (or an institution) simply decides we don’t belong.” She deduced that faculty of color are particularly susceptible to the negative racial framing of senior white faculty and administrators who can, if they wish, twist traditional promotional processes to favor whites, often using the rhetoric of “objective” evaluations and under the guise of “academic judgment.” Faculty of color are frequently unaware of the white norms and habits that underpin recurring unwritten practices favoring white candidates. Matthew concludes from extant data that these experiences are not unique to her university, but are happening everywhere in higher education.7 In another example, consider the subjective comments focused on personality traits rather than on academic accomplishments in a department chair’s tenure letter regarding Professor Cleveland Hayes, an African American male faculty member. That chair admonished Hayes in writing for being too confrontational with others and assigned negative personality characteristics to him as arrogant, uncaring, inflexible, and passionate: His passion about his social justice agenda often presents itself as inflexibility and a lack of ability to consider others’ perspectives. Cleveland comes across as arrogant and as if he always needs to be right.8

discriminatory experiences

59

The chair’s letter concludes that Cleveland Hayes does not reflect the “college’s dispositions of respectfulness and professionalism.” He concluded: Faculty members remarked on Cleveland’s frequent comments on his disdain for college committees and for the teacher education faculty. The faculty feels that his unwillingness to display the agreed upon dispositions is very problematic . . . . I do not recommend him for tenure . . . .9 In his published account Professor Hayes describes the rapid escalation of negative events that led to this administrator’s harsh admonition. The fallout had occurred after Hayes raised a question about a class taught by a white colleague he was shadowing. In an effort to create a dialogue about racial and class issues, Hayes reports that he asked that colleague about the probability that a lesson plan form she developed might create lesser expectations for students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. The white colleague was offended and insisted that based on her own experiences, race is not a critical factor to consider in college teaching, or even with respect to social justice. Subsequently, the colleague barged into his office to demand an apology, which he did not offer. Hayes was later called to the department chair’s office, presented with a letter, and told that the chair had contacted Human Resources. Hayes was then assigned a “helping committee” to assist him in moderating his approach and supposed impatience in his passion for social justice. The rapidity of the acts of official censure and closure that Matthew and Hayes experienced is commonplace. A research study of 84 newly hired and mid-career faculty of color and white women revealed that turning points in their professorial careers can occur with surprising speed and often seemingly irreversibly. These faculty members described their turning points in terms of feelings of isolation from colleagues, internalized self-doubt related to feelings of competence, and collegial disapproval. The study also found that faculty of color experienced greater stress than their white colleagues in relation to these particular behavioral indicators.10

60

discriminatory experiences

More Evaluation Hurdles: Racist and Sexist Framing in Operation

The common hurdles faced by people of color and white women in the workplace often transpire in the application of differential standards in employment-related processes such as evaluation, compensation, and promotion. Research by social psychologist John Dovidio and others indicates that black and Asian American faculty and white female faculty with especially outstanding qualifications may be hired or promoted at rates comparable to those of white men, but if their record is even slightly less than perfect, they can be subjected to discrimination, including shifting the usual standards to focus on their weakest aspects. Such discrimination often arises, and can have severe career consequences, because of the hypervisibility of these nondominant academics and their often distinctive token status. Additionally, in such discriminatory situations their justified demands for fair academic recognition can result in formal or informal punishments for the complainers.11 Shifting academic standards often occur in these situations, where negative racial and gender framing can come into play. Often faculty of color are “presumed incompetent” until they prove otherwise. Moreover, as members of traditionally disadvantaged groups approach higher-level academic positions, field and laboratory studies reveal that whites’ racial biases are frequently manifested more intensely and that actual evaluation criteria become more subjective when whites are directly or symbolically threatened with disruptions to the academic status quo that routinely privileges them.12 An institution’s process-based discrimination often unfolds through behavioral barriers and racially framed expectations and evaluations that pervade everyday interactions in college and university workplaces and thereby operationalize the dominant framing and norms of the underlying elite-white-male dominance system. Take the situation described by Dorinda J. Carter Andrews, an African American woman who, as a tenure-track assistant professor faced the double jeopardy of raced and gendered identification and challenges as an outsider within a predominantly white institution. The reported disrespect with which she was treated by her teaching mentor was one marker of how he, a middleaged white man, framed her from both a white racial and male sexist

discriminatory experiences

61

perspective. Thus, he reportedly referred to her as “girl,” albeit often lightheartedly. In a meeting with him and two white female colleagues, he slammed his hand onto the table and said jokingly, “Now shut up girl and listen!” The white female colleagues did not admonish him for this behavior. Moreover, when Andrews became noticeably pregnant, he inquired loudly in a public office area, “Well, damn, girl, are you married?”13 This comment seemed to imply the common white framing of black African Americans as having children out of wedlock. Mariko Silver, President of Bennington College, describes the double standards that women face in terms of getting and exercising power compared to their white male counterparts. Silver, a rare Asian American woman college president, was counseled by a respected male college president who advised her “in an avuncular manner” that when she gave a talk she should use her body language and voice “to project force.” His was a male sexist framing of her. As she explains, “In other words, I should look and sound like him.” Her experiences led her to realize that full power is not necessarily accorded to women (of all racial backgrounds) in the official positions they come to hold: . . . power can come from position, but position does not necessarily confer power. . . . the window for earning trust, is, in my experience, smaller for a woman in an environment dominated by men. Male leaders are given the benefit of the doubt; their authority (and authoritativeness) is not only assumed but embraced; their recommendations are accepted and directions followed.14 Gendered and racialized institutions imbed both the male sexist framing and the white racial framing of those people who control them, often to the detriment of those historically excluded by these institutions. Long-term Impacts on Targets of Discrimination

The marginalizing and exclusionary barriers to their professional academic careers that Patricia Matthew, Cleveland Hayes, and Dorinda J. Carter Andrews experienced are far from isolated incidents in our colleges and universities. With few substantial remedies available for discriminatory actions in the educational workplace, faculty of color and white female faculty

62

discriminatory experiences

frequently must expend great emotional labor and suffer psychic taxation in their efforts to legitimize themselves. As Yolanda Flores Niemann, a Latina professor of psychology who has served in senior administrative roles explains, “the price that women of color pay may get heavier with increasing visibility, authority and power within the institution.” Inegalitarian realities shape the experiences of historically underrepresented groups, revealing that no matter how hard individuals work, no matter the strength of their academic credentials, and no matter the positions they acquire, they still experience vulnerability to “malevolent experiences” at the hands of those in the dominant white group.15 As we consider the long-term impact of everyday acts of marginalization and exclusion on the careers and personal lives of people of color and white women, it becomes clear that the common terminology of “microaggressions” is conceptually inadequate, as we discuss further in the next chapter (see p. 93ff ). Day-to-day discriminatory acts create intense emotional labor, major cognitive challenges, and serious stress-related health effects for nondominant individuals in higher education and other major workplaces. For example, a major study by sociologist Louwanda Evans of African American pilots and flight attendants revealed that due to their racial and gender identities, they are forced to engage in much extra emotional and cognitive labor as they interact daily with white airline management and their white passengers. African American airline employees must adhere to white normative expectations for no emotional displays at work and display deference to whites who engage in racist behaviors—or whites will view them as deviant and negatively frame them with racial stereotypes of the “angry black female” or the “violent black male.” Suppressing their feelings about white racial hostility and discrimination in order to keep their jobs involves painful emotional labor, in this case as part of the larger structurally racist conditions and framing of white-controlled work spaces.16 In addition, the study also found that they African American pilots and flight attendants had to engage in much cognitive labor, such as trying to figure out what a particular white’s discriminatory act meant and how to handle that racially hazardous work situation in

discriminatory experiences

63

the future. Often, too, they worked through these issues, cognitively and emotionally, in concert with black friends and family members, thereby gaining support but also expanding the negative impact of that discrimination well beyond the individual. Confirming these findings, another study of black professionals found that when they are a token or solo black person in a workplace, they too must be careful not to display anger, frustration, and annoyance even in settings that normally accept such behaviors for white individuals, such as in a courtroom or in labor negotiations.17 Maintaining a workplace identity that is acceptable to whites typically involves much time, effort, and energy for people of color, who often must perform according to whites’ racial expectations. This is a form of well-institutionalized discrimination, which involves a type of white-enforced “acting white” for people of color. Racially differential behavior expectations require men and women of color to avoid emotionalism, to convey workplace issues they see in a non-controversial manner, and to keep a lowered tone of voice to avoid accusations of anger. In this process they again must expend much emotional and cognitive labor not usually required of whites in similar settings.18 More generally, sociologists Glenn Bracey and Wendy Moore have discussed well how people of color moving into historically white institutional settings frequently face white-imposed “race tests.” That is, many whites overtly or subtly demand that these nonwhite entrants “serve the interests of whites in the space,” or whites execute these “exclusionary race tests to coerce people of color into leaving the space.” These conventionally white spaces include historically white workplaces, churches, and colleges and universities.19 The Cumulative Effects of Emotional and Cognitive Labor

The concept of racial battle fatigue (RBF) was developed by the sociologist and University of Utah dean, William A. Smith. Smith thereby addresses the physiological, psychological, and behavioral taxation experienced by racialized groups. The stress-related impacts of discrimination include serious damage to individuals’ physical and

64

discriminatory experiences

psychological health. Stress arises due to the discrepancy between the negative demands of the racist environment and the individual’s biological, psychological, and social resources.20 Examples of the psychological impact of discrimination are the targeted individual’s feelings of apathy, anger, anxiety, and helplessness. The physiological effects include high blood pressure, gastric distress, headaches, and sleep disturbances. The emotional–behavioral impact can be withdrawal, self-doubt, and loss of confidence. Smith characterizes the impact of oppressive situations on people of color as similar to military combat stress. It is ubiquitous; has a multi-faceted impact on physiological, psychological, and emotional reactions; and reflects the imposition of the dominant, institutionalized racial framing and ideology. Smith postulated early on that individual awareness of racial oppression and its impacts increases with the level of educational attainment; this prediction has been confirmed in a study of 661 black men.21 Psychologist Robert Carter has also posited that traumatic stress resulting from racial harassment and other discrimination is typically experienced as emotionally painful, sudden, and uncontrollable by their targets. The reactions arising from this racialized stress can be manifested in many ways—depression, anger, loss of self-esteem, shame, and guilt. The duration and nature of the racial events triggering the stress—as well as their number, the social support available, and the person’s physical vulnerability—are contributing factors to its severity.22 Amplifying these findings, a study of 189 African American women found that their level of everyday stress involved a combination of race-related and gender-related stress, as well as more generic stress.23 Consider concrete examples of how racial battle fatigue and traumatic stress accompany acts of everyday racism in an important study of 36 African American male students at five predominantly white university campuses. The study describes the racial targeting of these students, including being placed under surveillance and being criminalized by campus and community police officers. Take the case of Ahmed, a student at the University of Illinois, who was followed by a white campus police officer as he went to buy snacks at a local store. The officer asked him to step outside, questioned his whereabouts that

discriminatory experiences

65

evening, and asked for identification. Apparently a woman’s purse had been stolen nearby and a generalized description of a tall black male had been issued. Without explaining anything to him, the officer patted him down and had him place his hands against the wall. It was only after another individual passed by who fit the description that he was released. Such recurring discriminatory events often have longtime, even lifetime, effects on those thus targeted.24 In a recent incident at Yale University, Lolade Siyonbola, a black graduate student, was initially questioned intensely by two white police officers after she was found taking a nap in the common room of the Yale Hall of Graduate Studies and asked to show identification. The officers were called by a white graduate student who reported that a black woman she did not know was asleep in that common room. (That white student had a few months earlier called the police on another black graduate student.) Siyonbola broadcast the tense police interview on Facebook live, responding “I deserve to be here. I pay tuition like everybody else. I’m not going to justify my existence here.” Again, we see the substantial negative impact of just one serious act of white discrimination, including yet more emotional and cognitive labor.25 The impact of such racist actions on students of color is often severe and lasting. Sociologist Leslie Houts Picca got more than 300 students of color at various colleges and universities to keep diaries of everyday racial events they had faced. One example of a difficult racist event and its impact was given by a black male student at a historically white college in the West: This is one of those sad and angry nights for me. Tonight marks the third time since the beginning of the school year that I’ve been called a nigger by a bunch of white students on a .. weekend . . . . At first I used to wonder where they actually take the time in their heads to separate me from everyone else by the color of my skin. I used to just blame alcohol consumption for their obvious ignorance and racist attitudes, but I have since stopped trying to make excuses for them. . . . [He later adds] Sometimes it seems that if I am around all white people, then I become nothing more than a token Black “exhibit” for their amusement.

66

discriminatory experiences

I guess that even I have to be careful not to judge all based on a few bad examples. . . . The saddest thing however, is that these people, these college students are supposed to be the supposed crème de la crème, the future business and political leaders.26 This young student describes his experience with white racial framing in action—frequent verbal violence by acting-entitled white students. He describes the great impact, his pain and strong emotions of sadness, anger, and disgust. He has had to engage, like most people of color thus targeted, in extensive energy-draining emotional and cognitive labor to puzzle out white discrimination and to develop countering strategies— far more labor than most whites (including the student attackers) ever do with regard to racial matters. His anti-racist counter-framing is evident; he rejects the alcohol explanation and accents the white students’ racist framing as systemic, including their emotions of racial hatred. Indicating substantial sociological sophistication, he then notes another type of discrimination he faces—white “amusement” tokenism, but then indicates his caution in not moving too quickly to generalizations. At the end, he hammers home his chilling point about who these young whites are likely to become in the future. This college student is by no means an exception. Numerous recent studies have revealed such racialized college climates. For instance, at one historically white university researchers explored how black male students there dealt with its well-established white racial climate. As in the case of the student above, they too reported a commonplace sense of displacement, isolation, and lack of belonging, all likely associated with their reported experiences of whites’ insulting and disrespecting them. Again they indicated significant emotional and cognitive labor in dealing with this racist campus climate, labor not required of whites.27 Contending with everyday discrimination is an energy-consuming, life-consuming experience for Americans of color. In an interview project with middle class African Americans that the second author conducted, one very distinguished professor, who had taught for many years at the historically white University of Texas (Austin), explained well the cost of dealing with a lifetime of racism:

discriminatory experiences

67

If you can think of the mind as having one hundred ergs of energy, and the average man uses 50 percent of his energy dealing with the everyday problems of the world . . . then he has 50 percent more to do creative kinds of things that he wants to do. Now that’s a white person. Now a black person also has one hundred ergs; he uses fifty percent the same way a white man does, dealing with what the white man has [to deal with], so he has 50 percent left. But he uses 25 percent fighting being black, [with] all the problems being black and what it means.28 By virtue of an accident of birth, African Americans and other Americans of color must typically expend an enormous amount of their energy defending themselves and their families from the recurring assaults of everyday racism. In contrast, over their lifetimes, white Americans on average have a major life-energy advantage, for they do not have to waste large amounts of time dealing with the impositions of anti-white discrimination. Active Resistance by Underrepresented Faculty Members

Because of the persistent efforts of faculty of color and white women faculty to document their struggles, organizations such as the American Association of University Women (AAUW) have had an active role in analyzing specific patterns of discrimination in tenure reviews in higher education.29 These organizations and their members have often taken the lead in documenting and protesting the exclusionary and other discriminatory behaviors that negatively impact tenure and promotion outcomes. They emphasize that some due-process protections do exist in the typical tenure review process for faculty members and procedures do follow established criteria set in university or college policy. Such protections include the right of appeal to a grievance committee or higher administrative authority. By making aggressive use of these venues, faculty appeals can be filed on both procedural grounds and substantive grounds, including racial and gender discrimination. In contrast, however, relatively little discussion or research has involved the employment challenges faced by at-will administrators in higher education. For the many administrators in these at-will positions, due-process

68

discriminatory experiences

protections generally are unavailable, except when specifically related to concrete discrimination complaints presented pursuant to a specific institutional policy. These administrators usually serve “at the pleasure” of a single supervisor, and this status is typically documented in their appointment letters. Acts terminating employment typically give no reason for the action in order to avoid a “for cause” paper trail and legal liability, and can be undertaken for purely subjective reasons. The usual reason cited for termination is something vague such as “we need to go in a different direction.” And the relatively covert nature of many such actions makes proof of discriminatory treatment extremely difficult to provide.30 Consider the narrative of Caroline, a white female provost at a research university, who described the unethical demands and bullying she experienced from a top male administrator during her administrative service there. As she explained, I had somebody who controlled my future and wanted me to do something which I didn’t find ethical actually, but it was again one of those “he-said-she-said” situations and he had the power and the ear of everybody and my solution was to leave. I left the institution. . . .31 More often than not, such administrative situations as this do result in individuals leaving an institution and having to find other employment. Using the Legal System: Success and Failure

When seemingly discriminatory acts occur, nondominant individuals may believe that legal recourse beyond the campus is a viable pathway through a claim with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). This is the major government agency that deals with racial and gender discrimination. Yet as statistics of success or failure reveal, this path is unlikely to succeed and will incur significant legal, financial, professional, and emotional costs for the person seeking such redress for discrimination.32 The EEOC was created under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which prohibits the use of race, color, national origin, religion, and

discriminatory experiences

69

sex in employment determinations for workplaces with more than 15 employees. Following the passage of the 1963 Equal Pay Act (EPA) and its protection of women from pay discrimination, plaintiffs can file discrimination claims relating to their compensation under this EPA law or under Title VII. Complainants can also bring charges of workplace harassment on the basis of any legally protected status such as race, gender, and age, although claims of sexual harassment have gained the most public attention. Charges of employer retaliation can also be filed if an employee has reason to believe that the employer retaliated after they complained about discriminatory actions against themselves or another employees.33 However, individuals do not have the right to pursue an individual course of action under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. That is, EEOC officials must issue an individual a right to sue letter to pursue the case themselves.34 The timeframe for filing a claim is a too-short 180 days after the alleged discriminatory incident. If the right to sue is pursued, individual cases can proceed to trial, and in some instances may even be decided by the Supreme Court. Yet since Title VII does not explicitly define discrimination, EEOC investigators face the difficult task of determining what constitutes unlawful discrimination. This “legal muddle” is one of the reasons leading to conflicting Supreme Court rulings over time.35 Title VII law identifies two primary avenues to determine whether discrimination has occurred: disparate treatment and disparate impact. Disparate treatment is an individual claim that an individual has been discriminated against and is based upon the proving the intent to discriminate by a particular decision-maker in authority who took a “materially adverse action” against the employee. A small number of cases have allowed some flexibility in determining this racial intent, as long as the employee can prove racially disparate treatment.36 Because Congress did not elucidate a statutory framework for determining this discriminatory treatment and its motivation, the complex (tripartite) process for a plaintiff to prove a prima facie case of disparate treatment discrimination had to be clarified by the Supreme Court in McDonnell Douglas Corp. v. Green (1973).37 First the plaintiff must show that she or he belongs to a covered racial group. In the second stage the

70

discriminatory experiences

employer must provide a legitimate reason for the employment decision; and in the third stage the defendant must demonstrate that the typically non-racial reason was only a pretext for racial discrimination. One central weakness in the disparate treatment legal rationale is the notion of individual agency, rather than of institutional or systemic racism.38 For this reason, employment discrimination law is now at a crossroads because it is not realistic and thus overlooks the typical institutional and systemic factors, including organizational context, and instead focuses on overt, individual acts.39 According to scholars Gertner and Hart, the legal doctrine and its application in court proceedings involves “the unrealistic search for a rogue, guilty decision-maker in the workplace, whose biases are overt.” As they explain, “anything short of that—any more subtle form of discrimination—will not pass muster” in much of the current justice system.40 Disparate impact applies to the differential treatment of members of a protected group based upon their racial or gender classification through a “particular employment practice” that affects opportunities for employment.41 Even this basis for filing claims of group discrimination has been under conservative legal siege. In Wal-Mart v. Dukes (2011), a more conservative Supreme Court determined that the particular female plaintiffs suing for sex-based discrimination could not represent a nationwide class of women workers because they could not prove that high-level decisionmakers within Wal-Mart had adopted an explicit policy of sex discrimination.42 The weak and deflective legal language of disparate treatment ignores the real world of actual employees and managers—that is, the many ways that systemic forms of exclusion accumulate in the workplace and in their routine operation result in acts of racial or gender exclusion and subordination. Consider, for example, a study of 60,743 cases of racial and sex discrimination in employment in Ohio from 1988 through 2003. Researchers found that expulsion through discriminatory firing was the most common form of discrimination. In most cases, the discriminatory action was covert and entailed the differential implementation by managers of workplace policies such as through the subjective application of performance

discriminatory experiences

71

criteria (e.g., vague notions like insufficient “soft skills”) to justify negative employment actions.43 The tenure review letter of Cleveland Hayes, noted previously, exemplifies the subjective use of alleged “soft skills” weaknesses to critique his academic performance—in this case as being “too arrogant” and “passionate” about social justice as seen by a white observer. Further, in alleging racial or sex discrimination, the perpetrator must have full supervisory authority to take action. Reinforcing the individualized approach to workplace discrimination, in Vance v. Ball State University (2013) the Supreme Court in a close decision raised the legal bar under Title VII by requiring that employment discrimination be perpetrated by a supervisor with enough authority to make tangible employment decisions such as to hire and fire.44 In this case a workplace racial harassment suit filed by Maetta Vance, an African American catering assistant, in relation to a white catering specialist, was rejected because that white catering specialist was ruled to not be her supervisor. Under current law, the burden of proof for the plaintiff in a disparate treatment claim is steep. Typically, he or she must prove conscious racial bias such as through explicit racist slurs or over racially biased statements. With the advent of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, employers are keenly aware of the need to avoid such overt statements or statements that betray hidden racial biases. The rise of subtle and pretextual forms of discrimination and widespread awareness of the penalties for overt discriminatory acts have increased employer avoidance of egregious or overt racist statements. Drawing on the view of the legal discourse of intent as stripping the individual complainant of history and identity, Prescod-Weinstein has explained: When legal discourse is stripped of the history of forced servitude and genocide, then the only time in racial discourse that matters is now—not anything that happened before. In this context, assessing experiences of bias requires only considering the intent of someone who is biased.45 In addition, under current law broader charges of a hostile work environment also must rely on proving the discriminatory conduct by numerous individual harassers rather than on various negative aspects of

72

discriminatory experiences

the workplace environment taken as a whole. Overall, the development of employment discrimination law in recent years, under a much more conservative Supreme Court than in the late 1960s and 1970s, has made proving racial or gender discrimination very difficult, even for those who routinely suffer it.46 The Slim Odds of Proving a Claim of Discrimination

To be more specific, let us consider the usual steps in the EEOC charge resolution process that begins on receipt of a complaint of discrimination. As noted previously, the EEOC is the government organization dealing with racial and gender discrimination complaints. Its officials may or may not hold an intake interview to determine the prima facie evidence that might support a discrimination complaint and whether that claim falls under federal EEO law. One of the difficulties in the investigatory process is the significant variation among local EEOC offices in how these important investigations are conducted. Unfortunately, studies have found that the outcomes of similar discrimination complaints vary by the particular state in which that claim is filed.47 Another hurdle in filing a discrimination claim is how it is treated based on a determination made by EEOC officials about the strength of the evidence. According to unpublished data, at this point of intake in its Charge Handling Priority System, the EEOC categorizes only about 19 percent of the cases as “A,” with strong evidence of unlawful discrimination. Most, 58 percent, are categorized as “B,” with moderate evidence; and 23 percent are categorized as “C,” indicating weak evidence. These categorizations indicate the extent of the EEOC’s own investigations. That is, only a fifth (A, “strong”) of the cases actually received a thorough EEOC investigation.48 Then, after an interview with the claimant, the EEOC may contact the employer for a response and position statement. Most of these companies and other organizations use their legal counsel to provide statements and are well-equipped in terms of organizational and legal resources to respond to individual discrimination claims and associated EEOC requests. Employers are generally better able to navigate

discriminatory experiences

73

this legal redress process and influence its outcome than the individual complainants, as employers can draw on this legal expertise and other organizational resources. Next, if “reasonable cause” (reason to believe discrimination occurred) is not found by EEOC officials, the case will be dismissed. Even then, the EEOC issues a right-to-sue letter to the individual complainant. However, recent (2015–2016) statistics indicate that less than a tenth of cases that are issued such an EEOC right-to-sue letter actually proceed to litigation.49 In contrast, if “reasonable cause” is found by the EEOC, a case will move to a conciliation process that leads to a settlement or it will be referred to the EEOC legal unit. Only limited success has occurred for employees who file discrimination charges-with less than one in five complaints resulting in any type of favorable outcome for the complainant.50 An analysis of 10,810 charges filed against 2166 employers between 1990 and 2002 found that only 16 percent were resolved favorably for the charging party. Moreover, as the study’s author notes, this determination of favorable or unfavorable outcomes is difficult, given the complex nature of the EEOC charging process and the several ways in which their resolutions occur. This study included all outcomes that resulted in some benefits for the complaint, including through outside-the-court conciliations. Nonetheless, resolutions that required serious changes in workplace policies occurred in only one percent of cases. Charges of workplace harassment and lack of promotion were more likely to receive favorable outcomes than job termination disputes. In addition, those employers with experience in this complicated charge-resolution process were more likely to receive favorable employer outcomes.51 An analysis of EEOC outcomes in 2017 revealed that only 2.9 percent of charges were judged in that year to have “reasonable cause” based on evidence resulting from an EEOC investigation; most were found to have “no reasonable cause.” In addition, the notion of “reasonable cause” itself gives cover to a wide variety of employers’ discriminatory actions that can be hidden by them within a subjective application of vague standards and language. Unless a “smoking gun” of overtly biased and discriminatory language is documented well, the plaintiffs will be unlikely to prove

74

discriminatory experiences

that there is “reasonable cause.” Fifteen percent of the cases filed in 2017 resulted in administrative closures. But, as the EEOC itself cautions, the 2–3 percent rate of found discrimination is only part of the story and does not capture the favorable impact resulting from monetary and nonmonetary resolutions resulting from settlements before and after a claim is filed.52 These positive resolutions of discrimination claims included settlement of 6.4 percent of cases with benefits to the charging party, successful conciliation of 1.2 percent of cases with relief to the charging party, and withdrawal of 5.4 percent of cases by the charging party upon receiving benefits.53 Furthermore, as noted previously, these outcomes often differed across different EEOC districts. Even with a finding of reasonable cause, this is only a starting point in the process of a plaintiff proving discrimination. Less than one percent of the discrimination claims are handled by the EEOC legal unit with a decision to proceed to litigation.54 Should cases make it to trial, the employer defendants can ask a judge to dismiss the case for various reasons through summary judgment.55 As a result, at every stage of the EEOC process, the possibility for the success of a discrimination claim is severely circumscribed. For these reasons, federal oversight of racial and gender discrimination essentially amounts to an administrative process rather than a formal legal avenue of redress56 In regard to higher education one study of 52 tenure denial cases occurring between 1970 and 2000 revealed that 36 (69 percent) of these cases filed by faculty claiming discrimination were won by the educational institutions—with 13 of these results attained by them without going to trial. Only six faculty cases were won on the merits of the discrimination claim and had proved racial animus in court, while ten others simply avoided a final decision in various ways. Four of the winning cases based on the merits of the discrimination claim were white faculty who sued historically black institutions. In only two cases did black faculty members win in court against historically white institutions, with a third case filed by a black faculty member resulting in the judge overturning the jury decision and the appeals court ordering a new trial. The remaining cases that were won had avoided a final court decision. Thus, of the 14 black men and women who filed against white institutions for tenure discrimination, only three were victorious in court or otherwise.57

discriminatory experiences

75

Despite the implementation of the Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as Benjamin Baez has concluded, “although Blacks were the beneficiaries of Title VII, they have not been successful . . . in proving race or national origin discrimination against colleges and universities.”58 One can quickly see that a reason for the serious weakness of the EEOC in resolving discrimination complaints is that its governing legislation is not crafted to deal seriously with widely institutionalized and often covert forms of racial and gender discrimination. Contemporary discrimination in the post-Civil Rights era has become more subtle and concealed in behavioral practices and workplace structures. A remedial model based on case-by-case claims of discrimination creates a dilemma in terms of resolving systemic patterns of inequality.59 In addition, the EEOC has never has been provided by (especially white) federal legislators with the level of serious government funding and staffing that is required for it to deal with all legitimate complaints of racial and gender discrimination that it annually receives—plus those it would receive if it had a better record of redressing them. The EEOC’s limited enforcement authority based on the definitional framework of existing federal statutes coupled with its reliance on private mechanisms (employee lawsuits) to enforce public laws60 have constrained the ability of the agency to address workplace inequality. Professional and Individual Costs of Complaining about Discrimination

The social science research and legal literatures document well the social costs of claiming racial or gender discrimination, including the often intense emotional and cognitive labor that such discrimination exacts on its targets. Because employment issues have serious financial implications for breadwinners, the stakes are high for individuals who experience workplace discrimination. The ripple effects of discriminatory treatment extend to families, who also frequently face significant emotional and cognitive labor in that regard. Complaining about racial or gender mistreatment has been shown to have significant social consequences. For example, one experimental study found that an African American male subject was devalued and deemed more argumentative, trouble-making, and hypersensitive

76

discriminatory experiences

when he attributed a failing test grade to discrimination in contrast to an African American male subject who attributed his failure to the quality of his test answers. These experimental researchers note that making a discrimination claim is viewed as a form of complaining and blame-pointing. The consequences for racially stigmatized individuals may be especially unpleasant when complaining about discrimination involves a more powerful (e.g., white) individual who controls significant socioeconomic resources.61 News of employment closure such as tenure denial often spreads quickly across the well-connected academic world. As a comprehensive report on sex discrimination in tenure denial by the American Association of University Women (AAUW) has pointed out, many college administrators or faculty may be hesitant to hire an individual rejected for tenure by another educational institution. And if a lawsuit is filed by an aggrieved faculty member, the likelihood of being hired elsewhere decreases markedly, since such individuals may be viewed as “troublemakers.” The emotional and cognitive labor and the resultant battle fatigue resulting from discriminatory treatment can be compounded by filing a discrimination claim. As one female faculty plaintiff in the AAUW report noted: The toll of pursuing such cases is extraordinary. There are few, if any, women who emerge uncompromised with respect to their health, their financial situation, or their professional life.62 Another former plaintiff, Catherine Clinger, wrote of the emotional costs of undertaking litigation, warning that discrimination plaintiffs can expect to be as depressed as you’ve ever been in your life, to realize that you see things that are really obvious and it will take a long time to convince someone else . . . . And you should go in knowing that there is a huge possibility that you will get nothing but grief out of this.63 For individuals involved in litigation, unsupportive university administrators can and do counter their discrimination claims in many ways.

discriminatory experiences

77

Such approaches include presenting unflattering criticisms of the faculty member’s personality and professional work, thereby making the experience more humiliating and demeaning. Faculty plaintiffs are often disappointed by the lack of support from other colleagues, including other nondominant faculty members. As one litigant, Janet Lever, wrote, she experienced a “lack of support from women who also blame the victim more than they see sexism in the system.” She also noted how difficult it was to find another academic position: “It makes getting other academic appointments more difficult. Because it’s understood that deans won’t trust you, faculty search committees don’t waste scarce resources recruiting you.”64 Yet another female discrimination plaintiff reported how some of her colleagues “including many women, avoided or even seemed to shun me.”65 And loss of the ability to gain positive formal and informal employment references due to adverse publicity over a discrimination complaint further restricts future employment prospects in academia. Given the potential lack of success in filing a claim and the attendant psychological, financial, and career costs, men of color and most women who experience career-derailing mistreatment often pay an especially heavy price. Consider, for example, the narrative of Alex, a Latino who served as Chief Diversity Officer at a major research university and somehow became the innocent scapegoat for an unrelated university scandal:66 A scandal unrelated to my position as chief diversity officer became the central concern of my institution’s central administration. I continued [to] advocate for diversity and soon became an isolated and inconvenient voice. Before long, my position was eliminated. It confirmed what I had figured out soon after I was hired, that the creation of my position was just intended as diversity window dressing and little more. Ironically, even this Chief Diversity Officer, whose role was to safeguard and protect diversity there, could not survive dealing with just one significant scandal at his institution. In a similar story, Michael, a black Affirmative Action Officer at a southern research university, experienced differential treatment from his new white male supervisor who did not value

78

discriminatory experiences

his experience and expertise, although he already had a record of exemplary service with the university. As a result, Michael underwent significant personal stress, feeling under great pressure and that in every decision he had to perform better and be better. The lack of support he experienced in his important daily work caused him to retire early from the university.67 The examples offered in this chapter reveal that the vocabulary of microaggressions or micro-inequities again fails to capture the often long-term and very damaging effects of these commonplace discriminatory actions on the careers and personal lives of men of color and women of various backgrounds. It also fails to implicate the larger realities of institutional racism and institutional sexism. Most of the discriminatory incidents we discuss throughout this book are nested within and shaped by these important organizational and institutional contexts. We have seen in this chapter patterns of institutionalized exclusion and other discrimination that accumulate and coalesce in acts of employment censure and closure. Many testimonials from the frontlines of academia emphasize the trifecta of physical, emotional, and other psychological ramifications of what are, in fact, macro-aggressions or macro-inequities. And there is usually little recourse available through conventional legal and other institutional avenues. Conclusion

As discussed in this chapter, the language of much current diversity analysis is itself problematical. With the empirical findings presented here in mind, in the next two chapters we discuss some important critiques of the commonplace concepts of “microaggressions” and “implicit bias” (“unconscious bias”) that demonstrate the ways they lack explanatory and predictive power related to the serious everyday acts of racial and gender discrimination. Given the widespread currency of these terms in much diversity training on college and university campuses, it seems surprising that the effectiveness of these specific interventions remains an open research and training question. In the next chapters we will examine the implications of the emphasis on implicit and bias microaggressions in diversity work, such as in search committee briefings, and suggest alternative ways of strengthening current diversity language and related diversity education efforts.

discriminatory experiences

Notes

79

1 Fasching-Varner, K. J., Albert, K. A., Mitchell, R. W., and Allen, C. M. (2014). Introduction. In K. J. Fasching-Varner, K. A. Albert, R. W. Mitchell, and C. M. Allen (Eds.) Racial battle fatigue in higher education: Exposing the myth of post-racial America (pp. xv–xviii). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, p. xvii. 2 American college president study (2017). Washington, DC: American Council on Education 3 Pathway to the presidency (2013). Washington, DC: American Council on Education, 4 See, for example, Gmelch, W. H., Roberts, D., Ward, K., and Hirsch, S. (2017). A retrospective view of department chairs: Lessons learned. The Department Chair, 28(1), 1–4. See also Chun, E., and Evans, A. (2015). The department chair as transformative diversity leader: Building inclusive learning environments in higher education. Sterling, VA: Stylus; and Feagin, J. R., and Ducey, K. (2017). Elite white men ruling: Who, what, when, where, and how. New York, NY: Routledge. 5 Blain, K. N. (2018, April 6). “Power is still too white.” In “The Awakening: Women and power in the academy.” Chronicle Review. The Chronicle of Higher Education. Retrieved July 30, 2018, from www.chronicle.com/interactives/the-awakening 6 Matthew, P. A. (2016). Preface. In P. A. Matthew (Ed.) (2016). Written/unwritten: Diversity and the hidden truths of tenure. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, p. xiv. 7 Ibid. 8 Hayes, C. (2014). Assault in the academy: When it becomes more than racial battle fatigue, p. 74. In K. J. Fasching-Varner, K. A. Albert, R. W. Mitchell, and C. M. Allen (Eds.), Racial battle fatigue in higher education: Exposing the myth of post-racial America (pp. 69–76). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. 9 Ibid., p. 69. 10 Boice, R. (1993). Early turning points in professorial careers of women and minorities. In J. Gainen and R. Boice (Eds.), Building a diverse faculty. New Directions for Teaching and Learning, no. 53 (pp. 71–80). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. 11 Dovidio, J. F. (2012). Introduction. In G. G. Muhs, Y. F. Niemann, C. G. Gonzales, and A. P. Harris (Eds.), Presumed incompetent: The intersections of race and class for women in academia (pp. 113–115). Boulder, CO: The University Press of Colorado. 12 Hodson, G., Dovidio J. F., and Gaertner, S. L. (2002) Processes in racial discrimination: Differential weighting of conflicting information. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 28(4), 460–471; Dovidio, J. F., and Gaertner, S. L. (1996). Affirmative action, unintentional racial biases, and intergroup relations. Journal of Social Issues, 52(4), 51–75. 13 Andrews, D. J. C. (2015). Navigating raced-gendered microaggressions: The experiences of a tenure-track black female scholar, pp. 81–82. In F. A. Bonner II, a.f. marbly, F. Tuit, P. A. Robinson, F. Tuitt, R. M. Bandu, and R. L. Hughes (Eds.), Black faculty in the academy: Narratives for negotiating identity and achieving career success (pp. 79–88). New York, NY: Routledge. 14 Silver, M. (6 April, 2018). It’s ok to lead like a woman. In The awakening: Women and power in the academy. Chronicle Review. The Chronicle of Higher Education. Retrieved July 30, 2018, from www.chronicle.com/interactives/the-awakening 15 Niemann, Y. F. (2012). Lessons from the experience of women of color working in academia, p. 448. In G. G. Muhs, Y. F. Niemann, C. G. Gonzales, and A. P. Harris (Eds.) (2012). Presumed incompetent: The intersections of race and class for women in academia (pp. 446–500). Boulder, CO: University of Colorado Press. 16 Evans, L. (2013). Cabin pressure: African American pilots, flight attendants, and emotional labor. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.

80

discriminatory experiences

17 Wingfield, A. H. (14 October, 2015). Being black—but not too black—in the workplace. The Atlantic. Retrieved July 16, 2018, from www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/10/ being-black-work/409990/ 18 Carbado, D. W., and Gulati, M. (2013). Acting white? Rethinking race in “post-racial” America. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press; Chun, E. (2010, Winter). Light at the end of the tunnel: Effective responses to difficult dialogues. Insight into Diversity, 4. 19 Bracey, G. E., and Moore, W. L. (2017, May). “Race tests”: Racial boundary maintenance in white evangelical churches. Sociological Inquiry, 87. 282–302. 20 Woods-Giscombe, C., and Lobel, M. (2008). Race and gender matter: A multidimensional approach to conceptualizing and measuring stress in African American women. Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology, 14(3), 173–182. 21 Smith, W. A., Hung, M., and Franklin, J. D. (2011). Racial battle fatigue and the miseducation of black men: Racial microaggressions, societal problems, and environmental stress. Journal of Negro Education, 80(1), 63–82. 22 Carter, R. T. (2007). Racism and psychological and emotional injury: Recognizing and assessing race-based traumatic stress. The Counseling Psychologist, 35(1), 13–105. 23 Woods-Giscombe and Lobel. (2008). Race and gender matter. 24 Smith, W. A., Allen, W. R., and Danley, L. L. (2007). “Assume the position . . . you fit the description”: Psychosocial experiences and racial battle fatigue among African American male college students. American Behavioral Scientist, 51(4), 551–578. 25 Wootson Jr., C. R. (11 May 2018). A black Yale student fell asleep in her dorm’s common room. A white student called police. The Washington Post. Retrieved July 14, 2018, from www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2018/05/10/a-black-yale-studentfell-asleep-in-her-dorms-common-room-a-white-student-called-police/ 26 Picca, L. H. (2014). Everyday racial interactions for whites and college students of color. In C. M. Renzetti and R. K. Bergen (Eds.), Understanding diversity (pp. 144–155). New York: Pearson. 27 Parker, W. M., Puig, A., Johnson, J. and Anthony Jr., C. (2016, Fall). Black males on white campuses: Still invisible men? College Student Affairs Journal, 76–92; McClain, S., Beasley, S. T., Jones, B., Awosogba, O., Jackson, S., and Cokley, K. (2016, April). An examination of the impact of racial and ethnic identity, impostor feelings, and minority status stress on the mental health of Black college students. Journal of Multicultural Counseling and Development, 44, 101–117. 28 Feagin, J. R., and Sikes, M. P. (1994). Living racism: The black middle-class experience. Boston: Beacon Press, pp. 295–296. 29 AAUW Educational Foundation (2004). Tenure denied: Cases of sex discrimination in academia. Washington, DC, p. 71. 30 See Chun, E., and Evans, A. (2011). Diverse administrators in peril: The new indentured class in higher education. Boulder, CO: Paradigm. 31 Ibid. 32 AAUW Educational Foundation (2004). Tenure denied. 33 Hirsh, C. E. (2008). Settling for less—Organizational determinants of discrimination-charge outcomes. Law and Society Review, 42(2), 239–274. 34 Baez, B. (2013). Affirmative action, hate speech and tenure: Narratives about race and law in the academy. New York, NY: Routledge. 35 Hirsh (2008). Settling for less; Leiter, W. M., and Leiter, S. (2011). Affirmative action in antidiscrimination law and policy: An overview and synthesis (2nd ed.). Albany, NY, p. 6 36 Green, T. K. (2005). Work culture and discrimination. California Law Review, 93(3), 623–684.

discriminatory experiences

81

37 McDonnell Douglas Corp. v. Green, 411 U.S. 792 (1973). As discussed in Cunningham, E. C. (1998). The rise of identity politics I: The myth of the protected class in Title VII disparate treatment cases. Connecticut Law Review, 441(30), 441–501. 38 For further discussion of this distinction, see Baez, B. (2000). Agency, structure, and power: An inquiry into racism and resistance for education. Studies in Philosophy and Education, 19, 329–348. 39 Green, T. F. (2007). A structural approach as antidiscrimination mandate: Locating employer wrong. Vanderbilt Law Review, 60, 849–904. 40 Gertner, N., and Hart, M. (2012). Implicit bias in employment litigation, p. 81. In J. D. Levinson and R. J. Smith (Eds.), Implicit racial bias across the law (pp. 80–94). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. 41 Ibid. 42 Green, T. K. (2011). The future of systemic disparate treatment law. Berkeley Journal of Employment & Labor Law, 32(2), 395–454. 43 Roscigno, V. J. with Garcia, L. (2007). Race discrimination in employment. In V. J. Roscigno (Ed.), The face of discrimination: How race and gender impact work and home lives. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. 44 Greenhouse, S. (25 June, 2013). Supreme Court raises bar to prove job discrimination. The New York Times. Retrieved July 15, 2018 from www.nytimes.com/2013/06/25/business/ supreme-court-raises-bar-to-prove-job-discrimination.html 45 Prescod-Weinstein, C. (2018). Diversity is a dangerous set-up. Retrieved July 7, 2018 from https://medium.com/space-anthropology/diversity-is-a-dangerous-set-up-8cee942e7f22 46 Green (2005). A structural approach as antidiscrimination mandate; Gertner and Hart (2012). Implicit bias in employment litigation. 47 Hirsh. (2008). Settling for less. Hirsh refers here to Lancaster, R., et al. Social structure and formal law: Social attributes and the outcomes of employment discrimination cases. American Sociological Association Conference, Montreal, Quebec. 48 Ibid. 49 Captain, S. (31 July, 2017). Workers win only 1% of federal civil rights lawsuits at trial. Fast Company. Retrieved July 4, 2018 from www.fastcompany.com/40440310/employees-winvery-few-civil-rights-lawsuits 50 Hirsh. (2008). Settling for less. 51 Ibid. 52 What you should know: Myths and facts about the federal sector EEO process. Equal Opportunity Commission. Retrieved January 6, 2019 from www.eeoc.gov/eeoc/ newsroom/wysk/federal_sector_eeo_process.cfm 53 U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. All Statutes (Charges filed with EEOC) FY 1997 – FY 2017. Retrieved July 4, 2018 from www.eeoc.gov/eeoc/statistics/enforcement/ all.cfm 54 Ibid. 55 Gertner and Hart. (2012). Implicit bias in employment litigation. 56 Ibid. 57 Baez (2013). Affirmative action, hate speech and tenure: Narratives about race and law in the academy. 58 Ibid., p. 116. 59 Hirsh, C. E. (2009). The strength of weak enforcement: The impact of discrimination charges, legal environments, and organizational conditions on workplace segregation. American Sociological Review, 74(2), 245–271. 60 Bornstein, S. (2014). Rights in recession: Toward administrative antidiscrimination law. Yale Law & Policy Review, 33(1), 119–173

82

discriminatory experiences

61 Kaiser, C. R., and Miller, C. T. (2001). Stop complaining! The social costs of making attributions to discrimination. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 27(2), 254–263 62 AAUW Educational Foundation (2004). Tenure denied, p. 71. 63 Ibid., p. 67. 64 Ibid., p. 68. 65 Ibid., p. 69. 66 Chun and Evans (2011). Diverse administrators in peril, p. 49. 67 Ibid.

3 QUESTIONING ≈IMPLICIT BIAS∆ AND ≈MICROAGGRESSIONS∆ TOWARD BETTER TERMINOLOGY AND CONCEPTS The idea of “physically locating” manifestations of racism in the brain reduces racism to a decontextualized physiological condition that tends to displace or obscure understandings of it as a socially and historically situated manifestation of power relations.1 The volatile national political environment discussed previously has frequently been characterized by inflammatory and hostile actions directed by whites toward numerous individuals and groups of color. This overt expression of racist and discriminatory sentiments has burned off the paper-thin veneer of white civility that had for a time inhabited many U.S. public spaces and characterized prevailing campus rhetoric about diversity matters. However, these overt, dramatic, and persisting realities directly call into question the adequacy of the prevailing vocabulary of concepts like “implicit bias,” “microaggressions,” and “micro-inequities.” Of course, these concepts have some utility for diversity efforts, but in our view they do not probe deeply enough into the problems of racism and sexism. They are typically used in a superficial, surface-level analysis and do not consistently attend to the deep and systemic contexts of the oppressions with which they attempt to deal. 83

84

≈implicit bias∆ and ≈microaggressions∆

In this chapter, we explore significant issues surrounding these problematical terms and concepts and discuss some reasons for their popularity in much diversity training in higher education. We then highlight the importance of a broader and deeper explanatory framework for understanding the ways that a historically racist and sexist social system has been implemented and replicated across the United States, and especially within higher education. A fully adequate approach to dealing with specific discrimination issues in higher education requires full and adequate consideration of the broader historical (indeed foundational) and contemporary societal contexts within which they occur. Implicit Racial Bias: The IAT

Beginning in the 1990s, an extensive social psychology literature has focused on what is termed as implicit social cognition. In the late 1990s Mahzarin Banaji, a Harvard psychologist, and Anthony Greenwald, a University of Washington psychologist, introduced the Implicit Association Test (IAT). This approach studies individual racial biases based on certain technical measurements of individual responses to usually visual stimuli presented very quickly to them. The IAT, a computer-based visual test, has been a major instrument for this research on “implicit” or “unconscious” bias. To measure attitudes toward racial categories, a subject is shown a picture of a human face followed by positive or negative words like “smart” or “lazy.” The subject is asked to press a key such as “x” when she or he sees black faces with positive words, or a different key such as the “y” key when she or he sees white faces with positive words. Then, for example, if the subject more rapidly associates positive words with white faces, it is inferred that the subject has a deep implicit bias favoring whites. Following the launch of the IAT on a Harvard University website (under research grant from the National Science Foundation), this Project Implicit gathered over 2.5 million completed IATs between 2000 and 2006. The IAT measures the speed of responses, presuming that an individual responds more quickly to associations they have already made in their heads. Analysis of three datasets from this time period found that 68 percent of respondents more rapidly associated black/dark-skin with negative words and white/light-skin with positive

≈implicit bias∆ and ≈microaggressions∆

85

words. Black respondents, on average, were the only racial group that did not exhibit an implicit pro-white preference on these tests. The researchers also examined participants’ views of racial identity groups using self-report measures. They then compared this self-reported explicit racial bias with IAT results on implicit racial bias. In general, the IAT results indicated stronger racial bias than did the self-report (i.e., “explicit”) measures of bias. The researchers further concluded from their evidence that implicit and explicit racial attitudes or judgments are distinct but also related. This view was then substantiated in seven studies with 107,709 participants that concluded that IAT results were reliably related to measures of explicit racial attitudes.2 Problematizing the IAT Test and Approach

Even though the IAT tests are widely discussed in the media and widely used in diversity efforts on and off of college campuses, the tests and their interpretation have many problems. Some are methodological. Some critics of the analyses of IAT results argue that their claims of unconscious racism are based on “overly aggressive interpretations of a new class of psychological inventories.”3 Other research findings suggest that the IAT test effects may be partially due to procedural aspects of the IAT test and to non-affective factors such as the use of self-relating terms in the IAT testing process (i.e., terms such as “like me” or “unlike me”) that enable subjects to more or less quickly process information.4 In addition, the significant variability in general processing speed (GPS)—the response time of individuals to cognitive tasks—has been downplayed in the IAT literature. Actually, these central GPS-response times are related to education, age, alcohol use, and certain other factors, and these factors have been shown to account for 25 to 50 percent of the variability in the critical speed of human responses on certain research tasks.5 Other methodological criticism has arisen from the publication and release of the IAT long before it had been fully validated in the rigorous way generally required by the field of psychology, and thus has had the potential to mislead millions of people who took the test about their own racial and gender biases. Research findings indicate that the significant methodological problems with the IAT include the following:6

86

≈implicit bias∆ and ≈microaggressions∆

1. Test-retest reliability, the production of similar results each time you take the test, is problematical. The IAT’s measure of reliability falls well below the parameters needed to be practically useful. 2. The IAT measures milli-second differences in reaction times. No one has mapped the functional relationship between variations in IAT reaction times and variations in actual discriminatory behavior.7 3. Statistical evidence is lacking for the prediction of individual discriminatory behavior. External validity issues are foundational and problematic in terms of the implications of limited IAT-related lab findings for the actual causes of discrimination in real work settings.8 4. It is not clear whether the IAT taps into stable mental associations and racial attitudes as opposed to contextual mental constructs such as the fear of being labeled a racist.9 5. Empirical studies have not determined whether implicit bias and explicit bias are truly separate and distinct phenomena. The fact that measures of both often correlate is contradictory to the argument that the two concepts are significantly distinct bias phenomena.10 Remarkably, too, the IAT has not even been proven to measure implicit bias; as some critics suggest the test includes “a noisy mishmash of other stuff,” which might conceivably include some form of implicit bias.11 Additionally, psychologists Abigail Stewart and Virginia Valian have emphasized that IAT research findings make it unclear whether the IAT measures beliefs, associations, attitudes, propositions, or some other mental constructs.12 The IAT and the Biologization of Racism

These important methodological issues make it clear that the racebased (and gender-based) IAT research has likely taken a wrong turn in some researchers’ later efforts to biologize racial bias. In recent years, this research has been linked with attempts at brain mapping for subjects who are taking the IAT, thereby providing imprecise neuroscientific findings that try to link neuronal activity to the implicit bias test.13 In the effort to identify implicit bias through neuroscientific evidence of certain brain processes, the behavioral

≈implicit bias∆ and ≈microaggressions∆

87

realism of IAT-type testing has also veered off in the direction of instrumental positivism by seeking to mimic the approaches of the natural sciences and limiting bias questions to those that can be verified through selected quantitative techniques. In his critical article, “Pills for Prejudice,” Jonathan Kahn argues that this effort seeks to biologize racism as an empirically observable and measurable biological phenomenon. He points to efforts by Elizabeth Phelps and Mahzarin Banaji that try to pair the Implicit Association Test with functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) to record images of how individuals’ brains respond to racially-coded stimuli. These experimental efforts are geared toward establishing racial bias as a physiological phenomenon and thus a physical-material entity. For example, IAT researchers Kubota, Phelps, and Banaji have sought to describe what they term “unintentional, implicit expression of racial attitudes” and the positioning and control of these attitudes in physiological neural circuitry.14 This pseudo-neuroscientific IAT effort essentially downplays the role of human consciousness in acts of racial framing and discrimination and neglects the deep historical and socially embedded nature of white-racist framing in the United States. As an individualistic assessment, it also ignores the internalization of this dominant racial framing beyond individual minds (brains) in the minds (brains) of critical others in a person’s relevant human groups, such as families and larger collectivities like legal and educational institutions. The biologizing and medicalizing of racist thinking is not new. Over the decades it has been rooted in several waves of psychological research—the first wave from the 1920s to the 1950s that viewed racial prejudice as an aberration or disruption of normal thought processes located in the brain; the second wave soon thereafter wherein racial prejudice was seen as part of normal rather than abnormal brain processes; and the third wave beginning in the 1990s seeking to use new technologies to study links between racial bias and brain processes. The third wave of thinking, including the IAT efforts at Harvard, often views racial bias as a type of disease or infection, rather than as a small part of the extensive racial framing of a systemically racist society.15

88

≈implicit bias∆ and ≈microaggressions∆

IAT’s Tenuous Link to Discriminatory Behavior

Recent research also indicates that the ability of the IAT to predict discriminatory behavior is very limited, and meta-analytical studies have found that the IAT has low predictive power for actual behavioral changes. Despite the desire to find a magic bullet for dealing with individuals’ racial views, the IAT’s lack of connection to real-world racial behavior remains a significant obstacle to using the test as an educational intervention to promote diversity goals. As sociologist Troy Duster explains, the fundamental issue is not whether unconscious or implicit racism can be established empirically, but whether significant evidence exists (even if unconscious or implicit racism is established) of how it influences human actions.16 Even the IAT researcher Brian Nosek acknowledges the “very weak overall” link between the IAT and measures of discriminatory behavior. Nosek further indicates, “You would think that if you change the associations, and the associations predict behavior, then the behavior would change too. But the evidence is really limited on it.”17 Take, for example, another important meta-analytic analysis of the use of the IAT in studying various racial/ethnic relations based on 46 research reports published since 2006. That overview study concluded “that the IAT provides little insight into who will discriminate against whom, and provides no more insight than explicit measures of bias.”18 It found the predictive utility of the IAT to be “weak and unreliable” in regard to the “more spontaneous behaviors covered” in the meta-analysis. Interestingly, the study also noted that measures of explicit bias in these studies also offered weak prediction in the areas of racial-ethnic discrimination, a finding echoing previous studies of this bias-behavior linkage.19 Efforts to predict behavior based on explicit and implicit measures of racial bias are still in their infancy. One reason that we explore below is that people routinely operate out of a much broader racial framing of the world than is measured by conventional psychological measures of racial biases. Counter-arguments raised by leading IAT researchers Greenwald, Banaji, and Nosek to this particular meta-analysis posited that the statistically small IAT effects could still predict discrimination in

≈implicit bias∆ and ≈microaggressions∆

89

some situations.20 Small effects can mean serious impacts, such as bias-generated discrimination in employment settings that repeatedly affects the same person or a group of persons—e.g., repeated negative performance evaluations by an employer or lower rates of callbacks for job interviews by an employer. At the same time, they concede that these IAT measures are problematic in identifying specific individuals likely to engage in racial discrimination, as can be seen in its weak test-retest reliability and the “small to moderate predictive validity effect sizes” in various studies.21 Several field studies have sought to establish a link between the IAT and hiring discrimination. Research conducted in Sweden by Agerstorm and Rooth sought to link callbacks for job interviews with implicit stereotypes related to ethnicity and obesity on an IAT-type test. The methodology involved correlating the self-reported (explicit) responses of hiring managers regarding hiring preferences and their expectations regarding job performance with the results of the IAT. In the study related to obesity, months after the researchers submitted fictitious applications featuring obese candidates to them, 153 hiring managers completed both an explicit bias questionnaire and the IAT. A statistically significant but weak correlation was shown between IAT scores and hiring preference ratings, but no relationship was found between the IAT scores and the explicit performance expectations for obese individuals. The researchers concluded “the finding that our implicit measure showed small or nonsignificant correlations with the explicit measures is consistent with previous research.”22 Results in a job study involving Arab/Muslim-sounding names were roughly similar, showing a weak correlation between explicit attitudes and performance stereotypes, and a statistically significant correlation between implicit stereotypes and job callback rates. Both studies are considered inconclusive due to methodological issues. These include the “severe” time delay (the researchers’ description) between the employment actions taken and the administration of the IAT, the lack of critical evaluation of the IAT’s validity and reliability, and the researchers’ reliance on self-report data of a self-selected group of participants to measure explicit Arab/Muslim bias.23

90

≈implicit bias∆ and ≈microaggressions∆

Recently, another meta-analysis of hundreds of previous studies, this time with 80,536 participants, found that tested reductions in implicit bias do not necessarily translate into desired behavioral changes. As the first large-scale quantitative analysis of change in implicit bias, this 2017 study builds on dual-processing theories that contrast automatic mental processes that are relatively quick, efficient, and unintentional with deliberate mental processes which are slower, intentional, and controlled. The researchers who conducted the study posited that implicit bias addresses associations that do not require deliberate mental retrieval as compared to explicit measures that involve deliberate retrieval. Their meta-analysis concludes that current policy interventions that attempt to change this implicit bias, as measured by conventional testing, will not consistently change actual discriminatory behavior such as that involved in intergroup racial relations. This analysis found no evidence that measured implicit bias mediates such behavioral changes, or alternatively that such behavioral changes mediate shifts in measured implicit bias.24 As with other studies, a notable conclusion of the study is that while implicit bias testing may have value in terms of assessing the prevalence of certain biased judgments in a given population, serious behavioral interventions—and, by extension, diversity training programs on and off college campuses—-need to more directly address the specific social conditions that create and sustain racial and gender discrimination and resulting inequalities: Although the presence of an implicit bias would speak to the structure of the social environment, efforts to change behavior by directly changing implicit bias would be misguided. It would be more effective to rid the social environment of the features that cause biases on both behavioral and cognitive tasks . . . or equip people with strategies to resist the environment’s biasing influence.25 According to Patrick Forscher, one of the authors of this analysis, “I currently believe that many (but not all) psychologists, in their desire to help solve social problems, have been way too overconfident in their interpretation of the evidence they gather.”26 The early implicit

≈implicit bias∆ and ≈microaggressions∆

91

bias research reflected some significant optimism about the ability to predict from such testing who would be more likely to engage in acts of discrimination, whereas the next generation of this type of research has been less optimistic in the explanatory and predictive power of IAT-type testing.27 The Issue of Conscious and Unconscious Bias

The meta-analysis just noted, like other studies, also foregrounds the central issue of whether the biases measured by the IAT test are truly implicit in the sense of being unconscious and inaccessible to individual control. Consider the definitions offered on Harvard University’s website for Project Implicit: “An explicit stereotype is the kind that you deliberately think about and report. An implicit stereotype is one that is relatively inaccessible to conscious awareness and/or control.”28 However, these definitions and understandings are quite debatable. One founder of implicit bias research, Brian Nosek, has proposed a less definitive interpretation of whether implicit bias is unconscious. As he has explained, “The use of the term ‘implicit’ in our field . . . is deliberate to avoid specific commitment about consciousness.” He adds, “Implicit describes a variety of concepts” including “unaware, unintentional, fast, efficient, unconscious.”29 Nosek’s qualifiers here are important and suggest a lack of resolution among these researchers about key issues of consciousness related to implicit bias. Unsurprisingly, given the website’s definitions and much media coverage, a popular misconception has arisen that unconscious bias and implicit bias are synonymous concepts. As other scholars and legal analysts have viewed it, they are not synonymous. More accurately, unconscious bias refers to a lack of source awareness or lack of content awareness. In other words, unconscious bias, particularly as used and described in certain legal contexts, refers to a lack of knowledge or awareness of the actual bias itself.30 However, the IAT measure of implicit bias can be controlled by those subjects being tested, as has been shown by research showing that they can manipulate their IAT scores intentionally and voluntarily.31 If implicit bias is not necessarily unconscious, how then can we understand it?

92

≈implicit bias∆ and ≈microaggressions∆

As measured by IAT-type testing, implicit bias involves three separate steps: (1) recognition of a racial group; (2) association of a racial stereotype with that racial group; and (3) layering a positive or negative association to that racial stereotype.32 In other words, IAT-type measurements refer to racialized associations in real time that are provoked by existing racial stereotypes held by tested subjects. IAT researchers’ conception of “implicit bias” out of their testing refers to indirectly assessed attitudes and prejudice that operate “unintentionally,” yet there is no evidence that these attitudes are outside of conscious control. 33 For many IAT-oriented analysts “implicit bias” seems to mean that such bias is demonstrated without a person thinking consciously about it in the immediate setting, such as when taking the IAT’s facial test. It cannot mean that people demonstrating the bias have never been conscious of it or cannot immediately recall it explicitly if asked to do so. The demonstration of implicit racial bias on such tests would be impossible without the large-scale circulation and normalization in the larger society of the white-racist framing of black Americans or other Americans of color. No one reveals on a speed test an “implicit bias” about a group if they have not already been trained in that bias by the commonplace socialization processes of major societal institutions. Members of various social groups—especially families and friendship networks—learn, reinforce, and teach elements of this dominant racial frame in the interactions and patterns within these groups, indeed almost always intentionally and over long periods of time. In short, the IAT approach has evolved into a simplistic attempt at assessing longstanding social, legal, educational, and policy issues about racial diversity that are actually grounded in a centuries-old history of systemic racism. As a result, the IAT has come under increasing fire from other researchers as based on “shaky science” and as a “weak scapegoat” by often letting people off the hook for their supposedly “unconscious” racist and sexist acts.34 Indeed, in light of this country’s long history of foundational, systemic, and very intentional racism, critical analytical questions must be asked: Could it possibly be that past and present expressions of extensive racial discrimination are mostly implicitly and unconsciously motivated? Does the notion of unconscious racism mean

≈implicit bias∆ and ≈microaggressions∆

93

that people’s racial ignorance leads to unintended discriminatory actions, or that they are clueless about the racial framing that influences those concrete actions?35 Rethinking the “Micro” Concepts: An Overview

Now we can turn to a second problematical aspect of much current explanatory thought for racially biased attitudes and actions. The origins of terms and concepts of microaggressions, micro-inequities, microassaults, and similar terminology followed the enactment of Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act that outlawed egregious forms of racial discrimination in U.S. employment sectors. The level of legal sophistication regarding the range and array of racial (and gender) discrimination increased following this landmark legislation and increased many employers’ awareness of the pitfalls and penalties of openly discriminatory behaviors and blatantly biased statements. For a time thereafter (late 1960s–1970s) there was significant progress in desegregating once legally segregated institutions, much of which was backed up by decisions of a Supreme Court that was probably the most liberal on issues of undoing racism in U.S. history. For example, that Court ruled in Griggs v Duke Power Co (1971) that Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act prohibits not only blatant racial discrimination but also subtle and pretextual discrimination—in their language “practices that are fair in form, but discriminatory in operation.” They added that “If an employment practice which operates to exclude Negroes cannot be shown to be related to job performance, the practice is prohibited.”36 Statistical evidence of a racially differential (disparate) impact of job testing was in this Court’s view sufficient to assert a problem of possible job discrimination; at that point, the legal burden was on companies to show their employment testing and screening had direct job relevance and was not just pretextual. Duke Power’s employment tests were not shown to be “reasonably related” to the actual job performance of the excluded black employees. Quite openly, the high court was articulating a strong and reasonable theory of institutional discrimination to interpret patterns of U.S. racism. In this 1960s–1970s period there was also a very

94

≈implicit bias∆ and ≈microaggressions∆

substantial expansion of empirical and theoretical social science research demonstrating much institutional and systemic racism, including in the research of the second author.37 However, within a decade or so a more conservative Supreme Court and some conservative lower federal courts were moving away from aggressive consideration of these important institutionalracism, patterned-discrimination arguments of the Griggs case to often require proof by plaintiffs of personal racial “animus” on the part of white employers and government officials in demonstrating that there was racial discrimination. Evidence of large-scale disparate impact along racial lines alone was often no longer sufficient to prove racial discrimination.38 Statistical racial disparity could be challenged in court by employers as resulting from a business necessity (often vague or pretextual) of some type. Judicial and other conservatives insisted that malicious racial intent had to be shown to prove discrimination in employment and other areas like housing, banking, and insurance where more liberal analysts and plaintiffs sought to use the disparate impact theory and statistical data. In several Supreme Court decisions since the 1970s, the disparate racial treatment rationale has been made more difficult to use and prove in court. As indicated earlier, the social science research literature indicates that certain second-generation, often subterfuge and pretextual, forms of racial and gender discrimination have frequently replaced more overt discrimination in many institutional areas. These second-generation forms include less overt, yet often repeated and cumulative, racially hostile and exclusionary actions that evade easy documentation and can be viewed, at least by whites (including judges), as ambiguous or even unintentional. In fact, however, they may constitute intentional subterfuges to avoid valid charges of illegal discrimination.39 In the conservative racial atmosphere of the 1970s, the term “racial microaggressions” was introduced by Chester Pierce, a Harvard psychiatrist, to describe apparently more subtle racist insults experienced on an everyday basis by black Americans then moving in larger numbers into newly integrated institutions. Pierce described microaggressions as “subtle, innocuous, preconscious, or unconscious degradations and putdowns”

≈implicit bias∆ and ≈microaggressions∆

95

that create a cumulative burden on the victims of racism (and sexism) and contribute like more blatant discrimination to a shortened life span, diminished confidence, and increased morbidity.40 To counter this everyday reality, he urged every black person “to have a proud ego image and learn to seize hope and pounce on opportunity.” Furthermore, he warned against the dangers of the internalization of aspects of this racial discrimination: “Every black must recognize the offensive mechanisms used by the collective white society, usually by means of cumulative proracist microaggressions, which keep him psychologically accepting of the disenfranchised state.”41 Pierce found the most daunting task for victims of racism is to defend against these everyday microaggressions; he foregrounded the great time and energy that must be devoted to this usually quite difficult task. The emergence of the “micro-inequities” conceptual framework is a related offshoot of Pierce’s seminal work on microaggressions. The scholar Mary Rowe is credited with creating the term micro-inequities in 1973 as an umbrella term for the more subtle acts of racial discrimination and exclusion, including Pierce’s microaggressions. Rowe views micro-inequities as a spectrum ranging from hostile microaggressions, to those arising from unconscious bias, to those due to negligence and “innocent ignorance.”42 Drawing on her experiences as ombudsperson at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in recent decades, Rowe has theorized that these micro-inequities constitute the principal scaffolding for contemporary discrimination by subtly excluding or marginalizing individuals that are different and making them less effective in various historically white organizations. She recognized that the accumulation of repetitive acts of subtle exclusion, avoidance, and marginalization can cause stress and pain for those thus targeted because racialized and other nondominant individuals often cannot control, improve, or evade the social situations they face.43 Rowe cites a plethora of examples of microaggressions and other micro-inequities she observed that include the failure to invite employees of color to important strategy meetings, unfairly blaming organizational problems on those who are racially different, and expecting incompetence and failure from nondominant individuals. These examples also include:44

96

≈implicit bias∆ and ≈microaggressions∆

1. Comments about performance that reflect racial stereotypes, such as the expectation that Asian Americans are technically oriented, yet when they do what is expected, are not thought to be assertive enough. (For example, “he just called me in whenever he needed error-free, technical work on no notice and with no back talk. I would stay up all night. At the end of the year my evaluation said, ‘I didn’t speak up enough.’”) 2. Stereotyped comments about a person’s racial group, gender, or sexual orientation: “You make me think about tepees and tomahawks.” Or “Would the senator’s staff be convinced by a black lobbyist?” 3. Comments about the ability or oversensitivity of people of color: “He just asked who could possibly have done this brilliant work. I did not realize it was a compliment.” Or “She seems so touchy!” Over the last two decades, a more specific and nuanced research literature on racial microaggressions has emerged, primarily in the counseling and social psychology fields. Derald Wing Sue has developed a fully featured taxonomy of microaggressions that focuses on those cases where negative racist framing is the primary issue. Sue’s taxonomy identifies three categories of microaggressions that can apply to numerous marginalized groups: micro-insults, micro-invalidations, and micro-assaults. Racial microaggressions are “commonplace verbal or behavioral indignities, whether intentional or unintentional” that communicate negative, hostile, or derogatory racial insults and slights. Sue theorizes that the most harmful types of microaggressions are “usually delivered by well-intentioned individuals who are unaware that they have engaged in harmful conduct toward a socially devalued group.”45 Micro-insults are behavioral remarks that reflect insensitivity in relation to an individual’s racial identity, such as when an African American student who has done outstanding work in his class is told by the white professor, “You are a credit to your race.” This is considered a microinsult because it allows the perpetrator to adhere to a belief in racial inferiority, even if unconsciously, and thereby “denigrates in a guilt-free manner.”46 Micro-invalidations are comments and behaviors that negate or exclude the experiential reality of nondominant individuals, such as

≈implicit bias∆ and ≈microaggressions∆

97

white person telling a native-born Latino/a individual, “If you don’t like it here go back to your own country.” This invalidation identifies the individual as alien in his or her own land. Micro-assaults involve more overt forms of racial attacks such as hostile name-calling or purposeful discriminatory behavior, such as calling Chinese Americans “chinks” and gays “fags.” He indicates that micro-assaults are “likely to be conscious and deliberate” and expressed as “explicit racial derogations,” whereas micro-invalidations and micro-insults are often unconscious.47 While a valuable conceptualization of the array of discriminations, Sue’s definitions and examples remain unclear in terms of how his categories of racial microaggressions significantly differ, and whether and when they are conscious, half-conscious, or truly unconscious. These concepts all also include the unfortunate downgrading term “micro” (small) in them, an issue to which we will return later. The psychological concept of racial microaggressions has come under some fire from social science critics, such as psychologist Scott Lilienfeld. He views these prevailing definitions as vague, subject to misinterpretation, and often referring to what he terms inadvertent cultural slights.48 He contests Sue’s formulation of microaggressions as based on the eye of the beholder, leading to a myriad of possible subjective interpretations. Specifically, from his psychological standpoint, the word “aggression” denotes negative intent and could cause pushback by members of the dominant white group that would defeat the purposes of much organizational diversity training. Lilienfeld further argues that few studies have controlled for the experiences of the outside perceiving person who does a microaggression, including that individual’s personality traits and attitudes. Additionally, in his view, and despite a burgeoning body of research contradicting it, the correlational evidence does not yet sufficiently support the often asserted link between microaggressions and negative mental health outcomes.49 Lilienfeld further states that no research evidence substantiates either the aggression or the prejudice in those who deliver these micro-slights.50 As we discuss later, this statement is at variance with the contention of other researchers who link implicit bias and explicit bias, such as those making use of the Implicit Association Test (IAT).

98

≈implicit bias∆ and ≈microaggressions∆

While Lilienfeld admits to the rise of more subtle forms of racism and the persistence of racial prejudice, his critique appears aligned with the conservative Supreme Court’s framing of the 1964 Civil Rights Act that demands more overt expressions of racist biases—apparently as perceived by outsiders like whites—in order to prove discriminatory intent. Yet, as noted earlier, the 1960s civil rights laws were the anvil on which was forged more pretextual and covert forms of discrimination as white employers became aware of their potential liability for openly exclusionary actions. Indeed, Pierce’s discussion of microaggressions in the 1970s already identified many deleterious impacts of cumulative, contextually ambiguous, exclusionary actions on the health and self-confidence of racially stigmatized individuals. The problematical work of analysts like Lilienfeld often provides a one-sided focus on victimized targets’ mental states, which in essence questions the objectivity of reports of those suffering from actual discrimination. In contrast, our book asks whether white and other researchers who may themselves have internalized this society’s dominant racial framing and norms can adequately articulate the painful, first-person experiences of racialized and other nondominant individuals in college and other societal settings. Here we explicitly and critically examine the perspectives of such analysts who deem those targeted by racial discrimination as “too sensitive” and who play down the pain and long-lasting psychological and career impact of behavioral oppression. There is much evidence of this white perspective and framing of people of color and discrimination. To take one recent example, a survey of 118 white students at a large public university found that when they selected the survey item choice of “a lot of minorities are too sensitive,” this selection was the greatest attitudinal predictor of their specific negative attitudes toward black students as expressed on other survey items.51 Beyond Implicit Bias and Microaggressions: Systemic Racism and the White Racial Frame

As one aforementioned meta-analytic study suggests, the policy interventions that make critical use of insights into specific social institutions and how they imbed and generate racial and gender bias

≈implicit bias∆ and ≈microaggressions∆

99

are more likely to bring about changes in discriminatory behavior. The analytical concepts provided by a narrow focus on microaggressions and implicit bias as measured by various psychological tests do not provide an adequate explanatory framework for understanding how discriminatory behaviors and actions constantly replicate and reproduce social inequality within institutional settings, often over many generations. Compared with efforts to accent implicit bias as a major teaching concept, including associating it now with brain functions, a broader sociohistorical framework is more fruitful in trying to fully contextualize and understand the myriad manifestations of racial and gender framing and discrimination that diversity programs usually try to address, both inside and outside of higher education institutions.52 In contrast to the major conceptual and methodological flaws associated with the IAT, the breadth and depth of the qualitative social science research that we examine throughout this book provides extensive and explicit expressions and measures of racist and sexist beliefs, discriminatory behaviors, and other oppressive actions—and mostly in real world settings. Compared to fragmented, specialized, technological measures that leave out significant historical and institutional contexts, the many first-person accounts of how discriminatory actions transpire provide much documentary evidence that leads to numerous substantive and detailed insights about the contexts, origins, manifestations, and societal framing of these racial and gender matters. They also demonstrate important strategies of resistance and counter-framing. From this vantage point, as we explained in Chapter 1, the study of systemic and institutional patterns of racist actions necessarily implicates society’s hierarchical contexts in which governing elites, very disproportionately white and male, have long created and maintained oppressive systems that foster the subordination and the voicelessness of nondominant groups. Everyday discrimination is not adequately viewed from an individualistic standpoint that only characterizes certain individuals as “bigots, “racists,” or “misogynists,” but rather needs to be understood as a foundational and systemic phenomenon generated socially and lodged deeply within ongoing institutional structures and processes. That is, a

100 ≈ i m p l i c i t b i a s ∆ a n d ≈ m i c r o a g g r e s s i o n s ∆

heavy dose of societal realism is necessary, and the commonplace white or male norm of “not seeing” must be discarded. Central to this systemic racism is the pervasive white racial frame that we discussed previously. In seeking to understand the normalization of white hostility and discrimination targeting nondominant groups in today’s racial climate, the concept of a centuries-old white racial frame offers a broader perspective and deeper explanation for the manifestation of millions of everyday acts of white racial exploitation, and other discrimination. Consider that many terms and concepts that social scientists and other social analysts use to analyze U.S. racial matters were originally created or foregrounded in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century by white, mostly male social scientists heavily influenced by their own societal experiences, situations, and perspectives. While concepts like prejudice, stereotyping, bigotry, animus, and bigoted discrimination are certainly appropriate and useful, their use is typically skewed toward a more individualistic, non-systemic interpretation of racial issues. It appears that the majority of white social scientists and other important white professionals (e.g., federal judges) have rarely wanted to go beyond individualistic or dyadic interpretations of these important racial matters to a much broader analytical framework for understanding our foundational, institutional, and systemic racism. For the most part, it is scholars of color who have historically been the most likely to broaden the framework for examining these critical aspects of U.S. racism. A recent example of resistance to diversifying the scholarship and broadening the Eurocentric focus in certain academic fields can be seen in a racist attack on a black academic launched by one white classics scholar at a recent conference of the Society for Classical Studies. Commenting on events at the conference, Dan-el Padilla Peralta, a black professor of classics at Princeton University, discussed the racial profiling of two black classics scholars who were stopped and asked for identification at that prestigious conference. Peralta also emphasized the need for more diversification in this historically white field, indicating that classics publication statistics still reveal that most scholarly classics articles are by white authors. His critical analysis of the venerable

≈ i m p l i c i t b i a s ∆ a n d ≈ m i c r o a g g r e s s i o n s ∆ 101

profession was then attacked by a white classics scholar, who argued for the need to protect the idea of “Western civilization” and criticized Professor Peralta, declaring that he had only gotten his job because he is black (a Dominican American). Among other issues, this example reveals the linguistic cover that terms like “Western civilization” provide for what is an aggressively white-framed view of supposedly “virtuous” Western societies like the United States.53 Indeed, leading white politicians have recently made similar racialized comments. Early in 2019 a veteran Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives, Steve King, a strong supporter of President Donald Trump and his antiimmigrant policies told a New York Times reporter that he was not racist, but then made this comment: “White nationalist, white supremacist, Western civilization—how did that language become offensive? Why did I sit in classes teaching me about the merits of our history and our civilization?”54 We might note too that President Trump had long been a strong supporter of King’s arch-conservative political positions. Since the seventeenth century this powerful white racial framing has provided a broad worldview from which whites (and many others) regularly view U.S. society. To be more specific, this white frame includes much more than bias and prejudice. Over time it has come to include a number of important elements, including the following: (1) racial stereotypes and prejudices (a verbal-cognitive aspect); (2) racial narratives and interpretations (integrating cognitive aspects); (3) racial images (visual aspects) and preferred language accents (auditory aspects); (4) racialized emotions; and (5) inclinations to discriminatory action. It is very important to understand that at its center this broad white racist framing has a very positive orientation to whites as mostly virtuous (a pro-white subframe) in many ways, and that it also has a negative orientation to racial “others” viewed as unvirtuous (numerous anti-others subframes). The central pro-white subframe accentuates white virtuousness, including in such areas as racial superiority, work ethic, intelligence, and civilization.55 This omnipresent white frame is a composite of numerous racial elements that come into play in the everyday practices of members of the dominant white group, as they seek to impose, emphasize, or retain their dominant identity, privileges, and power.

102 ≈ i m p l i c i t b i a s ∆ a n d ≈ m i c r o a g g r e s s i o n s ∆

Elements of this framing are learned, packaged, and utilized in different ways by individuals and their small contextual groups across the society. These elements have been well documented now in more than three decades of field and experimental research.56 Interestingly, the scholars Stewart and Valian use the term “schemas” for grouped attitudes and knowledge about particular social groups. Schemas are broader than specific stereotypes and can include both positive and negative categorizing and sorting out of objects and events. Schemas can be small or large, are deeply learned, and are often subject to “fast thinking”—that is, to rapid decisions that can result in inaccurate judgments.57 The dominant white racial frame is made up of numerous schemas that group specific aspects of the frame together. Certainly, individuals vary in their internal arrays of racialized stereotypes, narratives, images, emotions, and inclinations to discriminate. Depending on the individual, they may accept certain racist elements even as they consciously or half-consciously reject yet others. Some “bits” or elements of their framing are quite positive—e.g., in regard to whites or limited aspects of outgroup views—and many are negative. These bits are usually drawn from collective knowledge at the immediate network level, such as families, friends, work groups, and religious groups. These immediate social contexts, as we see throughout this book, are always important to the development, perpetuation, and use of the white racial frame, as well as to the male sexist frame (see below). As the sociologist Karl Mannheim argued, “Strictly speaking it is incorrect to say that the single individual thinks. Rather it is more correct to insist that he [or she] participates in thinking” that uses and reinforces what relevant social others also think, or have thought.58 The constant white sense of white superiority and virtuousness in most societal areas forms an essential aspect of this dominant racial frame. The re-emergence and resurgence of more overt and extreme versions of this old white frame—as in the examples of violent white nationalism discussed in previous chapters—in contemporary life suggests that it has not changed as much as have been heralded by advocates of a colorblind and post-racial America. Instead, in the recent past it was often just temporarily submerged below a patina of

≈ i m p l i c i t b i a s ∆ a n d ≈ m i c r o a g g r e s s i o n s ∆ 103

“political correctness”—that is, more polite language with few overt racist epithets but much hidden racial framing and little real action to end that framing and the everyday discrimination it creates. To reiterate, a systemic theory of racial oppression moves beyond individual racial attitudes and actions to understand and interpret individual (and collective) discriminatory actions as socially generated and systemic phenomena that have been constantly reproduced and reduplicated within U.S. institutions, including U.S. higher education, over centuries of time. From this critical perspective, individuals’ racial framing, racial discrimination, and other racially oppressive actions need to be constantly understood and contextualized within this centuries-old backdrop of foundational and systemic racism. For example, the recent diversity accents on particular types of individual bias (e.g., implicit and unconscious bias) too easily give a pass to the conscious and collective patterns of racial framing and discrimination that persist in virtually every major institution across U.S. society. Systemic Sexism and the Male Sexist Frame

As we underscored in Chapter 1, this dominant white racial frame is often intertwined with a male sexist frame. This has been the case throughout the centuries of North American history because elite white men have usually been at helm of power in major societal institutions. Strategies to reduce or eliminate both racism and sexism must look beyond an individualistic framework that stresses only bias and prejudice. Both systems of oppression involve asymmetrical interpersonal relationships that are part of these larger systems of oppression. The term and concept of systemic sexism encompasses the institutionalized patterns of dominant male and subordinate female positions in U.S. society. Systemic sexism includes not only the many discriminatory practices men direct against women but also unjust male societal privileges and power and the dominant male sexist frame rationalizing this gendered hierarchical reality. Somewhat similar in features to the white racial frame, this male sexist frame includes (1) sexist stereotypes

104 ≈ i m p l i c i t b i a s ∆ a n d ≈ m i c r o a g g r e s s i o n s ∆

and prejudices (a verbal-cognitive aspect), (2) gendered narratives and interpretations (integrating cognitive aspects), (3) sexist images (visual aspects), (4) gendered emotions, and (5) inclinations to discriminate. At its center is a positive orientation to men as the most virtuous (a pro-male subframe) in many ways, and it includes a negative orientation to women as unvirtuous (an anti-female subframe) in numerous ways. This dominant male sexist frame legitimates and implements everyday discrimination targeting women.59 Certainly, individuals and small groups vary in the aspects of this male sexist frame that they imbed or emphasize in their daily activities, including significant variations associated with certain racial and ethnic groups. Even so, white masculinity and patriarchal orientations have tended to be dominant over the centuries of their expression in the major U.S. institutions. We should note too, though we do not have the space to deal with it in this short book, that systemic sexism in the U.S. case is also heterosexist and transphobic—that is, it is also closely linked to these other societal oppressions. Far More than Prejudice: Contemporary Racial Framing

Let us now probe briefly, with a few penetrating examples, into the highly developed and extensive white racial framing that has worked its way into individual minds and consciousnesses. As a holistic phenomenon, the dominant white racial frame has not only the racial biases discussed previously but hundreds of other racial “bits.” This dominant frame operates as a generic meaning system and social lens that is regularly adopted, to a greater or lesser degree, by members of the dominant white group, as well as to varying degrees by those in nondominant groups. Its racist elements can be rejected or replaced by individuals, partially or substantially, who instead adopt an equalityand-justice racial framework.60 Assessing her everyday life in academia, Dr. Tracey Owens Patton, an African American faculty member, has described how interlocking systems of domination that seemingly occur at an everyday interactive level reflect the larger institutionalized system of racial marginalization. For instance, in one hallway conversation with another colleague

≈ i m p l i c i t b i a s ∆ a n d ≈ m i c r o a g g r e s s i o n s ∆ 105

present, Wayne, a white male colleague, overtly challenged her racism research, which is explicitly focused on gathering and assessing data on what she terms the “white supremacist world view.” Clearly operating out of a version of the white racial frame, he advised her, Nobody cares about race, racism. None of it matters. If you want to succeed you better learn how to compromise your values. You had better sell your soul. Your research contributes nothing. You need to lay low and just be silent.”61 When Patton informed her department chair of the incident, the chair attributed the comment to Wayne’s sense of humor; and the university’s director of human resources and diversity advised her, “put up with it, because you’re new and no one at the university will support you” if you complain. This, sadly, is a common report of new faculty of color. Then, in another department incident, a different white male faculty member lectured those faculty members present at a meeting about his view of discrimination there. Pointing at her, with a reddening face he yelled “Anyone who thinks that there is discrimination in this department is wrong.” He clearly knew what he was doing as he arrogantly operated out of a white framing, yet no one there countered him. As the only black person, Patton felt silenced, did not comment, and quickly left the room. Reflecting painfully on such recurring racial incidents, she has explained how hostile racial framing and commentaries from fellow members of the university have made her feel unwelcome. She is the “outsider-within”—being physically of, yet not really of, such university settings. She notes too that the conscious racism-downplaying advice to put up with such racial framing and assaults does indeed involve “selling your soul,” a strategy of one-way assimilation to the prevailing racist system. It is “deeply rooted in White supremacy and advocates a negation of anything counter to the maintenance of the White supremacist hegemonic order.”62 Quite clear in Dr. Patton’s accounts are important dimensions of the dominant white racial frame, in this case as expressed by powerful white men. Conspicuous is the arrogant white sense that what white male faculty in such settings value, say, and act on is correct, virtuous, and

106 ≈ i m p l i c i t b i a s ∆ a n d ≈ m i c r o a g g r e s s i o n s ∆

normative. Their conscious and overt interpretations of racial realities here are considered at least acceptable. Evident too are the apparently acceptable emotions of the dominant white frame, seen in the red-faced anger and yelling in the latter incident and in the white male arrogance demonstrated in both performances. We observe in the human resources director’s words that these white men’s actions are explicitly regarded as more or less acceptable and normative. Their consciously assertive actions, narratives, and emotions signal the aggressively pro-white center of the white racial frame. In addition, the anti-black subframe of that white frame is demonstrated in the verbal attack on Dr. Patton for her serious research on racism issues, for that black-oriented research is explicitly said to be value-less in this historically white institution. The anti-black framing of these whites is consciously demonstrated in great disrespect of her and her views as a faculty member, by more powerful white members of that university. Little or no attempt is made to understand the academic world, and its recurring racism, from her point of view. Such everyday accounts are reported in many studies of black professionals.63 The dominant white racial frame, often forcefully asserted by powerful white men, generates racist actions and thereby buttresses racist structures in historically white educational institutions across the United States. As we see here, language comments can be racial acts with serious consequences. They are commonplace across the United States. In recent years much evidence of the racial stereotypes, emotions, and narratives that constitute some of the many bits of the racial framing central to systemic racism has surfaced repeatedly on the national political stage. For instance, the conscious white framing of African Americans invoked by President Donald Trump against them has alleged a lack of intelligence on the part of many of them, including successful athletes, media personalities, and politicians. His and his followers’ expression of these racial stereotypes and narratives demeans the competence and proven abilities of these successful individuals and illustrates the conscious and egregious nature of this recurring racism. For instance, in August 2018 Trump tweeted about the successful black basketball star, Lebron James, and a black CNN commentator, Don Lemon, in this way: “Lebron James

≈ i m p l i c i t b i a s ∆ a n d ≈ m i c r o a g g r e s s i o n s ∆ 107

was just interviewed by the dumbest man on television, Don Lemon. He made Lebron look smart, which isn’t easy to do. I like Mike!” (The reference to Mike appears to be a gratuitous reference to another black basketball star.) Far too often, however, media commentators refer to this obviously conscious and overt racist framing with vague and inaccurate phrases such as “just identity politics.” In another instance, at a major Pennsylvania political rally, President Trump repeated his denigration of veteran California Representative Maxine Waters, also an African American, with the language of “Very low IQ. Low. Low IQ.”64 He continued with what is in fact a racist narrative, that is, making similar comments about her and adding reasons for his racist view at later rallies. Trump frequently used this insult of “low IQ” for women, particularly women of color, and it was often a main line of attack against them.65 These examples offer evidence of deeply rooted racist and sexist framing on the part of a leading U.S. politician. The challenges to black public figures like Lebron James, Don Lemon, and Maxine Waters by the highest U.S. office holder sought to undermine these individuals’ competence and intelligence, and thereby subject them to racialized personal ridicule. Operating out of the arrogant white center of the dominant white racial frame, Trump regularly used old anti-black stereotypes and narratives that have been part of that dominant frame for centuries. President Trump and his political acolytes also drew on anti-Latino stereotypes together with narratives of threat. During the 2018 midterm elections, for example, he and other conservative Republicans engaged in an array of racist anti-Latino narratives, such as claiming Latino gangs and immigrants were taking over certain U.S. cities and negatively stereotyping a group of refugees from Central America (many of them mothers and children) who were actually trying to escape violence and poverty and slowly making their way to the United States. Operating from a racist framing, Trump and other conservative politicians and media commentators falsely claimed these poor refugees, weeks away from the U.S. border and dwindling in numbers, included numerous Middle Eastern terrorists and gang members who were “invaders” and a serious threat to the United States. Without any evidence of a real migrant threat, they asserted

108 ≈ i m p l i c i t b i a s ∆ a n d ≈ m i c r o a g g r e s s i o n s ∆

that Democrats (especially the Jewish American George Soros) were directly responsible. The Soros claim was false, and likely signaled the anti-Semitic framing in the minds of many making the claim. Trump also claimed he had to send thousands of U.S. troops to an already militarized border with Mexico. These and many other of Trump’s racist commentaries revealed his arrogant operation out of the center of the white racial frame that assumes white supremacy and virtuousness; they were layered with racially framed stereotypes and narratives about people of color that have resulted in aggressive acts of discrimination against them over the centuries, and to the present. Unfortunately, he had many followers who aggressively used the social media and other outlets to articulate similar white racist framing, repeatedly over several years.66 With these examples of the pervasiveness of the social realities of systemic racism, including gendered racism, and its dominant white frame in mind, we now turn to discussing the recent focus of higher education diversity training on the implicit bias perspective. The growing number of research studies of race- and gender-based discrimination on college campuses provide concrete evidence of the reproduction of socio-racial inequality through racially discriminatory behaviors, practices, and outcomes.67 Take, for example, a study of the intersection of race and gender in the everyday discrimination (inaccurately termed “microaggressions” in the study) experienced by students at a large predominantly white midwestern university. Based on a diverse sample of 82 students, four themes emerged that reflect stereotyped perspectives of people of color: (1) black males as threatening; (2) Latinas as exotic and sexually available; (3) the classroom as a site for acceptable white racialized aggressions against black women; and (4) male-dominated academic majors as settings for discrimination targeting women. Black male students there described negative encounters with campus police searching for black male suspects that parallel the narrative of Ahmed, the student at the University of Illinois noted in Chapter 2. As one student in the study relates, black students receive differential and negative treatment by police for infractions as compared to their white counterparts:68

≈ i m p l i c i t b i a s ∆ a n d ≈ m i c r o a g g r e s s i o n s ∆ 109

It just bugs me, that we [have] police on our floor all the time, and . . . it seems like the RAs really pay more attention to our floor than everybody else’s floor . . . . And then the whole citation thing . . . [when the police] found liquor on our floor, we’re going to jail, and it’s like, Why is that? They [white students] just got a citation! I don’t understand that. The singular emphasis in many diversity efforts that accent implicit bias overlooks how these usually more important realities of overt systemic racism and systemic sexism (heterosexism) have embedded themselves in people’s character structures (i.e., learned habitual behaviors). Even without probing into the recesses of human brain structures, the presence of overt and explicit racism and sexism remains a very significant and unresolved issue in all this society’s major institutions, and certainly in our historically white colleges and universities. Questioning the Popularity of Implicit Bias Diversity Training

Unfortunately, most diversity education programs in higher education have been piecemeal, atheoretical, and not linked enough to the transfer of research learning and theoretical perspectives to educational settings.69 Moreover, the widespread proliferation of implicit bias education across university and college websites seems to imply that a definitive answer (often, in effect, a cure-all) for dealing with racial discrimination has been found, even though scientific evidence for implicit bias and its link to discrimination is still lacking in regard to such claims. As we have seen, implicit bias training may be a largely ineffective intervention since numerous researchers now acknowledge that the IAT cannot predict discriminatory behavior in the real world. Such training can oversimplify causation as it relates to this discrimination, and take the needed emphasis away from learning about systemic racism’s historical structural and framing realities as well as about actual discriminatory behavior and necessary countering actions within existing educational institutions. A large part of the appeal of implicit bias in diversity education programs is the simplicity of explanation it offers for individual racism

110 ≈ i m p l i c i t b i a s ∆ a n d ≈ m i c r o a g g r e s s i o n s ∆

and the lack of blame it offers for discriminatory behaviors that are viewed as arising from a supposed lack of intent and the unconscious mind. Many argue that because the concept of implicit bias avoids racial blame and consequent guilt for the whites involved, it can open the door in diversity programs to addressing serious racial biases without directly addressing the well-institutionalized racism of U.S. society.70 Certainly, part of the reason for the turn toward emphasizing implicit and unconscious bias in diversity and other educational programs is that accenting the reality of still-explicit racist framing and discrimination has become less socially acceptable to a great many whites due in part to their erroneous assumption that civil rights legislation and enforcement has ended most racial discrimination, as well as to contemporary white fears about being personally labeled “a racist.” Given the methodological and conceptual issues with the IAT, the administration of this and similar tests as a teaching tool for students can be quite problematic. In a research study conducted in five California state universities, 258 students completed a pre-teaching assessment on prejudice and stereotypes, then took the IAT and completed a teaching module on implicit and explicit prejudice. After that, they took a postteaching assessment. The study did not find evidence that this implicit/ explicit teaching module strengthened students’ motivation to control and change their racial prejudices, but did conclude that students who displayed a stronger implicit bias against African Americans based on IAT scores were more motivated to control that prejudice following the teaching module.71 Although these and other researchers have viewed the IAT as a “cutting edge” research tool, the lack of reliability and validity of the IAT calls into question the general use of this instrument as such a teaching tool. Specific consideration of racial prejudice and stereotypes that might be reflected in IAT test results is in itself educationally valuable, but students might well be misled about the accuracy and meaning of their own scores on the test. In addition, they do not come away understanding the larger extent and institutional context of their own and others’ racist framing. Certainly, in some circumstances there are possible benefits of implicit bias education programs in higher education. College departments sponsoring diversity training, such as Human Resources or Diversity

≈ i m p l i c i t b i a s ∆ a n d ≈ m i c r o a g g r e s s i o n s ∆ 111

and Inclusion departments, are often criticized for programs that are perceived by white administrators as surfacing problematic historical and contemporary racial injustices and causing feelings of racial guilt among white students, faculty, or staff. By contrast, diversity seminars and workshops that accent implicit or unconscious bias findings and do not assign blame can reduce white defensiveness while providing a context for offering modest strategies for overcoming individual racial stereotypes and other commonplace racial framing.72 However, in such settings a general administrative reluctance to surface and assess the need for substantial change in an educational institution’s racial status quo—and to use necessary value terms like “social justice” or “racial justice”—can easily cause additional conflict across campus racial lines, including protests by faculty and students of color. Considerable campus conflict and pushback can also occur when diversity facilitators move outside of the boundaries of the celebratory types of diversity training sessions. This is common in diversity training efforts where detailed attention is paid to the local institution’s processbased forms of racial discrimination, such as that which takes place in faculty recruitment, hiring, and promotion, as well as in acts of academic closure such as tenure denial. Many powerful decision-makers in historically white educational institutions have been reluctant to probe deeply into how racially exclusionary processes actually unfold on their campuses, and many diversity trainers have sought to avoid training controversies that could backfire and affect their future training efforts. As Kumea Shorter-Gooden, a former Chief Diversity Officer at the University of Maryland (College Park) explains well:73 There is a risk that diversity events’ seminars will become political correctness fests and that people will cheerlead and feel affirmed which are not bad things but where not much openness or learning happens . . . . It’s really important that we not act like these things are just a matter of opinion. But there is documented evidence that there are systematic disparities based on race, religion, gender, and so forth. It’s important to name these things while making sure that we are not conveying that there’s . . . a set of good guys and there is a set of bad guys, and by the way the bad guys are white, male, straight, Christian, Cis.

112 ≈ i m p l i c i t b i a s ∆ a n d ≈ m i c r o a g g r e s s i o n s ∆

Interestingly, one of the notable ways that implicit bias training has taken shape in higher education is through the ADVANCE (Advancement of Women in Academic Science and Engineering Careers) grants of the National Science Foundation (NSF). ADVANCE sponsors programs that offer process-based approaches to advancing the participation of women in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) careers. The Institutional Transformation and Adaptation tracks of ADVANCE focuses on development and implementation of innovative organizational change strategies across all STEM disciplines. An online search on “implicit bias” among these NSF grants that were awarded displays more than 3000 results including research studies, conferences, partnerships, and training.74 A significant number of these projects focus on faculty search committee training, screening, and hiring processes and include a specific focus on addressing implicit or unconscious racial and gender bias. For example, the WISELI (Women in Science and Engineering Leadership) Institute at the University of Wisconsin (Madison) has developed a faculty recruitment booklet, Searching for Excellence & Diversity Guide, that has an extensive section on the potential influence of “unconscious bias” in faculty recruitment and cites representative examples of research studies relating to such bias in academic contexts.75 An important concern that accompanies the rise of strong critiques of the implicit bias research in the popular and educational press is that institutions may be deterred from providing the more serious anti-racist training that addresses the prevalent behavioral and organizational barriers to greater racial inclusion. However, as we discuss in our final chapter, other major research-based avenues for diversity education can be deployed, approaches that are based on substantial research evidence of systemic racism’s impact on individual behavioral discrimination and institutionalized process-based outcomes in higher education. Conclusion

In this chapter, we have delved further into the analytical limitations of microaggressions and implicit bias concepts in terms of understanding the foundation of contemporary discriminatory behaviors and

≈ i m p l i c i t b i a s ∆ a n d ≈ m i c r o a g g r e s s i o n s ∆ 113

actions. We have highlighted major conceptual, methodological and procedural issues associated with the Implicit Association Test (IAT) as well as its general lack of predictive power in terms of recurring discriminatory behavior. The recent attempted biologization of racism in certain brain studies has further downplayed the role of human intention, consciousness, and social context in racist actions by seeking control within physiological neural mechanisms. In contrast, our analysis provides a broadened view of macroaggressions and macroinequalities in terms of the long-lasting psychological and career impact of well-institutionalized oppression on members of nondominant groups. Rather than a focus on the individual, we highlight the need for recognition of the longstanding, socially-based, systemic patterns of racial and gender-based oppression that have been replicated within the social structures and processes of higher education. In the next chapter we further examine everyday patterns of discrimination in academia and thematic patterns of exclusion ranging from behavioral interactions to unmeritocratic decision making in organizational processes. Notes

1 Kahn, J. (2017). Race on the brain: What implicit bias gets wrong about the struggle for racial justice. New York, NY: Columbia University Press, p. 265. 2 Nosek, B. A., Smyth, F. L., Hansen, J. J., Devos, T., Lindner, N. M., Ranganath, K. A., et al. (2007). Pervasiveness and correlates of implicit attitudes and stereotypes. European Review of Social Psychology, 18, 36–88; Nosek, B. A., and Hansen, J. J. (2008). The associations in our heads belong to us: Searching for attitudes and knowledge in implicit evaluation. Cognition and Emotion, 4, 553–594. 3 Blanton, H., and Jaccard, J. (2008). Unconscious racism: A concept in pursuit of a measure. Annual Review of Sociology, 34, 277–297. 4 Popa-Roch, M., and Delmas, F. (2010) Prejudice implicit association test effects: The role of self-related heuristics. Zeitschrift fur Psychologie/Journal of Psychology, 218(1), 44–50. 5 Blanton and Jaccard (2008). Unconscious racism. 6 See, for example, Kahn, J. (2018). Race on the brain: What implicit bias gets wrong about the struggle for racial justice. New York, NY: Columbia University Press. Mitchell, G. (2018) An implicit bias primer. Virginia Journal of Social Policy and the Law, 25(1), 28–57. Retrieved January 15, 2019 from https://sssrn.com/abstract=3151740. Singal, J. (2017, January 5). Psychology’s favorite tool for measuring racism isn’t up to the job. New York Magazine. Retrieved August 1, 2018 from www.thecut.com/2017/01/psychologys-racism-measuringtool-isnt-up-to-the-job.html. 7 Tetlock, P. E., and Mitchell, G. (2009). Implicit bias an accountability systems: What must organizations do to prevent discrimination? Research in Organizational Behavior 29, 3–38.

114 ≈ i m p l i c i t b i a s ∆ a n d ≈ m i c r o a g g r e s s i o n s ∆ 8 Ibid. 9 Tetlock, P. E., and Mitchell, G.(2008). Calibrating prejudice in milliseconds. Social Psychology Quarterly, 71(1), 12–16. 10 Mitchell. (2018). An implicit bias primer. 11 Singal (2017). Psychology’s favorite tool for measuring racism isn’t up to the job. 12 Stewart. A., and Valian, V. (2018). An inclusive academy: Achieving diversity and excellence. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. 13 For further discussion of the use of the fMRI in connection with the IAT and the efforts in brain mapping and activation to study responses to racial stimuli see Kahn (2017), Race on the Brain. 14 Kubota, J. T., Banaji, M. R., and Phelps, E. A. ( 2012). The neuroscience of race. Nature Neuroscience, 15(7), 940–94 15 Ibid. 16 Duster, T. (2008). Introduction to unconscious racism debate. Social Psychology Quarterly, 71(1), 6. 17 Bartlett, T. (5 January, 2017). Can we really measure implicit bias? Maybe not. Chronicle Review. The Chronicle of Higher Education. Retrieved August 4, 2018 from www.chronicle. com/article/Can-We-Really-Measure-Implicit/238807 18 Oswald, F. L., Mitchell, M., Blanton, H., Jaccard, J. and Tetlock, P. E. (2013). Predicting ethnic and racial discrimination: A meta-analysis of IAT criterion studies. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 105(2), 171–192. 19 Ibid., p. 184. 20 Greenwald, A. G., Banaji, M. R., and Nosek, B. A. (2015). Statistically small effects of the Implicit Association Test can have societally large effects. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 108(4), 553–561. 21 Ibid., p. 557. 22 Agerstrom, J., and Rooth, D-O (2011). The role of automatic obesity stereotypes in real hiring discrimination. Journal of Applied Psychology, (4), 790–805, p. 796. 23 Rooth, D-O (2007). Implicit discrimination in hiring—Real world evidence. Center for Research and Analysis of Migration, University College London. Retrieved November 2, 2018, from http://ftp.iza.org/dp2764.pdf 24 Forscher, P. S., Lai, C. K., Axt, J. R., Ebersole, C. R., Herman, M., Devine, P. G., and Nosek, B. A. (2017). A meta-analysis of change in implicit bias. Retrieved August 9, 2018 from https://files.osf.io/v1/resources/awz2p/providers/osfstorage/572b5bd3b83f6901e87 bd53c?action=download&version=5&dire 25 Ibid., p. 39. 26 Goldhill, O. (2017, December 3). The world is relying on a flawed psychological test to fight racism. Quartz. Retrieved August 3, 2018, from https://qz.com/1144504/the-worldis-relying-on-a-flawed-psychological-test-to-fight-racism/ 27 Mitchell. (2018). An implicit bias primer. 28 Project Implicit (n.d.). Retrieved August 1, 2018 from https://implicit.harvard.edu/ implicit/faqs.html#faq1 29 Goldhill. (2017, December 3). The world is relying on a flawed psychological test to fight racism. 30 Mitchell. (2018). An implicit bias primer. 31 Ibid. 32 Kahn. (2018). Race on the brain. 33 Mitchell. (2018). An implicit bias primer. 34 Goldhill. (2017, December 3). The world is relying on a flawed psychological test to fight racism.

≈ i m p l i c i t b i a s ∆ a n d ≈ m i c r o a g g r e s s i o n s ∆ 115 35 Blanton and Jaccard. (2008). Unconscious racism. 36 Griggs v Duke Power Co, 401 US 424 (1971). 37 Feagin, J., and Feagin, C. B. (1978). Discrimination American style: Institutional racism and sexism. Englewoods Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. 38 Ibid. For more recent discussions of conservatives attacking disparate impact regulations and court decisions, see Serwer, A. (2019, January 4). Trump is making it easier to get away with discrimination. The Atlantic. Retrieved January 14, 2019, from www.theatlantic.com/ideas/ archive/2019/01/disparate-impact/579466/ 39 See Feagin, J. R. and Ducey, K. (2019). Racist America: Roots, current realities, and future reparations (4th ed.). New York, NY: Routledge, passim. 40 Pierce, C. M. (1995). Stress analogs of racism and sexism: Terrorism, torture and disaster. In C. V. Willie, B. Brown, B. M. Kramer, and P. P. Rieker (Eds.), Mental health, racism and sexism (pp. 277–296), p. 281. Pittsburgh, PA: Pittsburgh University Press. 41 Pierce, C. M. (1970). Black psychiatry one year after Miami. Journal of the National Medical Association, 62, 471–473, p. 472. 42 The quiet discrimination of microinequities: A Q&A with adjunct professor Mary Rowe (2016, February 3). MIT Sloan School of Management. Retrieved December 26, 2017, from http://mitsloan.mit.edu/newsroom/articles/the-quiet-discrimination-of-microinequitiesa-qa-with-adjunct-professor-mary-rowe/ 43 Rowe, M. P. (1990). Barriers to equality: The power of subtle discrimination to maintain unequal opportunity. Employee Responsibilities and Rights Journal, 3(2), 153–163. 44 Ibid. 45 Sue, D. W. (2010). Microaggressions in everyday life: Race, gender, and sexual orientation. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, p. 5; Sue, D. W. (2010). Microaggressions, marginality, and oppression: An introduction. In D. W. Sue (Ed.), Microaggressions and marginality: Manifestation, dynamics, and impact (pp. 3–22), p.3. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons. 46 Ibid., pp. 9–10. 47 Sue. (2010). Microaggressions in everyday life, pp. 28–29. 48 Lilienfeld, S. (2017, January 11). Microaggressions: Strong claims, inadequate evidence. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 12(1), 138–169. 49 Martin, M. (2017, September 5). Scott Lilienfeld on microaggressions, and the Goldwater rule: Half hour of heterodoxy #10. Heterodox Academy. Retrieved October 22, 2017, from https://heterodoxacademy.org/2017/09/05/scott-lilienfeld-on-microaggressions-andthe-goldwater-rule/. 50 Lilienfeld (2017, January 11). Microaggressions, p. 161. 51 Kanter, J. W., Williams, M. T., Kuczynskik, A. M., Manbeck, K. E., Debreaux, M., and Rosen, D. C. (2017). A preliminary report on the relationship between microaggressions against black people and racism among white college students, race and social problems. Retrieved October 22, 2017 from www.researchgate.net/publication/319379644_A_Preliminary_ Report_on_the_Relationship_Between_Microaggressions_Against_Black_People_and_ Racism_Among_White_College_Students 52 Kahn. (2018). Race on the brain. 53 Flaherty, C. (2019, January 7). Q & A goes horribly wrong. Inside Higher Ed. Retrieved January 8, 2019, from www.insidehighered.com/news/2019/01/07/racist-commentsdirected-classics-scholar-disciplinary-meeting-floor-classicists 54 Trip, G. (2019, January 10). Before Trump, Steve King set the agenda for the wall and antiimmigrant politics. The New York Times. Retrieved January 10, 2019, from www.nytimes. com/2019/01/10/us/politics/steve-king-trump-immigration-wall.html 55 Feagin, J. R. (2014). The white racial frame. Centuries of racial framing and counter-framing (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Routledge.

116 ≈ i m p l i c i t b i a s ∆ a n d ≈ m i c r o a g g r e s s i o n s ∆ 56 Ibid.; Feagin and Ducey (2019). Racist America, 4th ed; Feagin, J. R. (2006); Systemic racism: A theory of oppression. New York, NY: Routledge; Elias, S., and Feagin, J. R. (2016). Racial theories in social science. New York, NY: Routledge. 57 Stewart and Valian. (2018). An inclusive academy, p. 82. 58 Mannheim, K. (1936). Ideology and Utopia. New York, NY: Harcourt Harvest Books, 1936). 59 Feagin, J. R., and Ducey, K. (2017). Elite white men ruling: Who, what, when, where, and how. New York, NY: Routledge. See Chapter 1. 60 See Feagin and Ducey (2019). Racist America, 4th ed.; Picca, L., and Feagin, J. (2007) Two-faced racism: Whites in the backstage and frontstage. New York, NY: Routledge. 61 Patton, T. O. (2004). Reflections of a Black woman professor: Racism and sexism in academia. Howard Journal of Communications, 15, 194. 62 Ibid., p. 196. 63 See Feagin and Ducey (2019). Racist America, passim; and Feagin, J. R. and Sikes, M. Living with racism: The black middle class experience. Boston, MA: Beacon Press. 64 Blow, C. M. (2018, August 5). President dumb and dumber. The New York Times. Retrieved August 6, 2018, from www.nytimes.com/2018/08/05/opinion/donald-trump-lebronjames.html 65 Ibid. 66 Trump campaign releases racist ad. CNN. Retrieved January 15, 2019 from www.cnn. com/2018/10/31/politics/donald-trump-immigration-paul-ryan-midterms/index.html 67 See for example, Pittman, C. T. (2012). Racial microaggressions: The narratives of African American faculty at a predominantly white university. The Journal of Negro Education, 81(1), 82–92. Von Robertson, R., and Chaney, C. (2017). ‘I know it [racism] still exists here:’ African-American males at a predominantly white institution. Humboldt Journal of Social Relations, 39, 260–282. 68 McCabe, J. (2009). Racial and gender microaggressions on a predominantly-white campus: Experiences of black, Latina/o, and white undergraduates. Race, Gender & Class, 16(1/2) 133–151, p. 139. 69 See for example, Bezrukova, K., Jehn, K. A., and Spell, C. S. (2012). Reviewing diversity training: Where we have been and where we should go. Academy of Management Learning and Education, 11(2), 207–227. 70 Russell-Brown, K. (2018). The academic swoon over implicit racial bias: Costs, benefits, and other considerations. Du Bois Review, 15(1), 185–193. 71 Adams, V. H., Devos, T., Rivera, L. M., Smith, H., and Vega, L. A. (2014). Teaching about implicit prejudices and stereotypes: A pedagogical demonstration. Teaching of Psychology, 41(3), 204–212. 72 Emerson, J. (2017, April 28). Don’t give up on unconscious bias training—Make it better. Harvard Business Review. Retrieved August 8, 2018 from https://hbr.org/2017/04/dontgive-up-on-unconscious-bias-training-make-it-better 73 Chun, E., and Evans, A. (2018): Leading a diversity culture shift in higher education: Comprehensive organizational learning strategies. New York, NY: Routledge, p. 203. 74 National Science Foundation. Retrieved August 8, 2018 from www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/ simpleSearchResult?queryText=Implicit+bias 75 Fine, E., and Handelsman, J. (2012). Searching for excellence & diversity: A guide for search committees at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (2nd ed.). Madison, WI: WISELI. Retrieved August 9, 2018 from http://wiseli.engr.wisc.edu/docs/ SearchBook_Wisc.pdf

4 REFORMULATING THE CONCEPT OF ≈MICROAGGRESSIONS∆ EVERYDAY DISCRIMINATION IN ACADEMIA Well, my first couple of years there, I always felt like there was a target on my back . . . . I knew that I was one of very few African Americans on campus on faculty, and then also being gay . . . . I know that my performance was never given the same weight as the other people’s performance, when I would publish a major piece . . . get teaching awards, those were always diminished and minimized, and my contributions were devalued.1 As we discussed previously, the breadth, depth, and impact of exclusionary and other discriminatory behaviors and acts defy the conceptually inadequate language of implicit/unconscious bias and of microaggressions and microinequities. The numerous first-person testimonies and other real-world data emphasized throughout this book, including in this chapter, demonstrate well the major and long-lasting psychological and career consequences of racial and gender discrimination—what are, in effect, much more than “micro” (small) aggressions and inequities. In this chapter we explore these issues more fully, with a systemic racism and systemic sexism focus. The gay African American male faculty member’s narrative above demonstrates the signif icantly unequal playing field he has faced. His 117

118

reformulating concept of ≈microaggressions∆

accomplishments were diminished and devalued in the attempt by the whites in the existing institutional hierarchy to undercut his performance and success. This example also demonstrates how the intersectionality of oppressed identities can magnify and intensify the impact of exclusionary and other discriminatory behavior. It brings into play the ways that the normative white racial frame and the often associated male sexist (heterosexist) frame together generate numerous racist, sexist, and heterosexist stereotypes, emotions, behaviors, and impacts. In a prominent example of the many racist and sexist “bits” of these powerful frames, consider the major recent study of systemic racial, gender, homophobic, and religious discriminations (termed there “microaggressions”) conducted at the University of Mississippi (UM). This research analysis assessed the content of 1383 diary entries of a diverse large sample of 621 students during the 2014–2015 academic year. The study recorded numerous troubling student behaviors and incidents that contrasted with the university’s attempted positive branding of multiculturalism and diversity. The researchers classified the incidents in terms of clearly identified conceptual categories that range from unconscious insensitivity to conscious putdowns to interpersonal communications that undercut the experiences of marginalized groups. These incidents portray a campus in which variously minoritized students are routinely insulted, dismissed, feared, and humiliated, with a consequent severe impact on the individuals affected. The study also documents the numerous obstacles to maintaining emotional stability and wellness for marginalized students. Take for example, the account of an African American student who wrote of her first day in a UM classroom:2 On the first day of school, I made it to class at least 20 minutes early. There was a white girl that sat behind me. When the teacher walked in, she made the ugliest remark. The white girl said, “Oh my God, why do we have a black professor?” I was very upset by her comment. As the authors of the study point out, that simple ten-word sentence sent a series of possible messages with the following implications:

reformulating concept of ≈microaggressions∆

119

1. The professor is incompetent because of her race. 2. As a white student, I will show the same disrespect to my African American classmates as I do to my professor. 3. I will be hostile to my professor in class and challenge the professor, even without a legitimate basis for doing so. 4. I will make derogatory racial comments about the professor throughout the class. 5. I will resent the African American students in the class who will likely get better grades for doing less work. 6. I will side with other white students in the class, creating an “us versus them” environment. The overtones emanating from this one racially charged statement invoke a host of implications for the college learning environment and demonstrate how what may seem to be minor verbal and behavioral “microaggressions” do quickly culminate in a chain of serious macroconsequences. Scholars Stewart and Valian summarize this reality succinctly: “Mountains are molehills piled one on top of the other.”3 In addition, as noted previously, “micro” literally means “extremely small,” yet most actions described by those who use the term “microaggression” are not really small or minor in their impacts or significance to those who experience them. The term “macro-aggression” makes more empirical sense for these instances if viewed from the viewpoint of those actually targeted. For that reason we strongly question this widespread use of this microaggression terminology as immediately imbedding into many minds that these events are not serious. We suggest instead that it is more important to discuss most of them as serious discrimination or “macro-aggressions” (and not as slight or minor discrimination) because those who suffer this discrimination typically experience and view it as quite harmful. Indeed, the hundreds of interviews we have done with the targets of racial discrimination over recent decades regularly reveal that recurring discrimination has very negative and long-term effects. We do realize too that the term “macroaggression” has been used by some discrimination analysts to apply to general society-wide patterns

120

reformulating concept of ≈microaggressions∆

of racial or gender discrimination, patterns what we prefer to term as systemic racism or systemic sexism.4 Additionally, even these analysts usually tie their societal macroaggression concept to everyday discriminatory interactions. Used in this way their macro distinction can be confusing, since discriminatory actions of all scales are always linked to the larger systems of racial or gender oppression. In this chapter we further explore the adoption of a broader conceptual framework for these racial and gender forms of marginalization, exclusion, and other discrimination in higher education. Many diversity media publications and research articles often assume that the concepts of “implicit bias” and “microaggressions” are well understood. However, these terms have often become catch words and rhetorical tools without the critical examinations and replacement frameworks necessary for truly understanding the everyday realities of systemic racism in higher education and beyond.5 Absent some critical definitions and explanations, the meaning and implications of this common terminology is usually unclear. For example, does “implicit” mean conscious, half-conscious, unconscious, or what? Are so-called “micro” aggressions minor or serious; intentional or inadvertent; individualistic or institutionalized? In our view much more attention to definitional detail and more critical insights about the foundational, contextual, and systemic racial realities are required. The Academic Playbook: Much Discriminatory Decision-Making

Under the aegis of commonplace elite white male dominance in higher education much unmeritocratic and inequitable decision-making still unfolds. This is often seen in the discretionary and discriminatory actions of mid-level white male gatekeepers, which are frequently unchecked by higher white authorities. In this regard, one African American professor, Patricia Matthew, has identified and demonstrated the presence of similar patterns of racial and gender discrimination in college appointment and tenure processes across the country: The fact that I am a black woman played some role in that tangledup process, and I still see the same patterns that were in play in my

reformulating concept of ≈microaggressions∆

121

reappointment and tenure reviews whenever I am assessed. More important, I now know that those patterns are at work all over the country. It’s not just me. It’s not just us. This is happening everywhere.6 Among whites, however, these recurring patterns of marginalization and exclusion are typically viewed as just isolated instances. Jon, a white administrator at a southwestern research university, notes the tendency for many white colleagues to believe that racism, homophobia, and gender discrimination are rare on his campus—and that the prevailing view is that any discriminatory incidents are minor or isolated: . . . they have it in their head. . .that racism, homophobia, and gender discrimination don’t really exist here. And so, there’s always like an explanation as to why so-and-so said this. . . . “Oh well, you know him, or I can’t believe that anyone in the department thinks that way, oh that’s just an isolated incident . . .” These isolated incidents keep happening over and over again, basically in the isolated category. He then explains where these white male faculty are coming from: Because it hasn’t happened to them, you know, if you are a white male on this campus and you’ve been here for twenty-five years, gee, everybody’s been really friendly to you, you have never been excluded, they can’t imagine it happening to anybody else . . . those very subtle eye contact, tone of voice, body language, differential treatment, those things are not blatantly offensive, not, you know, the kinds of things that you could report or cite as evidence, but just the kind of climate issues. They either will say, “Oh, that’s very isolated. . .” . . .or they will then suggest that maybe that black person or that woman is overly sensitive, is seeing things that aren’t there . . . .7 This analysis suggests, perhaps, one major reason that so many diversity analysts prefer to discuss racially discriminatory acts on campus as “micro” and minor—because these acts are perceived that way from the viewpoint of outside white observers they seek to influence.

122

reformulating concept of ≈microaggressions∆

Rather than a monolithic and narrow focus on individual actions and isolated incidents of “bias,” we will now examine how the complex reality of accepted behaviors, hierarchical decision-making, and established process-based outcomes reproduce patterns of racial and gender discrimination and inequality. To solidify this line of argument, we consider the conventional norms, mechanisms, and power structures that undergird and permit much inequitable decision-making by the dominant educational actors. This discussion, in turn, leads to an expanded analytical vocabulary to address the long-term impact of marginalization, exclusion, and social closure on the members of nondominant groups in predominantly white institutions. Performance and Promotion Discrimination

Thematic types of differential treatment of nondominant racial and gender groups in major U.S. institutions, including higher education, include the use of subjective and unpublished evaluation criteria, lack of realistic feedback, racially biased or gender-biased evaluations of performance, and absence of sustained faculty or administrative support. The differential-power analyst Jeffrey Pfeffer has identified the often tenuous link between job performance and job rewards and also the influence of extraneous factors, including racial and gender characteristics, on job performance outcomes.8 For example, although little scholarship exists on the differential power and treatment experienced by the higher education administrators who are from traditionally nondominant groups, a study of 43 women, minority, and LGBTQ administrators found significantly higher levels of mistreatment by superiors reported by the African American and Hispanic administrators, as compared with the white administrators. The study also revealed that African American and Hispanic administrators rated their decision-making power, in regard to the official level of their position, as significantly lower than otherwise comparable white administrators.9 As we have seen previously, unfairly low performance evaluations of high-performing professionals of color and white women can substantiate

reformulating concept of ≈microaggressions∆

123

the perceived threat that white male managers, administrators, and other employees develop with regard to these individuals. This fear can result in significant efforts to delegitimize them in the workplace.10 For example, in a study of 2827 professionals (lawyers), people of color and white women reported the need to go above and beyond (dubbed “prove it again”—PIA) to attain the same job recognition as white male colleagues. Women of color expressed this PIA need at a rate 25 percent higher than their white male counterparts. Higher levels of racial or gender bias were reported by the nondominant lawyers in all seven workplace processes: hiring, evaluation, high quality assignments, networking opportunities, compensation and promotion.11 Another survey of 64,000 employees in 279 organizations found systematic gender discrimination experienced by female employees including less access to senior management, difficulties in obtaining promotional opportunities, and everyday discrimination such as sexual harassment. Unsurprisingly, the study identified the continued underrepresentation of women, particularly women of color, in these many different workplaces.12 In higher education, informal evaluation factors can also be leveraged within formal processes to impact employment outcomes. Therese, an African American administrator in a prestigious university, describes how these subjective factors came into play in forcing out a African American colleague. Her colleague was criticized in how she personalized her office with black or African art and had a personal water cooler installed, as well as for the way she dressed. As Therese explains: And so then everything had come under scrutiny and it became unbearable for the person to actually maintain their employment so they resigned. Instead of someone you know, saying, well you know, we are pretty stuffy around here, we tend to be a little more conservative . . . I would suggest that you wear skirts that, you know, are longer than the ones that you currently wear . . . . And so not saying anything, everything is scrutinized from her work. It was a culmination of those things. She was hired for a certain level of expertise. And because her style was different, everything she did was . . . evaluated in very subjective ways.13

124

reformulating concept of ≈microaggressions∆

Isolation and Glass Ceilings in the Workplace

Common characteristics of workplace marginalization and exclusion include efforts to divide and conquer by isolating nondominant individuals or by pitting members of one nondominant group against another. This divide-and-conquer tactic is exemplif ied on a larger national scale by leading politicians. Consider again the example of President Donald Trump, who reveled in an “us versus them” approach that sided with working-class whites as he cast blame on other singled-out groups (e.g., impoverished Latino/a immigrants) in inaccurately assessing the causes for the country’s economic and crime difficulties.14 In situations where members of nondominant groups function as underrepresented tokens, they frequently experience racial or gender isolation, and their heightened visibility leads to increased performance pressures and yet more racial or gender stereotyping.15 Take, for example, a lab study of leadership perceptions about Asian Americans. In three lab experiments relating to engineers and salespersons, the study found that positive leadership perceptions were greater for whites than Asian Americans. As the study’s lead author, Thomas Sy, explains, the “stereotype in the workforce is that Asian Americans are great workers, not great leaders.”16 Although Asian Americans were perceived as more technically competent than whites, perceptions of their leadership abilities were consistently negative. These findings are contrary to the widespread belief, especially among whites, that work evaluations in the U.S. are generally guided by meritocratic criteria. They also suggest that that the lack of management promotions (the “glass ceiling”) in many workplaces for Asian American employees is the result of stereotyped white perceptions of Asian Americans as not prototypical leaders.17 That glass ceiling effect for Asian Americans is likewise seen in an analysis of national Equal Employment Opportunity Commission workforce data that identified Asian American white-collar professionals as the least likely racial group to be promoted into managerial roles.18 Similarly, a study of the technology sector in the San Francisco Bay area found that, despite the fact that Asian Americans represented the largest racial cohort of professionals there, they were the least likely of all racial groups to become technology managers and higher-level executives.19

reformulating concept of ≈microaggressions∆

125

One key reason for the lack of (or slower) promotions and for the glass ceilings for Asian Americans and other Americans of color—commonplace realities in higher education—is the everyday segregation of critical job information networks. In a major study sociologist Nancy DiTomaso interviewed many whites on how they had accessed their jobs over their employment careers. She found much serious and routine nonmeritocratic job access. The white interviewees had mostly used their white acquaintanceship, friendship, and family networks to secure most of their jobs over lifetimes of employment. While they held to the common meritocratic view that jobs should be gotten mainly in terms of “skills, qualifications, and merit,” they regularly made use of white networks to bypass real market competition. Indeed, not one of the many white respondents expressed concern about their routine use of this nonmeritocratic system over their lives. Indeed, much current employment discrimination entails whites favoring other whites by means of job networks, perhaps even more so than whites more directly discriminating against potential and actual employees of color.20 Such favoritism is normalized among whites and central to white actions taken out of the pro-white (presumed white virtuousness) center of the dominant white racial frame. Lack of Support and Failure to Allocate Resources

In numerous organizations, including colleges and universities, the differential allocation of authority to privileged people in the dominant group by those yet higher-up, together with the failure to provide much-needed advancement resources, are tactical approaches that regularly undermine the successful performance of those in nondominant groups. Research indicates that employees of color are less likely to have the usual authority and power associated with their organizational positions than majority group members in those same positions. The former also may have to draw on different social resources to obtain position-based power comparable to their majority counterparts.21 Recall how Lisa, an African American administrator in an elite research university, describes the tenuousness of her position. This limitation on her positional authority is reflected

126

reformulating concept of ≈microaggressions∆

in budgeting and participation in critical administrative discussions and decision-making:22 We don’t control things we should control . . . . It’s a guessing game. I don’t have much say in my own budget; hiring, very limited in determining what the level of the position should be; serving on committees, there are some committees that my position should represent, I don’t even know if I will get an opportunity to be there; nor am I participating in the discussions that would make that decision . . . . To have people make good decisions, you have to be at the table talking with them. I’m not doing that. Bullying and Harassment

In some instances, as we have noted previously, workplace bullying and harassment is used by those in power to demoralize their racial and gender targets, and thereby to assert more organizational dominance and control. Bullying conduct more easily occurs in situations where a person’s job status is untenured or otherwise contingent and the organizational culture is weak in terms of managerial accountability and safeguarding bureaucratic procedures. Bullying arises from the effort to maintain or elevate the dominant (e.g., white male) perpetrator’s status by demeaning the other person and threatening their emotional well-being.23 Systematic workplace bullying can be directed toward delegitimizing the individual, undermining her or his self-esteem, and even pressuring the person to resign. Research studies show that women employees are more likely to be bullied by men and that such bullying can take the form of sexual harassment and other negative gender-based behaviors.24 A recent research study involving 1568 participants (aged 16 to 21) indicates that bullying behavior is related to negative personality traits of people who take pleasure in the suffering of others and the desire to achieve dominance through calculated aggression.25 Take, for example, the account of Claudia, an African American college administrator, who describes how her white male supervisor intentionally tried to “push her to the edge”:

reformulating concept of ≈microaggressions∆

127

I was always stressed out, always worried about watching my back, trying to figure out what he was going to find wrong with every little thing that I did. So, I mean, I stayed up many nights working. In fact, he used to call me at 11:00 at night saying I need this report on my desk tomorrow at 8:00 in the morning and that would be the only time he would ever ask for it was at 11:00 at night. But he did things to really just get to me and try to push me to the edge. And he almost succeeded.26 The personal trauma resulting from such discriminatory abuse is intensified by the quantity or repeated nature of events, their severity, and their potential to create a more public humiliation for the target, particularly when an individual’s career and livelihood are at stake. Yet such systematic abuse could not occur without the larger context of often hidden yet well-institutionalized racism and sexism that pervades most major organizations, including those in higher education, across U.S. society.27 Reframing Microaggressions: A Better Conceptual Vocabulary

As shown in the discrimination cases here and in other higher education examples of discrimination throughout this book, analytical language and concepts like “implicit/unconscious bias” and “microaggressions” are woefully inadequate in describing the integrated and complex reality of (“macro”) racial and gender framing—including stereotypes, emotions, and narratives—and of serious discriminatory behaviors that emanate from those frames. This (macro) framing and consequent discrimination are central to the institutionalized structures of systemic racism and systemic sexism inside and outside of higher education. Recall from Chapter 3 social scientist Scott Lilienfeld’s critique of the scope of racial microaggressions vocabulary and his recommendation that the term “micro-assaults” be dropped. He preferred a focus on microinsults and micro-invalidations or what he termed “inadvertent racial slights.” In contrast, micro-assaults are the only category of racial microaggressions described by Derald Wing Sue as likely to be fully conscious. Moreover, both Sue and Lilienfeld move consideration of most racial and gender-based mistreatment into the category of “inadvertent” slights or

128

reformulating concept of ≈microaggressions∆

acts that are unconscious or, at best, half-conscious. Thereby, the typically dominant group perpetrators of racial and gender-based mistreatment are relieved of both agency and responsibility. Moving racial and gender framing to the realm of the unconscious or inadvertent acts nullifies perpetrator responsibility and intentionality, as well as downplays the importance of active moral conscience. Although the internal hierarchy and normative culture of higher education and other institutions create the permissive grounds for behavioral and process-based exclusion and other discrimination, the intentionality and consciousness of powerful decision-makers must not be overlooked and underestimated. Indeed, without that active intentionality, under current legal interpretations there are often no legal penalties available for acts that involve racial or gender discrimination. There is also the issue of recognizing the important social and demographic changes in society since the 1960s. Critical legal scholars Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic have assessed contemporary racial problems and debates in U.S. educational institutions such as those over hate speech and over banning or restricting racial-ethnic studies programs. They have shown that current legal analyses are often too backward-looking and formalistic. In their analysis of legal debates around limiting campus hate speech, they note how the more savvy Campus administrators generally favor restraints on hate speech and action, believing that they are necessary to maintaining a healthily diverse climate in which all can flourish. Their approach, in short, is pragmatic and forward looking. They value speech and a robust exchange of views but believe that in order to maximize that value they must first assure a variety of speakers and points of view, something that is unlikely to come about until they are able to provide a campus atmosphere in which all contributors feel welcome and safe. Yet, in contrast, most legal scholars and judges, as well as many more conservative white administrators, look at the same issues, not in pragmatic future-oriented terms, but rather “from a backwards-looking perspective in which the dominant question is what did we do in this

reformulating concept of ≈microaggressions∆

129

or that case which we decided twenty-five years ago, when society was less diverse than it is now.”28 The conventional legal (“free speech”) approach here and on other campus matters (e.g., ethnic studies programs) is often anachronistic and harkens back to the 1960s civil rights era. Legal scholars often accent a narrow intentionality and overtness interpretation of discrimination that is perhaps too readily accepted within historically white university and college workplace. By contrast, a forward-looking and flexible analysis shaped by changing new social and demographic realities should address the impact of covert racial and gender discrimination whose intentionality is hidden within highly nuanced institutionalized processes and cleverly disguised in vague “meritocratic” justif ications. Clearly, Derald Wing Sue’s groundbreaking work does point out that racial and gender microaggressions do not always fall into the category of overt and readily identifiable acts of exclusion, such as hate speech or use of racially derogatory terms. Yet this hostility can be carefully disguised in a veneer of polite gestures and discourse that, nonetheless, lead to major behavioral and process-based forms of intentional racial or gender marginalization and exclusion that have major and lasting effects. Indeed, there is much need for further research on how this disguised and veneered racism works in higher education institutions whose everyday practices still routinely favor whites. Moreover, the racially charged rhetoric of our current time signals the urgent need to replace the understated implicit bias and microaggressions language with a more direct and frank terminology that addresses the long-term material, social, familial, and career consequences of what are intentional macro-aggressions and macro-inequalities. Sue has laid out different forms of microaggressions that form a continuum of increasing severity. Similarly, we propose a continuum of racial and gender discrimination (macro-aggressions) that ranges from various forms of subtle mistreatment; to covert forms of institutionalized process-based discrimination (e.g., employment demotion or closure) that are actually motivated by racist or sexist framing; to yet more overt racial and gender hostility, exclusion, and violence such as that of those of white nationalists and “incel” activists inside and outside higher education institutions.

130

reformulating concept of ≈microaggressions∆

We also place this continuum of specific situational actions of discrimination within the larger context of society’s well-institutionalized racial and gender systems that routinely replicate racial and gender inequalities (i.e., macro-inequalities) over the generations through an array of everyday organizational processes (see Figure 7.1, p. 200). The persisting normative culture and climate of a particular department, division, or institution can create the educational or other societal environment in which serious discrimination (macro-aggressions) and serious inequities (macro-inequities) are regularly allowed to take place. Furthermore, we do not relegate the discrimination and inequities to the realm of the unconscious, but rather posit that serious discriminatory behaviors and actions along this continuum may contain a mixture of elements including imbedded sociocultural norms, learned racist and sexist framing, and half-conscious or fully conscious discriminatory actions. Given the severe material, emotional, and career ramifications resulting from racial and gender discrimination and inequalities, later in this book (Chapter 6) we examine important coping and resistance strategies that can and do assist members of nondominant groups in counteracting the recurring behavioral and process-based forms of exclusion. Our extensive analysis suggests that better understanding the systemic racism and systemic sexism contexts that underpin individual acts of discrimination does often assist members of nondominant groups in developing more cohesive and effective strategies and plans of action to counter such harmful actions. The concrete tactical approaches shared through the narratives of nondominant faculty and administrators in this book offer substantial insight into responses that can often help interrupt, neutralize, and overcome barriers to institutional inclusion and equitable treatment. Conclusion

In the next chapter, we examine issues surrounding concepts like “identity” and “identity politics” that are often used in discussions and efforts to deal with campus diversity issues. We examine in depth the difference between self-chosen and socially imposed racial and other identities and assess how the latter negatively affect the day-to-day experiences and

reformulating concept of ≈microaggressions∆

131

inclusion of nondominant groups in higher education. This exploration will surface the numerous specific ways that discriminatory actions based on physical identifiability seriously impact informal and formal campus social interactions—and, especially, the critical opportunity structures for nondominant faculty, staff, and students in higher education. We look farther into just who are the key actors in the elite-white-male dominance system, which is the larger context for the discrimination we have discussed in this chapter. Incidents of discrimination faced by faculty and staff of color, and often by white female faculty and staff as well, are most often perpetrated by white men, especially those with power in the academic contexts we emphasize. These elite white men have the power both to impose racial identities and characteristics on people of color and to discriminate in ways that have significant lasting consequences within and beyond higher education settings. Notes

1 Misawa, M. (2015). Cuts and bruises caused by arrows, sticks, and stones in academia: Theorizing three types of racist and homophobic bullying in adult and higher education. Adult Learning, 26(1), 6–13. 2 Johnson, K. A., Johnson, W. M., Thomas, J. M., and Green, J. J. (2018). Microaggressions at the University of Mississippi: A report from the UM Race Diary Project, unpublished research report, University of Mississippi, p. 35. 3 Stewart, A. J., and Valian, V. (2018). An inclusive academy: Achieving diversity and excellence. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. xxvii, 104. 4 Azadeh F. Osanloo, A. F., Christa Boske, C., and Newcomb, W. S. (2016). Deconstructing macroaggressions, microaggressions, and structural racism in education: Developing a conceptual model for the intersection of social justice practice and intercultural education. International Journal of Organizational Theory And Development, 4, 1–16. 5 Delgado, R., and Stefancic, J. (2017). Four ironies of campus climate. Minnesota Law Review, 101, 1919–1938. 6 Matthew, P. (2017). Matthew, P. A. (2016). Preface. In P. A. Matthew (Ed.) (2016). Written/ Unwritten: Diversity and the hidden truths of tenure. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, p. xv. 7 Chun, E., and Evans, A. (2012). Diverse administrators in peril: The new indentured class in higher education. Boulder, CO: Paradigm, p. 102. 8 Pfeffer, J. (2010). Power: Why some people have it—and others don’t. New York, NY: HarperCollins. 9 Chun and Evans. (2012). Diverse administrators in peril, p. 93. 10 Pettigrew, T. F., and Martin, J. (1987). Shaping the organizational context for black American inclusion. Journal of Social Issues, 43(1), 41–78. 11 Williams, J. C., Multhaup, M., Li, S., and Korn, R. (2018). Executive summary: You can’t change what you can’t see: Interrupting racial & gender bias in the legal profession. University of California, Hastings College of the Law. Retrieved October 25, 2018 from www. americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/administrative/women/Updated%20Bias%20 Interrupters.pdf

132

reformulating concept of ≈microaggressions∆

12 Women in the workplace 2018. McKinsey & Company with Lean In. Retrieved October 26, 2018 from https://womenintheworkplace.com/ 13 Chun and Evans. (2012). Diverse administrators in peril. 14 DelReal, J. A. (2016, August 29). Trump woos women and minorities by pitting one group against another. The Washington Post. Retrieved October 14, 2018 from www. washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-woos-women-and-minorities-by-pitting-one-groupagainst-another/2016/08/29/04a6b3c4-6a30-11e6-8225-fbb8a6fc65bc_story.html 15 King, E. B., Hebl, M. R., George, J. M., and Matusik, S. F. (2010). Understanding tokenism: Antecedents and consequences of a psychological climate of gender inequity. Journal of Management, 36(2), 482–510. 16 ‘Model minority’ Asian Americans are not viewed as ideal leaders in United States. Social Work Today. Retrieved November 1, 2018 from www.socialworktoday.com/news/ dn_031111.shtml 17 Sy, T. Shore, L. M., Strauss, J., Shore, T. H., Tram, S., Whiteley, P., Iked-a-Muromachi, K. (2010). Leadership perceptions as a function of race-occupation fit: The case of Asian Americans. Journal of Applied Psychology, 95(5), 902–919. 18 Gee, B., and Peck, D. (31 May, 2018). Asian Americans are the least likely group in the U.S. to be promoted to management. Harvard Business Review. Retrieved November 1, 2018 from https://hbr.org/2018/05/asian-americans-are-the-least-likely-group-in-theu-s-to-be-promoted-to-management 19 Gee, B., and Peck, D. (2017). The illusion of Asian success: Scant progress for minorities in cracking the glass ceiling from 2007–2015. Ascend. Retrieved November 1, 2018 from https://c.ymcdn.com/sites/www.ascendleadership.org/resource/resmgr/research/ TheIllusionofAsianSuccess.pdf 20 DiTomaso, N. (2013). The American non-dilemma: Racial inequality without racism. New York, NY: Russell Sage, pp. 64–66; DiTomaso, N. (2013, May 5). How social networks drive black unemployment. The New York Times. Retrieved May 6, 2013, from http://opinionator.blogs. nytimes.com/2013/05/05/how-social-networks-drive-black-unemployment/?nl=today sheadlines&emc=edit_th_20130506. DiTomaso, N. (2015). Racism and discrimination versus advantage and favoritism: Bias for versus bias against. Research in Organizational Behavior, 35, 57–77. 21 Ragins, B. R. (1997). Diversified mentoring relationships in organizations: A power perspective. Academy of Management Review, 22(2), 482–521. 22 Chun and Evans. (2012). Diverse administrators in peril, p. 141. 23 Roscigno, V. J., Lopez, S. H., and Hodson, R. (2009). Supervisory bullying, status inequalities and organizational context. Social Forces, 87(3), 1561–1589; Lopez, S. H., Hodson, R., and Roscigno, V. J. (2009). Power, status, and abuse at Work: General and sexual harassment compared. The Sociological Quarterly, 50(1), 3–27. 24 Sallee, M. W., and Diaz, C. R. (2013). Sexual harassment, racist jokes, and homophobic slurs: When bullies target identity groups. In J. Lester (Ed.), Workplace bullying (pp. 41–59). New York, NY: Routledge. 25 Van Geel, M., Goemans, A., Toprak, F., and Vedder, P. (2017). Which personality traits are related to traditional bullying and cyperbullying? A study with the Big Five, Dark Triad, and sadism. Personality and Individual Differences, 106, 231–235. 26 Chun and Evans. (2012). Diverse administrators in peril, p. 52. 27 Bryant-Davis, T., and Ocampo, C. (2005). The trauma of racism: Implications for counseling, research, and education. The Counseling Psychologist, 33(4), 574–578. 28 Delgado, R., and Stefancic, C. (2018). Four ironies of campus climate. Minnesota Law Review, 103(2), 1919–1941, p. 1929.

5 IMPOSED RACIAL IDENTITIES ANOTHER ESSENTIAL CONCEPT

If you’re black, the color of your skin and your existence [is] always contested by society in one form or another. I shouldn’t have to be afraid to sit down and eat my lunch—to read a book some place quietly where I have access. I shouldn’t be afraid to wear a hoodie. I shouldn’t be afraid to jog to class. My heart shouldn’t race when I see a campus police car or a cop car. Little things like that already made me nervous before because of what I see on the news, but now that it’s actually happened to me, it makes me hypersensitive to the fact that it could happen again. And that it could be worse if it were to happen again.1 This African American student references a major racial incident at Smith College and underscores the long-lasting pain, trauma, and emotional scarring caused by openly racist and gendered racist discrimination. The incident parallels the situation at Yale University described in Chapter 2 when another black female student there was reported by a white caller as being out of place while taking a nap in a university common area. Recall how Lolade Siyonbola there was asked to show her identification to four police officers. In both instances, the right of two African American female students to belong in an elite northern educational institution was openly challenged by whites—actions that in effect labeled these women as imposters and outsiders. 133

134

imposed racial identities

In the Smith College case, an apparently white college employee called the police to report an African American student, Oumou Kanoute, a first generation student, who was relaxing on a couch in a campus common room. Kanoute was employed at Smith over that summer as a teaching assistant in chemistry and a residential advisor. The employee reported her to the police in these terms: I was just walking through here in the front foyer . . . and we have a person sitting there laying down in the living room area over here. I didn’t approach her or anything but um he seems to be out of place . . . umm . . . I don’t see anybody in the building at this point and uh I don’t know what he’s doing in there just laying on the couch.2 Note too the caller’s confusion about the gender identity of Oumou Kanoute. When a uniformed police officer approached Oumou Kanoute she was frightened and very aware of the negative things that frequently happen to black people in such policing situations. She began to cry: I just immediately thought of my family and started praying. And in my head I was just like, “Stay calm. Do not stand up. Do not try to walk away. Just stay where you are. Be polite, answer their questions, and use your phone.” That’s all I could think. Later on, Oumou Kanoute elaborated on her troubling and painful experience in a Facebook post: All I did was be black. It’s outrageous that some people question my being at Smith College, and my existence overall as a woman of color. No students of color should have to explain why they belong at prestigious white institutions. I worked my hardest to get into Smith, and I deserve to feel safe on my campus.3 She learned from other black students that such experiences were commonplace at this college, including sometimes even for their visiting parents. She also describes the great stress and feeling of a lack of personal safety while being away from home the incident caused her, particularly

imposed racial identities

135

since she is a first-generation student: “I’m doing this not only for my family, but for my ancestors,” she explained.4 Although she received some encouraging messages on social media and in the press, Kanoute was subsequently criticized by various whites, who downplayed the seriousness of her racialized experience. Such criticism essentially added major insult to major injury as she explains: Basically devaluing my existence and my entire experience as a woman of color. To have a white person tell me how I should feel about racism is just—I don’t even have the words. To have someone—who has never experienced racism—tell me how I should react to it or how I should respond.5 Following this major racist incident, Smith’s president announced that every staff and faculty member would be required to attend anti-bias training. In a letter to the campus community, she wrote, “This painful incident reminds us of the ongoing legacy of racism and bias in which people of color are targeted while simply going about the business of their daily lives.” The employee who called the police was placed on administrative leave, and Smith College administrators undertook an investigation through a law office experienced in civil rights investigations.6 Again we see the complex role of systemic racism in settings like this, as both the police officer who interrogated her and the sympathetic college president are white. These statistical realities of very white higher education settings are also part of the contemporary, still systemic reality of racism in higher education. Naming and Conceptualizing the “Imposed Identity” Process

This incident of student Oumou Kanoute vividly reveals a number of key features of these all too commonplace incidents for people of color, on and off college campuses. We see the great stress and persisting social and psychological effects arising from the imposition of a racial identity—one with negative white framing—on an individual within a higher education environment. This discriminatory incident illustrates well the extensive emotional and cognitive labor required of those who

136

imposed racial identities

are targeted by everyday racism. Broadly contextualized, we observe in such campus events how the underlying system of U.S. racism generates, and is reproduced within, the norms, cultures, and day-to-day interactions in higher education spaces. This example again illustrates how interpretive concepts like implicit bias and microaggression are not nearly strong enough to cover millions of racially framed and intentional discriminatory incidents like these that people of color face each year. The commonplace racial framing demonstrated here is more than implicit or unconscious, but overt and obvious to most involved in the event. And the discrimination here is far more than “micro” in its effects on, and consequences for, the African American student, her friends, and her family. Strikingly, too, incidents like these reveal some serious gaps in social science and other diversity research and discussion on racial and gender identity issues. As with concepts like implicit bias and microaggressions, the commonplace discussions of racial “identity” in social science research and diversity workshops are usually limited by not providing a thorough analysis of the institutional contexts and of the identity-imposers. Most traditional identity analysis utilizes survey instruments or personal records to assess how people identify themselves racially. Self-chosen identity is certainly an important topic to study and assess, and we do not question that effort as such. Yet, even more important in many societal settings, past and present, is the way people with some power (e.g., white police officers, employers, teachers) over a person can and do impose racial (and gender) identities on that person. Unfortunately, in-depth research studies adequately theorizing these contexts and processes of externally imposed racial identities are relatively rare. And even then they almost never analyze fully the most powerful white identity-imposers, those at the top of the racial hierarchy, who have the greatest power to create and maintain racial identities for those with less social power. This is yet another language and conceptual change that we urge on those doing diversity research and workshops in higher education. A few important studies have begun to probe this issue, but in incomplete ways. One recent survey study by Nancy López and her colleagues recognized the role of outsiders in defining a person’s racial category

imposed racial identities

137

but did not devote much attention to theorizing the critical societal importance of this idea. They defined a concept of “street race” determined in terms of how an individual replied to a survey question on the way that individual thought that others on the street perceive their race, and then they examined the relationship of those individual responses to reports of personal health.7 In addition, a rare ethnographic field study of externally imposed identities and that actual imposition process was done by pioneering sociologist Amanda Lewis, who examined how children in actual school settings racially classified themselves and others. Lewis shows how these youngsters racially categorize, including how they interpersonally and in “interactions with official institutions, contend with others’ evaluations of who or what [they] are.” She also notes that for African Americans of all ages “in many situations (say, trying to hail a cab) few factors besides skin tone matter much at all (dress, language, and other indicators cannot protect one from negative outcomes of racial categorization)” by those whites and others imposing a racial identity on them.8 We see the need to dig further into these issues, especially for those concerned with campus and other diversity policy issues. Lewis focuses well on how children categorize each other, and it is not part of her project to probe deeply into who the more powerful societal imposers of such racial identities are, especially those at the top of educational organizations of various levels. This includes the question of who children and adults learn their racial framing of others’ identities from. Certainly, whites are mostly the top powerholders in the organizational hierarchies of historically white educational and other major institutions. For centuries now they have generally been the ones with the greatest power to create, and to impose, racial identities for Americans of color. This reality can be seen in the demographics of university and college leadership, where major racial capital and power is still mostly held by whites, especially white men, at the top. It is exercised by them through the channels of cultural norms, behaviors, and processes that, as we have seen throughout this book, commonly depict nondominant individuals as outsiders. The hegemonic power to mark the body of the racial other through imposed identity or bodily misrecognition is a process by which

138

imposed racial identities

the dominant group members, at the top and other levels, maintain and perpetuate the power dynamics inherent in society’s racial organizations and other structures.9 An imposed racial identity forces subordinated individuals into narrowly defined and stereotypical categorizations such as those based on skin tone and other physical features.10 These categorizations are of course not new. They routinely reflect the dominant racial hierarchy imposed by this country’s whites at least since the seventeenth century—with the institutionalization of vague color labels (“white,” “brown,” “red,” “yellow,” “black”) to depict racial identities in a pervasive metaphorical continuum that prefers lighter over darker skin. At first, in the seventeenth century, English and English American colonists labelled themselves with a term like “Christians” versus labels like “heathen savages” for the Africans they enslaved or the Native Americans they attacked. Soon, however, they came to call themselves “whites” as contrasted with “negroes” or “blacks” for those enslaved within their communities. This colonial racial categorization was of course imposed by whites, especially those in the white elite, and soon became a full-fledged racist framing that accented skin color and related physical characteristics. The racist framing of these white colonizers envisioned a God-ordained hierarchy of human beings with whites highly placed on that ladder. One was “black” in relationship to those self-defined as “white,” and thus “black” was a denigrated racial identity imposed on, not chosen by, those enslaved.11 From a broad perspective, the ability to racially define others and to oppress them, by those in dominant white group, derives from asymmetric power relations in which they control access to major material resources and also implant self-deprecating, white-framed views even within people in racially subordinated groups.12 For four centuries now, this country’s whites have passed along unjust enrichments in the form of material resources gained under slavery and Jim Crow situations to subsequent white generations. This inheritance of racial resources and capital routinely reinforces racial inequality, which is also protected and perpetuated by means of white opportunity hoarding and favoritism in the dominant white social networks, such as in seeking college admissions and good jobs.13

imposed racial identities

Identities: Political and Psychological Dynamics of Discrimination

139

The 20 or so generations of white discrimination and other racial oppression in this country have involved two distinct spheres we should think about: (1) the power and political dynamics restricting the ability of racially stigmatized individuals to challenge authority, exert societal influence, and access professional opportunities; and (2) the psychological dynamics in terms of the internalization of a sense of inferiority, learned helplessness, and compliance in the racialized targets.14 While microaggressions’ research tends to focus on small-scale discriminatory behaviors that certainly do have significant human effects, the reproduction of substantial racial inequalities occurs through the operation of a large array of covert, subtle, and overt discriminations within major U.S. institutions. The critical decision-making of powerful gatekeeping actors is often discretely cloaked within these large-scale institutional processes.15 Well-institutionalized acts of social exclusion and closure take place when the important societal rewards and opportunities are disproportionately meted out to members of dominant groups. Such acts typically involve racial insiders versus racial outsiders, a dichotomy that again calls to mind the question of “from whose perspective” the magnitude and impact of these discriminatory actions are judged and analyzed. Those who are targeted by discriminatory events usually consider them to be much more serious than do their perpetrators, or by most white outsiders viewing them at the time or later.16 An insidious aspect of the dominant discourse in higher education today involves whites’ simultaneously asserting racial neutrality in educational culture, structure, and practices while actually sustaining and engaging in patterned racialized structures and practices that exclude, subordinate, and marginalize people of color.17 Much discriminatory exclusion or marginalizing within educational settings is especially likely to be manifested in situations of racial homogeneity, in which the dominant white (or white male) group’s protection of institutionalized white space, rewards, and privileges becomes an issue. It may even accelerate in situations of competitive threat such as when nonwhite individuals begin to have significant influence in once largely white, or white male, educational environments.18

140

imposed racial identities

The dynamics of racial reproduction and inequality perpetration come into play in situations in which powerful individuals exercise significant unmeritocratic treatment toward nondominant individuals in the span of their institutional control. Powerlessness deriving from racial status differentials, insecure employment status, and marginalization in the educational or other workplace creates significant vulnerabilities for people of color.19 As Charmaine Williams, an African American female professional, points out: My experience of feeling privileged, then having the privilege snatched away when I pushed beyond the boundaries, is consistent with institutional practices that welcome diversity as long as it is prepared to assimilate to a mainstream norm . . . . In the current discourse of a diversity-aware academia, women of color are positioned to seek favor with powerful white men who can grant privilege or take it away.20 In many such cases in higher education, when unchecked by other institutional forces, those in power can bully others or even take pleasure in their employment misfortunes, with the belief that the stigmatized person deserves the treatment she or he receives and that the institution will benefit from what can be viewed as isolated and justifiable instances of social exclusion and closure.21 Acts of closure and other discrimination also evade notice when mostly white college boards of trustees do not serve as a counterbalancing force by carefully scrutinizing white administrators’ decision-making processes and racial or gender disparities in important organizational outcomes.22 In addition, the external imposition of racial identity based on various attributes—ranging from skin color and hair type to language spoken and accents—can lead to the damaging internalization of oppression by its targets and, thus, to the cyclical phenomenon of self-fulfilling prophecy and “stereotype threat.” The concept of stereotype threat refers to the vulnerability of people of color to underperforming in many social settings because of a socially imposed and heightened awareness of negative white racial stereotypes.23 Since a common framing applied to people of color (and sometimes white women) in higher education is

imposed racial identities

141

presumed incompetence, this perception has the potential to negatively impact self-esteem and thereby impact educational or job performance. For example, an interview study of 29 African American and 29 white faculty members at a midwestern university found that three quarters of the African American professors felt that students frequently questioned their academic competency and qualifications, and thus their right to be a professor. By contrast, white professors, particularly men, reported little impact of their racial identity on student expectations or evaluations. Indeed, their academic competence and credentials were rarely questioned. Some even downplayed their intellectual accomplishments to appear more approachable to their students.24 In this chapter, we offer more concrete examples of how the external imposition of identity on nondominant groups reifies inequality through stereotypical expectations and oppressive actions that influence organizational outcomes. We specifically delve into the white racial framing through which different racial groups are viewed, the socially imposed framing that is united by the common denominator of implemented marginalization, exclusion, and other subordination. Day-to-Day Realities of Imposed Identity

The research of Rachelle Winkle-Wagner offers the perspective of the “Unchosen Me,” an approach based on sociological theories of identity to describe how already-existing stratified social structures impact identity formation for faculty members in predominantly white institutions of higher education. Components of this “Unchosen Me” reality are culturally and institutionally imposed through a dynamic and fluid process that affects multiple aspects of their identities. Social boundaries based on these imposed identities are situated around important opportunity structures and access to important organizational privileges, rewards, and recognition. Through interviews in focus groups with 30 African Americans, 2 Afro-Latinas, and one multi-racial respondent at a major midwestern university, she explored the duality experienced by African American women faculty—such as in their often being in the racial identity spotlight and needing either to perform or to be invisible. Some expressed

142

imposed racial identities

the need to balance being perceived as “too white” or “too black” among their academic peers, and they sometimes even had to alter their speech patterns and tastes to demonstrate certain white-expected behaviors.25 These insightful interviews reveal the racist (and sexist) framing of identities encountered by these faculty members in classrooms of predominantly white students, who often judge them on their bodily appearance and other physical attributes. The bodily stereotypes common in a privileged white, male, or heteronormative framing can lead to false assumptions of black faculty incompetence. As a result, white students frequently engaged in obvious passive-aggressive discrimination such as eye-rolling and stony silence, or in quite open disrespect. For example, Cheryl, an African American faculty member, describes an incident with a white male student who came to her office to discuss a paper they were working on: He comes to my office and I ask if he went through the kind of guiding questions I gave and he said yes he did, and I ask, “How far did you get?” And he picked up the paper and he threw it in front of me and I almost had a conniption. I said, “You did not just do that? You did not just walk in my office and throw some papers at me like I’m somebody’s child. I’m sitting there helping you and you are going to disrespect me like that?” And so then he starts apologizing for that.26 Other significant research has demonstrated similar barriers. From another study involving ten African American female faculty members and administrators, consider this narrative of Danielle. She notes the preconceived racial framing of identities and abilities encountered in her public research university: I understand clearly the environment in which I work: white males and females with preconceived thoughts and committed opinions about people of other races and origins. What is ironic: gender orientation is widely accepted; however, people of color still remain on the bottom rung of the ladder. Recruitment for African Americans is nil to none. I have been told, just recently that, “there is just no one qualified.”27

imposed racial identities

143

This commonplace white notion about the supply of black and other faculty of color available in many academic disciplines is usually exaggerated or quite mythical. The second author of this book has encountered this mythology many times over his several decades, yet has usually been able to make a significant list of well-qualified black candidates for sociology departments honestly seeking to recruit black faculty members. His experience with scholars of color in other social science disciplines, and knowledge of a few studies of talented PhDs in those other fields, suggests that this reality of significant numbers of qualified candidates of color not being contacted by these white-run departments is true there as well. The previous respondent further describes her exclusion from decision-making groups due to the common white-framed stereotype of her as “hard to manage,” a stereotype similar to the angry black woman label. When women of color object to racist or sexist practices, they are often viewed as being difficult or not a good fit. Fear of powerful whites’ racial views often characterizes the academic decision-making environment and is a method of organizational control: As an Associate Director, I have not been allowed to chair or sit on search committees. I have been told that I was “hard to manage,” merely because I query that which I do not understand. I am a consummate team player, however, I speak up when injustice occurs and it occurs very often. I have seen students of color condemned, lied on and even dismissed because “they just did not fit.” I have seen professionals who were told to go home and never return, without a reason as to why. When I asked about the matter, I was labeled “insubordinate” and “stirring up matters.” Subtle inferences were made that it “could have been you.” Control by fear is the name of the game.28 In another example of the racial battle fatigue arising from such white framing of identity and ability, a black female graduate student, Tapo Chimbganda, has described the trauma and polarization she experienced in a class of white students with a white psychology professor as they

144

imposed racial identities

discussed controversial issues related to black identity. Her comments were often met with blank stares and opposition, in one case with a white male student telling her that she was “being stupid” for explaining how she had to adapt her communication style, personality, and way of dressing to relate to differing cultural expectations in the varying environments in which she had lived in Africa, Europe, and North America. In addition, statements like “slavery was a positive American experience of modernity” from him made her shudder as she imagined how these future white psychology professionals might treat patients of color.29 Resisting confrontation at first for fear of being labeled unprofessional, she finally addressed the class directly with a scathing response. Her professor later sent her an email advising her that, although her feedback was appreciated, it was not constructive and that she needed to learn how to better articulate her criticism. He referred to her as a non-psychologist, even though she had practiced as a psychologist for years and held a master’s in psychotherapy. As she relates: The professor and the rest of the class talked about these issues, my issues, dismissing the fact that in their midst was one to whom such matters may be lived experiences. . . .During this course and others, my racial identity was viewed negatively if I tried to speak from a position of Blackness . . . .30 The conundrum of whether to speak out due to white-framed perceptions of incompetence and the stereotypical perceptions of “angry” people of color caused Chimbganda to often suffer in silence and dread class meetings until she finally spoke out again on the last day of class. These examples from the research literature are only the tip of the iceberg. They illustrate the sustained, deleterious impact of the pervasive white racial framing of identities and abilities for nondominant faculty, professional staff, and students. These testimonials lead us to further consider how different racial and ethnic groups experience white framing within the higher education environment, including white expectations that lead to hypervisibility, questions of competence, and exclusionary outcomes.

imposed racial identities

145

Identity Issues: Prevalent Asian American Stereotypes

In the previous accounts of imposed racial identities we have seen that much of the existing research literature, including that on college and university settings, has involved assessments of the racist reality faced by African Americans. While much social science theory and empirical research has necessarily focused on white oppression of them, yet other oppressed racial groups have also faced significant white racial framing, including the painful imposition of stereotypical identities and narratives in higher education environments. For instance, drawing on numerous substantial interviews, Rosalind Chou and Joe Feagin describe the plight of Asian Americans struggling with this commonplace white framing and also between externally imposed and self-constructed identities. In an array of societal settings these often perceptive respondents reported rarely feeling fully accepted in society, and as often caught between the dominant white culture and their home cultures. For example, Alice, a Japanese American, described the racially framed perceptions of being “too serious” and “inscrutable” she encountered as a college professor: You don’t even need to open your mouth. There are some really good teachers out there, but because you’re Asian, you’re inscrutable, you don’t joke around, you have your own style. It wasn’t an easy way—an easy journey at all.31 Given the fact that Asian Americans as a racial group include at least 30 distinct national-origin groups, whites and other non-Asians quickly imposing a pan-racial identity on this group is problematic. Nonetheless, the white-imposed framing of Asian Americans over time has tended to view them in terms of a singular pan-racial identity based on a few stereotyped dimensions, such as geeky competence and unsociability. The white-created “model minority” myth has perpetuated the notion of the unsociability of Asian Americans coupled with a view of their hyper-competence and tendency to work too hard, racial stereotypes that (often intentionally) cause envy among other racialized groups.32 Moreover, the attainment of a self-chosen and fully shared pan-racial identity will likely be a long-term process that may take generations,

146

imposed racial identities

since at present that a majority of Asian Americans are immigrants or their children.33 A series of six studies conducted with a total of 1408 college undergraduates found this mixture of imposed racial stereotypes and imagery targeting Asian Americans. The researchers found that the interlocking racial framing of Asian competence and low sociability created a convenient excuse for racial discrimination targeting this often high-achieving group, which was also viewed as a competitive threat, especially to whites.34 From this dominant racial framing, Asian Americans were regarded as good researchers and technocrats, but not good administrative leaders. Unsurprisingly, another recent study found that only 2.3 percent of college presidents are Asian American.35 As Ray Saigo writes: I have studied Asian stereotypes . . . They range from “Asians don’t want to be leaders” to “Asians don’t have necessary leadership abilities” to “Asians are too smart to go into leadership positions.” Yet entire countries have Asian leaders [including the two largest!]. There are Asian chief executives and legislators in the United States. So what’s the problem?36 The brilliant Chinese American law scholar Frank Wu has poignantly explained the lack of liberty to define oneself resulting from an externally imposed racial identity:37 As a member of a minority group everywhere in my own country except among my family or through the self-conscious effort to find other Asian Americans, I alternate between being conspicuous and vanishing, being stared at or looked through. . . . In most instances, I am who others perceive me to be rather than who I perceive myself to be. Considered by the strong sense of individualism inherent in American society, the inability to define oneself is the greatest loss of liberty possible.38 Controlling one’s own racial definition against imposed conceptions is central to having real freedom in a society. Additionally, research on East Asian Americans by Berdahl and Min has distinguished between descriptive racial stereotypes or

imposed racial identities

147

generalized beliefs about a group versus the prescriptive stereotypes of that group. The latter, when violated, are likely to cause backlash and disapproval, which has the greatest impact from those with great social power. East Asian Americans are typically viewed as competent, but passive and somehow “cold.” As long as they remain in socially subordinate roles and do not try to assert their own viewpoints, they are often not viewed as competitive threats to whites. But the research findings in four separate studies indicate that when they do violate white-imposed prescriptive norms they are more likely to be subject to racial harassment and other discrimination in their workplaces or other organizational settings.39 In a recent example that suggests the imposed and persistent racial stereotype of Asian American unsociability, consider the recent lawsuit filed by the wealthy arch-conservative white lawyer, Edward Blum, and the white-oriented conservative organization he founded, Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA). This lawsuit alleged that Harvard University’s admissions officials held Asian American applicants to a higher admissions standard than other student applicants. Blum’s legal Project on Fair Representation has recruited plaintiffs for several lawsuits that challenge affirmative action and other government and university programs that still make modest use of racial characteristics to redress past and continuing discrimination against people of color. The Harvard lawsuit has surfaced student admissions criteria that can be viewed as questionable. Harvard rates each applicant on four areas: academic, extracurricular, athletic, and personal on a scale of 1 to 4 and then provides an overall rating. Almost no one is admitted with a score of worse than a 3 on the academic or personal rating, unless through certain unmeritocratic preferences such as ancestral legacies.40 The “personal” rating is designed to summarize and measure a substantial list of personal qualities like leadership, integrity, sense of humor, likeability, career choice, family background, and helpfulness.41 A 2013 report by the Harvard Office of Institutional Research suggests that Asian American applicants tended to receive a lower overall rating on the summed personal qualities, while receiving higher ratings on academic and extracurricular areas.42 According to

148

imposed racial identities

Peter Arcidiacono, a Duke University economist serving as an expert for Blum’s SFFA, Asian Americans were more likely than black or Hispanic applicants to receive a low personality score. In his view, if that scoring were removed, the admissions rate for Asian Americans would grow significantly.43 Interestingly, David Card, a University of California economics expert for Harvard in this matter, found that Harvard considered the diversity of applicants parents’ occupations and of the career aspirations of the applying students in the nonacademic (personal) factors in admissions. He also noted that the personal rating for applicants depends on other “qualitative factors that cannot be captured in Harvard’s [statistical] database,” including the rating by admissions employees on the applicants’ personal essays. While numerous Asian American students at Harvard voluntarily testified in favor of continuing the affirmative action program, problematically, Blum’s lawyers refrained from having even one of Harvard’s Asian American students to testify in the case.44 (One Laotian American student did report racist incidents at Harvard and criticized the university’s treatment of Asian Americans in an opinion piece in the conservative newspaper, The Wall Street Journal.45) Additionally, neither the Blum group nor the university response dealt with Harvard’s large-scale nonmeritocratic “affirmative action” program that overwhelmingly benefits white applicants—the very serious “legacy” bias in admissions that is commonly used at many historically white colleges and universities. Higher education scholar Mitchell Chang suggests decoupling the issue of discriminatory practices that privilege white students from the issue of race conscious admissions that foster the diversity of the student body.46 Recent incidents at other major universities, such as Washington University and several University of California campuses, also demonstrate a problematical white racial framing of Asian Americans. Email and other internet messages by students have complained about an “Asian invasion,” including the racial framing of Asian students “taking over” study areas or the classes sought by white students. Often these verbal and other attacks on Asian students racially identify, frame, and attack them as “foreign” or “foreigners,” including those born in the United States.47

imposed racial identities

149

Identity Issues: Negative Latino/a Framing

The racialized experiences of Latino/a faculty, staff, and students on our historically white college campuses also do not get the substantial attention from mainstream researchers and policymakers that they deserve. They too suffer from racially framed stereotypes, images, and narratives relating to their imposed racial identities. Like Asian Americans, the umbrella terms “Latino” and “Hispanic” refer to a broad umbrella of groups, including individuals of Mexican and Puerto Rican origin as well as those from Cuba and many Central American and Latin American countries. Like Asian Americans, individuals of Latino descent are often framed as “foreigners” in white academic and other societal spaces. In several research studies the voices of Latina professors have documented their negative experiences with white racist framing and associated imposed labels. For instance, Dulce Cruz was the only Latina professor in the English department at a midwestern university. She learned through the university grapevine that she was assigned to teach international students because she was considered to have a “foreign” identity, although she was raised in the United States. Also subject to academic challenges as to why she pursued nineteenth-century British literature, she later changed fields to study Caribbean literature, reflecting her interest in literacy theory. When she did research in a mainstream field, her ability and right to do so were often questioned, but when she pursued research more related to her historical ancestry, she was viewed as ethnocentric and incapable of research objectivity. Cruz writes that externally imposed identities created problems for her: It was not simply that my colleagues and students made me feel different; it was that my difference was equated with inferiority. One of the painful results of feeling inferior was that I was compelled to revise my identity. (Truthfully, there were times when I wished I could slip out of who I am.) 48 Similarly, Maria Christina Gonzalez writes of her experiences as a professor in the “leaning ivory tower” and of the identity masks people of color have had to assume in order to fit in there. As she explains:49

150

imposed racial identities

It is important that we be allowed to determine who we are, rather than having our identities designated by others. . . . I believe that many times, in addition to the professional socialization experience, we have bought into the def initions of our ethnic groups popularized by outside stereotype. This includes an emphasis on our shortcomings, our sufferings, our obstacles, to the exclusion of our strengths and achievements. A qualitative case study of six Latino/a students at a prestigious, public midwestern university located in a midsize city reveals the isolation and racial framing of these students in co-curricular activities and the surrounding communities. One of the students, Mario, described how when the upper-class white students in the university marching band nicknamed the first-year band students, he was named “Burro.” As an individual of Mexican American descent he found the nickname to be racially motivated, especially in light of the fact that one white senior was nicknamed “Thoroughbred.” Mario was also deemed the “mini-Thoroughbred.” The pejorative racial implications of this imposed name were evident to Mario: I thought it was like [a Mexican horse or donkey, in a negative way, ’cause I’m Mexican] and I was like, “Whoa!” [sounding angry] . . . I thought it was racially motivated. And [they said] “It didn’t have anything to do with race . . . . It was like, out of all the names there could have been, you know? A trillion words, you know? And I was just like, it had to that close to being racial, you know? And that’s why it still gets me and it’s still there. . . . In a way that’s part of like the White privilege . . . .50 Latino/a students are sometimes racially framed by whites similar to the way they frame African Americans, such as in the racially stereotyped notion that they do not work hard enough academically. For example, Tiffany Martinez, a student at Suffolk University, received her paper back from a professor who challenged her use of the word, “hence,” as “not your word,” and commented on her literature review, with “this is not your language” in the paper. The professor wrote further that he wanted her to indicate where she had used “cut and paste.” In Martinez’s own words, the professor caused her to doubt herself, as his

imposed racial identities

151

blue pen was the catalyst that opened an ocean of self-doubt that I worked so hard to destroy. In front of my peers, I was criticized by a person who had the academic position I aimed to acquire. I was hurting because my professor assumed that the only way I could content as good as this was to “cut and paste.” I am hurting because for a brief moment I believed them.51 The white professor imposed stereotypical expectations of incompetence on her and even suggested that she had cheated, leading her to question herself and the viability of the career path she sought to follow. Imposed Racial Framing: Native Americans

Native American faculty, staff, and students often face a distinctive type of racial framing, one also including imposed racial names and identities. In one interview study a Native American faculty member made clear how the distorted and negative framing of indigenous Americans and their histories is characteristic of U.S. history and other textbooks that are controlled by powerful whites: We push our students to consider how textbooks are written and revised based on censorship imposed from [white] publishing executives, adoption boards, school administrators, parent groups or other concerned citizens . . . In the end what we are asking is that they be open to hearing an alternative version of history; one that may be unsettling and that might force them to rethink their ideas about what it means to be “American.” He also explained how white students in classrooms also impose negative racial framing on Native American teachers, much like that reported by African American teachers noted above: What is most important is that we do this knowing that our presence in the front of the room is held suspect. White students have been taught that when people who look like us speak dangerous and unpopular truths, we have hidden agendas. We are not to be trusted. When we assert ourselves we run the risk of being discredited by students emboldened by their anger.

152

imposed racial identities

The challenge then becomes, not only leading the students from point A-to-B but also leaving the room unharmed with our sense of integrity intact.52 This eloquent commentary is full of insight about the classroom realities faced by all faculty of color. They face immediately imposed white stereotypes, imagery, and other racial framing, including notions of hidden agendas and unpopular truths. They also encounter much more than just in-class framing and stress, for their own sense of identity has to be protected and managed so they can leave the classroom relatively unharmed. Once again, we see the danger of imposed racial identities and of internalized racial oppression. One of the most serious contemporary threats to this Native American sense of self-worth is one regularly imposed by whites of all class backgrounds—the widespread white adoption and celebration of Native American mascots for U.S. sports teams over many decades. One of the most egregious examples of such mascots is the case of the Washington “Redskins” football team, situated in the national capital area. Among white fans, and in the larger white public, there is still much support for this white-imposed racist framing, one that uses a very racist name for Native Americans. Many whites insist, as they often do for entrenched white framing, that the name actually has positive meaning and should be accepted as such by Native Americans. However, by the midnineteenth century this racist name was used by whites to reference the scalps, skins, and bodies of Native Americans who were presented by white killers for private or government rewards for such brutal killings. These killings were frequently set in the context of larger-scale, government-backed, genocidal attacks on Native Americans that sought to steal a huge amount of their lands. Over more than a century now, Native Americans have been targets of an imposed racial identity (e.g., “Indians”) and of white racist framing aggressively using terminology like the racist slur used as the mascot of the Washington professional football team.53 A few national surveys have shown that a majority of the non-native population does not understand the Native American opposition to

imposed racial identities

153

the racist framing and supports the continuing use of the derogatory name for this football team. One indigenous American leader, Susan Shown Harjo, who has been heavily involved in the efforts to end that racist mascot, has spoken thus about these survey results: “This is a really good example of why you never put racism up to a popular vote, because racism will win every time. It’s not up to the offending class to say what offends the offended.”54 While national surveys, whose methodology is rejected by major Native American leaders, show many Native Americans do not find the mascots offensive, Native American focus groups have found that 80 percent find such Native mascots to be offensive.55 From their counter-framed perspective the white imposition of identities, names, and understandings of Native Americans is yet another example of white oppression. While many sports teams, especially at secondary schools and some colleges, have recently eliminated Native American logos and mascots, there are still at least 900 sports teams with these white-generated racist Native American mascots. Unsurprisingly, as the aforementioned Native American professor suggests, the imposition of white racial framing and distorted identities on indigenous Americans has very negative impacts. Researchers have shown that the negative stereotyping, imagery, and narratives in whites’ racist mascotization have harmful effects on children and adults. Yet, few white educators, at any educational level, seem concerned with an honest education of students about the genocidal and other oppressive realities of the Indigenous American experience, past or present.56 Given the attachment of many non-native Americans to racist narratives about Native Americans, it is not surprising that there have been few attempts to end such framing inside or outside the country’s educational institutions. One rare 2018 study sought to redress this racist framing. The researchers had a large online representative sample of Americans read honest narratives about Native American realities, and compared this sample’s reactions to a similarly sized sample of those who did not read the narratives. The statement of the new narrative that the researchers sought to make more pervasive in educational institutions included these points:

154

imposed racial identities

The history of Native Americans is . . . a story built around values that have shaped Native cultures and American society: respect for family and elders, shared responsibility to care for the land and an obligation to do right by the next generation. It is a story of resilience through great pain and injustice, from broken treaties and loss of land and language in the past, to derogatory sports mascots and biased history taught in schools today. Across more than 1,000 tribal nations and in every profession and segment of society, Native American peoples carry the cultural knowledge and wisdom that sustains Native nations and helps build a stronger future for all.57 Both of the samples were asked about their general level of interest in Native Americans, about the discrimination the latter faced, and about their views of contemporary issues facing Indigenous Americans. The researchers found that those who read the honest narrative showed significantly higher support for Native issues compared with respondents who did not read the narrative. . . . It also shows dramatic differences in attitudes toward Native American peoples and issues between people who read this language and people who did not.58 Clearly, even modest educational interventions can have positive, albeit often modest, effects in shifting non-native Americans’ racial framing of these important issues. Identifying as Multiracial American

The 2000 U.S. census was the first to allow individuals to identify in more than one racial category. Since then, the number of those describing themselves as biracial or multiracial has grown to 9 million, approximately 2.1 percent of the population. And this percentage likely underestimates the actual size of the multiracial population. For example, if the mixed-race backgrounds of both parents and grandparents are considered, the result would be about 6.9 percent of Americans. Moreover, a recent Pew Research Center study of 1555

imposed racial identities

155

multiracial adults indicates that a majority had experienced racist slurs or racist jokes, while one in four had been hurt by racial assumptions made by others about their identities and backgrounds. In addition, those mixed-race respondents with some black ancestry reported experiencing racial identification and discrimination similar to that faced by single-race black individuals. For instance, one in four indicated that they have been unfairly stopped by the police.59 As we further consider how racial framing, including imposed racial identities, affects nondominant students, faculty, and staff in higher education, we should note that mixed-race individuals often face distinct dilemmas. They are frequently defined by the dominant white racial frame that fixes multiracial individuals in either white or nonwhite categories and thus can render their actual mixed ancestries invisible.60 Because of the impact of these outside appraisals on multiracial individuals themselves, those who appear visibly nonwhite usually have few choices about how to self-identify successfully in the larger society, and thus must often self-identify as individuals of color. As shown in the aforementioned Pew survey, pressure to identify as single-race often characterizes the multiracial experience. In fact, nearly half the participants in that survey indicated they do not identify as multiracial because they are perceived by others to have just one racial background. For example, Jolanda, a Canadian student of half-Jamaican, half-Dutch descent describes the outside pressure to identify as a single-race individual: . . . people will sort of just default to identifying you as their opposite, because you don’t look the same, so even though I am just as much white as I am black, they only see the one side. Just ’cause I’m—I don’t look the same as them, so they won’t think of it that way.61 Note, too, that biracial and bicultural experiences are not identical. Some biracial individuals may not have lived in communities of color or learned much about the culture of their nonwhite parent. One research study of biracial and bicultural individuals found that the biracial subjects reported greater identity denial and questioning than the other subjects in terms of being told by outsiders how they should identify racially.62

156

imposed racial identities

In addition, interviews with multiracial students at one midwestern university found that they experienced three prevalent discriminatory actions (termed by the researchers “microaggressions”) from others: the denial of their multiracial reality, the tendency to assume that they had a monoracial identity, and the view that they were not monoracial enough to fit into a particular group. This was true for both white and nonwhite outsiders they encountered. For example, Vanessa, a student of Mexican and black descent, described how due to her lack of Spanish-speaking skills, she was not viewed as fitting in with her Mexican American classmates, yet also was not viewed as black enough by her black classmates: “Some people say I dress like a white girl . . . I’m not black enough. I can’t sing, or I can’t step, and I can’t dance.”63 Researchers have also found that women of mixed-race backgrounds tend to have more negative experiences with outsiders imposing certain racial identities on them than do their male counterparts, perhaps because of the greater social emphasis on women relative to their physical appearance.64 As Eleanor, a part-black, part-white college student explains: “But I could never choose to be white, so I think that some choices aren’t available based on the way you look. So it has something to do with how you look that you have certain choices.”65 Individuals may sometimes choose to pass for white if they appear to be white or, alternatively, as members of other groups of color. Conversely, the very old and racist white-generated “one-drop” rule in the U.S. accents any known African American ancestry as necessarily dominant in shaping one’s racial identity. This “race” definition originally arose in the white-framed norms and laws of the slavery era and persisted into the norms and laws of the later Jim Crow era. This white-imposed rule meant that during these eras individuals with any known black ancestry (regardless of appearance) were termed and legally coded, for discrimination, as “black” racially. Today, the term hypodescent is sometimes used to refer to the commonplace reality of biracial individuals being determined to belong to their lower-status parent’s group in ways that reinforce the prevailing U.S. racial hierarchy.66 As we can see in the aforementioned research studies, this imposition of racial identity often persists today in the informal norms operational across much of U.S. society.

imposed racial identities

157

Conclusion

As shown through the examples in this chapter, the dominant white racial framing, including the external imposition of racial identities, normalizes perspectives that result in differential expectations, negative opportunity structures, and negative career outcomes for people of color. While individual acts of racial exclusion and other discrimination can be undertaken with varying degrees of white awareness, the hierarchical system in higher education—with its typically elite white male dominance—-underpins an array of particular acts involving learned and practiced racial and gender framing. As we discussed previously, the relatively weak vocabulary of microaggressions and implicit bias fails to capture this gritty and systemic underlying reality, its hegemonic racial and gender norms, and its usually life-changing and harmful effects. These norms undergird many discriminatory interpersonal interactions and behaviors in higher education—and thus ultimately preserve age-old hierarchical racial and gendered realities. Notes

1 Dwyer, D. (2018, August 23). ‘I am not a threat’: Smith College student says she’s ‘terrified’ to return to campus after having police called on her. The Boston Globe. Retrieved August 30, 2018, from www.boston.com/news/local-news/2018/08/23/smith-collegestudent-oumou-kanoute-reflects-on-retur ning-to-c ampus-af ter-policec a l l e d < h t t p s : / / u r l d e f e n s e . p r o o f p o i n t . c o m / v 2 / u r l ? u = h t t p s - 3 A _ _ w w w. boston.com_news_local-2Dnews_2018_08_23_smith-2Dcollege-2Dstudent-2Doumou2Dkanoute-2Dreflects-2Don-2Dreturning-2Dto-2Dcampus-2Dafter-2Dpolice2Dcalled&d=DwMFaQ&c=ODFT-G5SujMiGrKuoJJjVg&r=cgU0nz2c5e1OitpJAuJX fw&m=wujesfudXQ-7ZE7lnOqg90CGo3UBE1BoLNvzrDJIyPA&s=6a5wQej8zZmJS 3TNf6U7QWd1YkXpcPcRMKPL5ks6Ng4&e=> 2 Lou, M. (2018, August 2). Smith College employee called police on black student eating lunch. Huffington Post. www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/smith-college-student-police_ us_5b630b98e4b0fd5c73d6ee6d 3 Dwyer (2018, August 23). ‘I am not a threat.’ 4 Ibid. 5 Ibid. 6 Ibid. 7 López, N., Vargas, E., Juarez, M., Cacari-Stone, L., and Bettez, S. (2018). What’s your “street race”? Leveraging multidimensional measures of race and intersectionality for examining physical and mental health status among Latinxs, Journal of Race and Ethnicity,4, 49–66. 8 Lewis, A. (2003). Race in the schoolyard. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, pp. 130, 134. 9 Ford, K. A. (2011). Race, gender, and bodily (mis)recognitions: Women of color faculty experiences with white students in the college classroom. The Journal of Higher Education, 82(4), 444–47.

158

imposed racial identities

10 Boutte-Heiniluoma, N. C. (2012). Your perception, my reality: The case of imposed identity for multiracial individuals. Unpublished doctoral dissertation: Texas A&M University. 11 Quoted in Jordan, W. D. (1968) White over black: American attitudes toward the Negro, 1550–1812. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, p. 12. See also Feagin, J. R., and Ducey, K. (2017). Elite white men ruling: Who, what, when, where, and how. New York, NY: Routledge. See Feagin, J. R. and Ducey, K. (2019). Racist America: Roots, Current Realities, and Future Reparations (4th ed.). New York, NY: Routledge. 12 Pilleltensky, I., and Gonick, L. (1996). Polities change, oppression remains: On the psychology and politics of oppression. Political Psychology, 17(1), 127–146. 13 DiTomaso, N. (2013). The American non-dilemma: Racial inequality without racism. New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation. 14 Prilleltensky and Gonick. (1996). Politics change, oppression remains. 15 For further discussion see Roscigno, V. J. with Light, R. (2007). Race attitudes and the alternative realities of workers and bosses. In Roscigno, V. J., The Face of Discrimination: How race and gender impact work and home lives (pp. 39–56). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. 16 Parker, R. (2003). Ethnicity, exclusion and the workplace. Hampshire, England: Palgrave MacMillan. 17 Moore, W. L., and Bell, J. M. (2017). The right to be racist in college: Racist speech, white institutional space, and the First Amendment. Law & Policy, 39(2), 99–120. 18 Roscigno, V. J. (2007). Introduction. In Roscigno, V. J. The face of discrimination: How race and gender impact work and home lives (pp. 1–20). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. 19 Roscigno, V. J., Lopez, S. H., and Hodson, R. (2009). Supervisory bullying, status inequalities and organizational context. Social Forces, 87 (3), 1561–1589. 20 Williams, C. C. (2001). The angry black woman scholar. NWSA Journal, 13(2), 87–97 21 See for example, Ben-Zeev, A. (30 June, 2009). Why are we pleased with others’ misfortune. Psychology Today. Retrieved October 4, 2018 from www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/inthe-name-love/200901/why-are-we-pleased-others-misfortune 22 Chun, E. B. (2017). Diversity and inclusion: The balancing act between governing boards and college or university administration. In R. Thompson-Miller and K. Ducey (Eds.), Systemic racism: Making liberty, justice, and democracy real (pp. 79–110). New York, NY: Palgrave MacMillan. 23 See, for example, Steele, C., and Aronson, J. (1995). Stereotype threat and the intellectual test performance of African Americans. Applied Psychology, 69(5), 797–811. 24 Harlow, R. (2003). “Race Doesn’t Matter, but. . .”: The effect of race on professors’ experiences and emotion management in the undergraduate college classroom. Social Psychology Quarterly, 66(4), 348–363. 25 Winkle-Wagner, R. (2009). The unchosen me: Race, gender, and identity among black women in college. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. 26 Ibid. p. 464. 27 Newsom, M. C. (2011). Slaying two dragons: For black women leaders in higher education, gender equity is only half the battle, p. 190. In J. L. Martin (Ed.), Women as leaders in education: Succeeding despite inequity, discrimination, and other challenges, Volume I (pp. 179–199). Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger. 28 Ibid., p. 191. 29 Chimbganda, T. (2014). Traumatic pedagogy: When epistemic privilege and white privilege collide. In K. J. Fasching-Varner, K. A. Albert, R. W. Mitchell, and C. Allen (Eds), Racial battle fatigue in higher education: Exposing the myth of post-racial America (pp. 29–36), pp. 35–36. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. 30 Ibid. p. 36.

imposed racial identities

159

31 Feagin, J. R., and Chou, R. S. (2015). The myth of the model minority: Asian Americans facing racism (2nd ed.) New York, NY: Routledge, p. 85. 32 Liu, M. H., Kwan, V. S., Cheung, A., and Fiske, S. T. (2005). Stereotype content model explains prejudice for an envied outgroup: Scale of Anti-Asian American stereotypes. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 31(1), 34–47. 33 Iwamoto, D. K., and Liu, W. M. (2010). The impact of racial identity, ethnic identity, Asian values and race-related stress on Asian Americans and Asian international college students’ psychological well-being. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 57(1), 79–91. 34 Ibid. 35 Seltzer, R. (2017, 20 June). The slowly diversifying presidency. Inside Higher Ed. Retrieved September 29, 2018 from www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/06/20/college-presidentsdiversifying-slowly-and-growing-older-study-finds 36 Saigo, Roy H., (2008, September 26) Why there still aren’t enough Asian American presidents. The Chronicle of Higher Education, 55(5). Retrieved October 3, 2018, from www. chronicle.com/article/Why-There-Still-Arent-Enough/3521 37 Wu, F. H. (2002). Yellow: Race in American beyond black and white. New York, NY: Basic Books. 38 Jaschik, S. (2016, October 31). When Latina student wrote “hence,” her professor assumed plagiarism. Inside Higher Ed. Retrieved September 29, 2018, from www.insidehighered. com/news/2016/10/31/latina-students-story-about-how-professor-reacted-word-hencesets-debate-stereotypes 39 Berdahl, J. L., and Min, J.-A. (2012) Prescriptive stereotypes and workplace consequences for East Asians in North America. Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology, 18(2), 141–152. 40 Arcidiacono, P. S. (2018, June 15). Exhibit A: Expert report of Peter S. Arcidiacono. Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. Harvard. Retrieved September 21, 2018, from https:// samv91khoyt2i553a2t1s05i-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/ Doc-415-2-Arcidiacono-Rebuttal-Report.pdf 41 Jump, J. (2018, June 25). Ethical college admissions: The Harvard admissions case. Inside Higher Ed. Retrieved September 22, 2018, from www.insidehighered.com/ admissions/views/2018/06/25/harvard-admissions-data-raise-questions-dont-demonstratediscrimination. See also Wong, A. (2018, June 19). Harvard’s impossible personality test. The Atlantic. Retrieved September 22, 2018, from www.theatlantic.com/education/ archive/2018/06/harvard-admissions-personality/563198/ 42 Jaschik, S. (2018, June 18). Smoking gun on anti-Asian bias at Harvard? Inside Higher Ed. Retrieved September 21, 2018, from www.insidehighered.com/admissions/article/ 2018/06/18/harvard-faces-new-scrutiny-over-how-it-evaluates-asian-american 43 Wong, A. (2018, June 19). Harvard’s impossible personality test. The Atlantic. Retrieved September 22, 2018, from www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/ 2018/06/harvard-admissions-personality/563198/. See also Arcidiacono, P. S. (2018, June 15). Exhibit B: Rebuttal expert report of Peter S. Arcidiacono. Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. Harvard. Retrieved September 21, 2018, from https://samv91khoyt2i553a2t1s05i-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/ Doc-415-2-Arcidiacono-Rebuttal-Report.pdf 44 Card, D. (2017, December 15). Report of David Card. United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts. Students for Fair Admissions, Inc., v. President and fellows of Harvard College. Harvard Corporation, p. 11. Retrieved September 21, 2018, from https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/files/diverse-education/files/expert_report_as_filed_d._ mass._14-cv-14176_dckt_000419_033_filed_2018-06-15.pdf

160

imposed racial identities

45 Babphavong, K. (2018, October 14). An Asian-American dissident at Harvard. Opinion. The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved January 20, 2019 from www.wsj.com/articles/an-asianamerican-dissident-at-harvard-1539546451 46 John Rogers and Mitchell Chang (2018, August 27). UCLA Center X: Mitchell Chang: Affirming Diversity. National Education Policy Center. Retrieved February 10, 2019 from https://nepc.coloardo.edu/blog/affirming-diversity 47 Whitford, E. (2018, October 11). When Asians are targets of racism. Inside Higher Ed. Retrieved October 11, 2018, from www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/10/11/anti-asianmessages-spread-washington-university-st-louis 48 Cruz, D. M. (1993). Struggling with the labels that mark my ethnic identity. In R. V. Padilla and R. C. Chavez (Eds.), The leaning ivory tower: Latino professors in American universities (pp. 91–100). Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, p. 93. 49 Gonzalez, M. C. (1993). In search of the voice I always had. In R. V. Padilla and R. C. Chavez (Eds.), The leaning ivory tower: Latino professors in American universities (pp. 77–90), p. 88. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. 50 Minnikel-Lacocque, J. (2013). Racism, college, and the power of words: Racial microaggressions reconsidered. American Educational Research Journal, 50(3), 432–465, pp. 456, 458. 51 Jaschik, S. (2016, October 31). When Latina student wrote “hence,” her professor assumed plagiarism. 52 Brayboy, B., and Estrada, M. C. (2006). Racism will not go away and neither will we: Two scholars of color examine multicultural education courses. In C. A. Stanley (Ed.), Faculty of color: Teaching in predominantly White colleges and universities (pp. 100–114). Boston, MA: Anker Publishing Company). 53 Fenelon, J. V. (2017). Redskins? Sports mascots, Indian nations, and White racism. New York, NY: Routledge, pp. 35–42. 54 Harjo quote is in Price, D. ( June 17, 2005). Friday’s morning mashup. WEEI.com. Retrieved May 16, 2013, from http:/leeinks.weei.com/sports/tag/david-price. See also Suzan Shown Harjo, S. S. (2005, June 17). Dirty word games. Indian Country Today, p. 1. 55 See Reclaiming native truth: Research findings, Compilation of all research. Reclaiming native truth project. June 2018. Retrieved pdf October 12, 2018, from www.reclaimingnativetruth.com/ 56 Payne, G. C. (2017, December 20) George Payne: Time to stop using Native Americans as mascots. Daily Messenger. Retrieved December 30, 2017, from www.mpnnow.com/ news/20171220/george-payne-time-to-stop-using-native-americans-as-mascots 57 Reclaiming native truth, p. 42. 58 Ibid. 59 Multiracial in America: Proud, diverse, and growing in numbers (2015). Pew Research Center. Retrieved October 3, 3018, from www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/ sites/3/2015/06/2015-06-11_multiracial-in-america_final-updated.pdf 60 Fanon, F. (1967) Black skin, white masks. New York, NY: Grove Press. For a rich discussion of this phenomenon, see Yancy, G. (2008). Black bodies, white gazes. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. See also Sim, J. P. (2016). Reevaluation of the influence of appearance and reflected appraisals for mixed-race identity: The role of consistent /inconsistent racial perception. Sociology of Race and Ethnicity, 2(4), 569–583 61 Paragg, J. E. (2011). Ambivalence, the external gaze and negotiation: Exploring mixed race identity, p. 50. Unpublished master’s thesis. The University of Alberta 62 Albuja, A. F. (2016). Unacknowledged identities: Biracial and bicultural autonomy. Unpublished master’s thesis. Graduate School, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. 63 Harris, J. C. (2017). Multiracial college students’ experiences with multiracial microaggressions. Race, Ethnicity, and Education, 20(4), 429–445, p. 439.

imposed racial identities

161

64 See for example, Renn, K. (2004). Mixed race students in college: The ecology of race, identity, and community on campus, Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. 65 Renn (2004). Mixed race students in college, p. 111. 66 Brunsma, D. L., and Rockquemore, K. A. What does “Black” mean? Exploring the epistemological stranglehold of racial categorization. Critical Sociology, 28(1–2), 101–121; Ho, A. K., Sidanius, J., Cuddy, A. J. C., and Banaji, M. R. (2013). Status boundary enforcement and the categorization of black–white biracials. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 49(5), 940–943.

6 RESISTING AND COPING WITH EVERYDAY DISCRIMINATION

The most baffling task for victims of racism and sexism is to defend against microaggressions. Knowing how and when to defend requires time and energy that oppressors cannot appreciate.1 As we have argued throughout this book, the conceptual inadequacy of the microaggressions and related micro terminology is conspicuous in obscuring the severe emotional and cognitive labor regularly required of nondominant groups when facing inequitable and unmeritocratic treatment in the higher education environment. And the vocabulary of implicit and unconscious bias fails to address accountability for inequitable behaviors and discriminatory actions undertaken by institutional gatekeepers who are usually aware of at least some of their negative impacts. The consequences of many routine acts of discrimination, exclusion, and social closure can be far-reaching, with great effects on psychological and physical health and well-being. Our focus in this chapter is on everyday coping and resistance strategies of faculty, administrators, and students in response to serious racial and gender discrimination and inequalities. We focus on asymmetrical power relations in which targets of discrimination are in subordinate positions and/or are subject to negative institutional forces beyond individual control, such as in many tenure review processes. Surprisingly, 162

coping with everyday discrimination

163

scant research exists on the coping strategies specific to employees in higher education in response to such racial and gender discrimination. For example, writing in a women’s studies journal, scholar Charmaine Williams notes the absence of guidance on maintaining emotional balance in the face of discriminatory treatment: “There does not seem to be enough written about the emotional components of negotiating this ground. . . . I have written about feeling betrayed, exploited, angered, enraged, pained, and otherwise agitated as a beginning scholar.”2 The narratives of nondominant faculty, administrators, and students in this and other chapters reveal that targeted individuals may have little or no opportunity to prepare for everyday acts of exclusion, marginalization, or employment closure. They often do not have the benefit of informal supervisory communications, such as that shared by powerful institutional actors, or of access to privileged white social networks. Sociologist Nancy DiTomaso has identified the racial segregation of important job information networks in accessing and keeping jobs. This routine segregation is reinforced within everyday work environments.3 In addition, other research indicates that this social network clustering among homogenous groups may lead to group polarization of attitudes, bonding over negative gossip, and less exposure to opposing perspectives and arguments.4 Our interviews include examples of “backroom” clustering in efforts to sabotage or undermine targeted individuals in toxic departmental and other college cultures. In several examples, this academic backstabbing, and likely internalized oppression, occurred even when some female faculty sought to undercut yet other female faculty. Consistent with the phenomenon of two-faced racism discussed earlier, academic gossip imbedding racial or gender stereotypes–such as assertions of incompetence or the lack of fit of targeted individuals– can compound in backroom settings without the latter’s knowledge.5 Absent some countervailing forces in the workplace—such as a protective guardian model highlighted in one study of workplace ethnographies–individuals with little job security will be at greater risk for supervisory bullying and other forms of employment mistreatment.6 That is, without an actively protective guardian from a dominant group, little recourse is available to nondominant individuals when racial or gender mistreatment regularly occurs. When the powerful

164

coping with everyday discrimination

decision-making forces of an institution and its dominant gatekeepers are pitted against a member of a nondominant group, as we have seen in previous chapters, few avenues of legal or institutional recourse are readily available to those targeted. Much more research is needed, but a few recent studies have explored the numerous active coping strategies used by minoritized students on predominantly white campuses. Sometimes these are successful, but often they are not. Among these studies research on high-achieving graduate students lends insight into vulnerable situations in which minoritized individuals suffer political and professional setbacks, such as faculty harming their reputations and loss of research opportunities.7 One study based on a sample of doctoral students and recent doctoral graduates of color at 21 institutions found that all of them had experienced racial discrimination in their doctoral programs through neglect and isolation, differential support and expectations, devaluing of their research on race, blatant racist acts, and/or violations of institutional and federal policies. These students responded with a range of internal responses to protect their psychological well-being, as well as active resistance responses such as avoidance of faculty members, soliciting intervention, reconstructing committees, and speaking up or filing institutional complaints.8 Arguably, for faculty, administrators, and staff from nondominant groups the level of vulnerability to racial or gender discrimination is even more intensified, with consequences that include real threats to job stability, authority, and security. Options and choices are often limited for people of color and white women, particularly in some tight job markets in higher education. The difficulties of obtaining a research sample from employees in higher education are substantial, due to issues of conf identiality or fear of reprisal. Yet an unmet need clearly exists for building a research-based, practical repertoire of resources and tested coping strategies that will assist nondominant individuals cope with inequitable treatment in the higher education workplace. Goals for targets of everyday discrimination and inequalities include maintaining academic and life balance, sustaining physical and psychological health, finding discrete avenues for resistance, building alliances and social support, counteracting

coping with everyday discrimination

165

mistreatment through different forms of intervention, and achieving resilience in the face of recurring hostility and discriminatory actions.9 Stress and Coping with Everyday Discrimination

Racial or gender discrimination represents a distinctive, complex, and sustained source of chronic stress that negatively impacts physical and psychological health and requires regularly stigmatized and subordinated individuals to deploy an impressive range of everyday coping responses.10 A substantial body of research indicates that racial inequalities in health reflect differential vulnerability to psychosocial stress. Such vulnerability is usually due to targeted individuals’ insufficient socioeconomic and power resources for dealing with the impacts on life opportunities of the socially defined attributes of race or gender.11 Prolonged stress has been shown to increase susceptibility to autoimmune diseases such as diabetes and myopathy, and it can exacerbate cardiological, neurological, and intestinal diseases. When the stress response to recurring discrimination is continuously activated, individuals typically experience fatigue and pain, and the breakdown of proteins in the muscles can occur without allowing the muscles to rebuild.12 And the relationship of frequent racial or gender discrimination to numerous mental health impairments such as depression, psychological distress, and loss of self-esteem is well documented in the research literature.13 For example, a study of 325 graduate students of color who were enrolled in professional schools in a major public university found that almost all reported recent experiences with racial discrimination of various types. For these high-achieving students, an association was also found between the extent of these racial aggressions and their beliefs about their negative location in the societal status order, as well as serious bouts of personal depression.14 Recall too the experiences of Claudia, an African American administrator, whose white male supervisor subjected her to unreasonable demands and other discriminatory abuse. The continuous bullying and mistreatment she experienced had severe and life-threatening health consequences:

166

coping with everyday discrimination

When I had that very discriminatory supervisor, I had extremely high blood pressure. I was on three medications. They were at the maximum dosage and my blood pressure was still uncontrollable. My doctor kept telling me I needed to quit my job because he was said I was going to die. He said I was going to just have a stroke or heart attack because my blood pressure was so high. After I was terminated, I started to almost faint, and what we found out was that I was on too much medication. And today I don’t even take any medication. It was clearly the stress from that job.15 These examples, as well as many others in the extensive literature on the individual and social costs of racism, demonstrate how pernicious racial and gender acts of discrimination have very serious damaging consequences to health, psychological well-being, and career outcomes.16 Types of Coping Responses

To begin, we offer a brief summary of the psychological literature on types of human coping responses to everyday stress. According to a traditional stress and coping model, a process of primary appraisal is triggered by stressful social encounters or transactions that cause individuals to evaluate situations in terms of possible harm, threat, and challenge. A person’s cognitive appraisal of a situation or transaction, whether conscious or unconscious, then leads to a secondary appraisal or the determination of potential coping responses. The initial cognitive appraisal influences the nature of the coping response as well as a person’s emotional reactions.17 The ability to interpret and assess warning signals of racial or gender discrimination in the workplace and take pre-emptive action to address the threat represents an important approach to coping in recurring situations of asymmetrical power in higher education. Coping strategies vary based on the nature and intensity of the threat, the availability of resources to assist the individual, the perceived intentionality of the act, and the personal evaluation of one’s ability to undertake a coping response. An often overlooked dimension of these

coping with everyday discrimination

167

coping strategies involves the time dimension. Individuals may adopt different strategies in anticipation of a threat, at the time the threat occurs, following an episode, or over a sustained time period. In determining the possible alternatives, individuals must gauge the costs and benefits of these various strategies. This process, in turn, affects their likelihood of success.18 The psychological coping literature is loosely organized in terms of problem-focused and emotion-focused responses, but usually the individual’s response bridges both categories.19 Problem-focused or proactive strategies aim to restructure situations or to take direct measures to address the issue at hand and its source. These strategies can be directed toward the self, others, or the situation itself.20 In strategies focused on the self, for example, the individual can anticipate potential situations and detect subtle behavioral and situational cues which will enable her or him to deploy refined interactional skills and adapt behavior to meet ongoing challenges.21 Emotion-focused strategies are designed to control emotions in order not to escalate situations, and often to enable individuals to attain some degree of detachment. Use of humor, sarcasm, and strategic concealment of one’s thoughts from the oppressor represent approaches that have enabled African Americans and other people of color for centuries to survive white threats of violence and other discrimination.22 Seeking social support can enable individuals to offset the effects of everyday discrimination by building social alliances and allowing for a more protected expression of emotions. In addition, passive methods of coping include avoidance strategies and other indirect ways to address the problem without active confrontation. In academic and other workplaces, because of the potential for supervisory backlash and the need to maintain the employment relationship, nondominant individuals usually have to “pick and choose their battles.” Psychological research findings also suggest that coping and resistance strategies vary by racial and gender background.23 For instance, recurring white discrimination is often experienced in divergent ways by people in different racial groups, especially since whites’ racial framing— including persistent stereotypes, narratives, emotions, and historical

168

coping with everyday discrimination

group associations—may vary quite substantially. For example, Latin Americans are often viewed by whites as likely undocumented immigrants; Asian Americans as the model minority and perpetual foreigner; and African Americans as lazy or dangerous criminals.24 These whiteframed perceptions can frequently necessitate differential coping and resistance strategies. The intersectionality of racism and sexism also influences the selection of these everyday coping responses. Several studies have examined the impact of gendered racism on African American women. Take, for example, a qualitative study of 196 women from the African American Voices Project that examines how the intersection of racism and sexism impacts the selection of resistance strategies. These women relied upon multiple resistance strategies that draw on internal and external resources as well as situational tools geared to specific discriminatory acts or inegalitarian environments. Internal resources included resting on one’s religious faith and spiritual resources and strongly valuing oneself. External resources included social support (“leaning on shoulders”) of experienced relatives and friends of color. Situation-specific responses included role flexing or altering speech patterns, behavior, and dress to fit in with the dominant white group’s expectations; efforts to counteract racial or gender stereotypes through caution, hypervigilance, and avoidance; and attempting to directly prove racial stereotypes and narratives wrong. On occasion, standing up and fighting back aggressively was viewed as a necessary resistance strategy to personal survival and respect, as was mentioned by several respondents in previous chapters.25 Another interview study of African American woman students found them using multiple reflective coping strategies in response to gendered racism and other discrimination. Three coping strategies were identified: (1) assertively resisting Eurocentric standards of beauty and using one’s voice as power by speaking up directly; (2) a collective strategy of leaning heavily on one’s personal support network; and (3) and a self-protective strategy of developing a strong sense of black female power, becoming desensitized to everyday racism, and/or avoiding the more difficult settings. In addition, picking and choosing one’s battle was deployed as a common situational

coping with everyday discrimination

169

strategy. Various strategies reveal gender-specific and racially specific responses that seek to disconfirm prevalent racist framing of African American women. For example, speaking up to power could be a “catch 22” by triggering further white discrimination (i.e., macroaggressions) based on activation of the stereotype of the “angry black woman.”26 Unmistakably, in every study implementation of these coping responses exacts a significant psychological and physical toll on the targeted individuals. As Sharee, a 39-year-old doctoral student explains, she became a workaholic in order to prove her right to be in her academic program and to overcome white racist framing about African American women:27 I’ve become a workaholic, I actually think that’s horrible for me . . . I’d say like two thirds of my hair broke off last year because I was so stressed . . . my coping has been horrible . . . I gained a bunch of weight . . . I think I’m highly functional in a low grade depression around what this environment represents for me. Other factors that differentiate the selection of active coping strategies include the positionality of the stigmatized individual in relation to hierarchical power. This hierarchical positionality can limit the degree of leverage an individual can exercise in response to racial or gender exclusion, marginalization, and other discrimination. Of course, certain commonalities in coping strategies transcend specific racial and gender differences. These strategies include realistic appraisal of a situation, seeking viable alternatives, valuing one’s professional abilities and competence, and confronting difficult situations directly. They also include finding and utilizing institutional support mechanisms, building alliances internally and externally, and drawing strength from spiritual and familial support. The specific approaches and insights of people of color and white women that are shown in our interviews across the chapters should be of great benefit to all those facing exclusionary and other discriminatory situations, and they can certainly be adapted or modified based on particular racialized and gendered contexts and circumstances inside and outside of higher education settings.

170

coping with everyday discrimination

Everyday Discrimination and Career Costs

College and university settings vary considerably in the redress options their academic employees have in regard to racial or gender discrimination. For example, many college and university administrators serve “at will”—that is, they do not have any type of tenure protection. Indeed, there is relatively little research documentation regarding the professional and personal impacts of acts of workplace discrimination and employment closure that affect them, especially those in nondominant groups. In contrast to them, the modest due process rights often afforded to faculty members in the tenure process have allowed some faculty of color and white female faculty to document incidents of perceived racial or gender discrimination and to lodge limited institutional and legal protests. A number of such cases have become public because of the significant press coverage they received. To illustrate the high costs of, and specific responses to, careerderailing experiences for nondominant faculty, let us consider the all too similar characteristics of a group of relevant tenure denial cases. Commonalities in these cases include ill-defined or previously unarticulated criteria for job evaluation, but set against strong recommendations for tenure at the departmental level and against a faculty member’s record of positive evaluations and teaching or research awards. These problematical cases indicate both the barriers and possible countering responses that might have made for better outcomes for these faculty members. For example, better mentoring and strong and regular job feedback probably would have helped all these candidates navigate the difficult tenure process more successfully. Tenure denial decisions were made in most of these cases by powerful white administrators, typically men, who later stepped down from their administrative positions and left a disputed track record in terms of support for faculty diversity and advancement. In all of these tenure denial cases, scant, if any, consideration was given by these powerful administrators to the personal and career disruptions that the protesting faculty face, to the legal expenses they incur, or to the unnecessary damage to their professional reputations. While their situations differed somewhat in terms of circumstances, background, and the rationale for the tenure

coping with everyday discrimination

171

denial, the cases illuminate how systematic inequalities unfold within most higher education contexts and what their individual and collective consequences are. First, consider the tenure denial case of Mai’a K. Davis Cross, an assistant professor of international relations at the University of Southern California (USC). She is a talented scholar of indigenous Hawai’ian and Asian ancestry. Cross had left her tenure track position at prestigious Colgate University to join USC in 2008. The author of three books, four book chapters, and some journal articles, Cross had received an important USC Teaching and Mentoring Award and the highest ratings in regular performance evaluations leading up to her tenure denial.28 Although recommended by her own School of International Relations and by the faculty of the Dornside College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences for university tenure, Cross’s tenure application was denied at the academic dean’s level above her own college level. A faculty grievance panel that examined her case found that this particular dean had made unauthorized calls to outside sources that, as they put it, “materially inhibited” her tenure review process.29 Cross then produced a report by a statistics expert indicating that between 1998 and 2018, just 48 percent of professors of color there had been promoted to associate professor with tenure, while in contrast 81 percent of white male and female faculty members had received tenure there. In addition, while white women were awarded tenure at a rate of 66.7 percent, only 40 percent of Asian American faculty members received tenure.30 The USC president himself then disputed these findings, indicating limitations in this particular statistical analysis such as counting cases with no decision as not being awarded tenure and including dual appointments while excluding other appointments in social sciences and humanities.31 Nonetheless, according to Laura Pulido, a tenured professor and founder of USC’s own Committee for Tenure Justice, the university administration did not back its claims with hard data that showed tenure denials by department, year, minority status, and gender.32 In addition, this president subsequently stepped down from the USC presidency in 2018, following an outcry by hundreds of prominent faculty, alumni, and students over this case,

172

coping with everyday discrimination

and after a series of ethics scandals relating to misconduct and sexual harassment by several university officials.33 In 2010, another USC tenure grievance was filed by the scholar Jane Iwamura, an assistant professor of religion and American Studies who was denied tenure. This problematical tenure denial was handed down even though Iwamura had received the highest faculty honor in her college and positive tenure recommendations from both departments involved in her dual appointment. Her tenure reconsideration request was also unsuccessful, in spite of the fact that she submitted for consideration a newly published book and a petition signed by nearly a thousand faculty and students from USC’s Student Coalition for Asian-Pacific Empowerment.34 In her statements Professor Iwamura particularly noted the lack of regular administrative feedback to her on her academic progress and the absence of transparency in the tenure review process.35 The dean involved in this case, the same as in the Cross case above, later left USC to become the provost at the University of California (Irvine), despite objections there of a group of faculty members. The Irvine Faculty Association noted that his tenure and retention decisions at USC were “uneven” and “unclear” and that he had set a tone that “adversely affected minority faculty and women.”36 In a third series of problematical tenure cases, this time at American University on the east coast, six female professors who were denied tenure accused the white male provost, Scott Bass, of discrimination over a ten-year period. Allegations of age discrimination were raised by two women in their fifties. In particular, they cited a comment made by that provost at a reception at his home regarding his preference for tenuring younger people who could carry out his vision for the university more responsibly in the future.37 In the tenure denial case of Carolyn Brown, a Latina assistant professor of journalism, variability in her student evaluations was given as the reason for that denial, despite empirical evidence shared by Brown regarding the lower student evaluations often received by many professors of color. Brown noted that she also had not been aware that the detailed statistical evaluation (e.g., use of standard deviations) in her student evaluations would play such a significant role in her tenure decision. She alleged that the decision was a reprimand for her

coping with everyday discrimination

173

active role in gender and racial issues that arose on that campus. Brown later assumed a senior lecturer position at the University of North Texas, a step down from her previous tenure-track appointment.38 Following the onslaught of complaints and some lawsuits, Scott Bass stepped down from his role as provost in 2018. The case of Aimee Bahng, an Asian American female assistant professor at Dartmouth College, offers additional insight into difficulties faced by scholars of color at historically white institutions. An assistant professor of English, Bahng was recommended for tenure there by her department, yet denied tenure at a higher administrative level despite vigorous protests from numerous faculty and students on campus. Bahng specialized in Asian American studies. According to Cynthia Wu, a professor of transnational studies at the University of Buffalo, research on race, gender, and sexuality has “less cultural capital” in academia and is often less respected, especially by senior white administrators, than more traditional academic research. Wu believes this type of tenure denial case represents a systematic dismantling of Asian American studies in colleges and universities, one that “defends [traditional] disciplinary boundaries.” Not only did Bahng’s scholarship not fit the conventional white-normed mold of acceptable research, but she had also paid the “racial tax” that most professors of color bear because they mentor and advise numerous students of color and engage in other necessary support services for these students, often at the expense of their own research time. Indeed, Bahng described herself as an “unpaid diversity consultant” for Dartmouth:39 We could have filled our entire calendar with meetings about diversity, whether with administrators, with undergraduates, or faculty groups and workgroups. There are a lot of conversations and engagements that we care deeply about, but at the same time it doesn’t count for anything, if my recent tenure case is any example. So I feel as though there’s a lot of invisible labor happening there. Ironically, Dartmouth’s own official report on faculty diversity matters, issued in 2016, had noted serious issues with retention of underrepresented faculty. It stated that

174

coping with everyday discrimination

all departures, for any reason, are felt significantly across the campus and fuel the perception of unfairness. Many are skeptical of Dartmouth’s commitment to diversity and inclusion, noting longstanding concerns about the campus climate for [underrepresented] faculty.40 Demonstrating the quality of her teaching and research, Aimee Bahng later found a tenure track position at prestigious Pomona College on the West Coast. The tenure-denial situations described here only reflect a few betterknown academic situations that have received some public attention. There are hundreds of others, at least, that deserve similar critical attention. The tenacity, financial resources, and emotional fortitude needed for underrepresented faculty and administrators to pursue such racial or gender discrimination claims and to undertake the punishing gauntlet of conventional grievance procedures and lawsuits cannot be overstated. Given the realization that few faculty or administrator claims of racial or gender discrimination will actually succeed, those who protest are faced with the dilemma of expending significant resources and personal capital in battling the infinitely superior legal and financial resources of an educational institution. In most cases the emotional and cognitive labor involved is huge, so huge as to prevent such resistance and redress by most people. Educational institutions with long bureaucratic records of systemic racism and systemic sexism—and/or with senior white male administrators colluding in this oppressive reality—can thus persist without seriously addressing any of these fundamental questions of academic achievement and fairness. This is an area where much redress and reform is very necessary at most of our institutions of higher education. Seeking Career Alternatives: Knowing Your Academic Value

In some situations college or university circumstances preclude the ability to change or resist a specific situation, and individuals have to seek other employment alternatives. In this case it is clear to us that knowledge of one’s own value and building a strong sense of self-worth, as well as a determined commitment to pursuing one’s professional goals, can assist members of underrepresented groups in dealing with oppressive

coping with everyday discrimination

175

academic situations that offer little latitude for protest and few positive alternatives for change. For example, several academic cases known to us shed light on the phenomenon of the so-called “queen bee” syndrome, which often seems to result from internalized oppression. These examples also illustrate the ways in which women faculty do, or do not, deal with that reality successfully. This syndrome is often prominent in maledominated cultures wherein some successful women set more rigorous requirements for yet other women in an effort to limit the latter’s success. Consider the difficult narrative of Monique, a white faculty member who had a strong track record of success in her health sciences field with the highest performance evaluations and many scholarly awards over a 25-year period. When an interim female department head was assigned to her department, the situation changed and became what Monique calls “the worst experience” of her life. This interim department head aspired to be a dean, yet reportedly maligned the abilities of the students, brought politics into the classroom, and humiliated one student for not voting in an election because he had to study. In a single year, six people left the department due to this interim department head’s interference in the health science program that potentially affected accreditation outcomes and the ability of the students to conduct fieldwork and to graduate. When Monique set up a meeting with the interim head and her dean to discuss various student concerns, this head told the dean that Monique was unprofessional and unqualified. She also refused to sign off on the accreditation reports, further jeopardizing the academic program. Although the female dean hugged Monique after the meeting and apologized on behalf of the department head, she refused to take an assertive stance or intervene. Fortunately, Monique had planned to leave the institution for another position. But through this experience, she came to the realization that no matter what her accomplishments were or how hard she worked, she could not fix the situation:41 That was kind of a shock too. What I thought before that was that if I communicated well enough or I worked hard enough, there wasn’t a situation that I couldn’t fix. Like I absolutely believed

176

coping with everyday discrimination

that. It was shocking to realize that in some situations there’s just nothing you can do about it. Monique explains how the “queen bee” syndrome can create an uncivil and hazing atmosphere for other women faculty: The last supervisor I had was female and I have to be really honest with you, in that experience and in many of my experiences, across the board I have had a lot more diff iculty working with female supervisors than I have male. I feel like in some cases there is this almost this rite of passage, it almost sometimes feels like a hazing kind of thing, like I had to go through it, and it was tough for me, and I want to make it tough for you. Or really an overarching feeling of insecurity, and I really think that in work settings where there is sort of incivility and bullying, it comes from, a lack of a person feeling confident in their abilities and who they are and feeling a need to put someone else in their place. Monique accents another important aspect of systemic racism and sexism—the way in which some of those oppressed racially or in gender terms, as they move up the power ladder, buy so much into the white racial frame or male sexist frame that they actively and knowingly help enforce racist and sexist discrimination, sometimes more so than some white or male colleagues. The “queen bee” syndrome has been well documented in the research literature and describes how some upwardly mobile (usually white) women gaining power in an organization contribute to its persisting sexist framing and discrimination by placing more rigorous requirements on yet other women—such as by critiquing their qualifications, expertise, or leadership skills in unfair ways, and even aligning themselves with certain male decision-makers against these latter women’s advancements. This syndrome often seems to arise from the feeling by a few senior women employees that they have worked hard to attain their positions and feel that other women have not yet had to work that hard, and thus should do the same.42

coping with everyday discrimination

177

While aware that there was little she could do about her situation, Monique relied on her professional commitment to her work as well as spiritual resources to give her a sense of perspective and carry her through the situation: My biggest fear in life would be for someone to say that I was unprofessional or under qualified. Had that happened at an earlier point in my life, it might have shut me down. And so she [the interim department head] said it in front of the dean and the dean didn’t agree . . . . But to be really honest I have become very spiritual, and I used to think I drove the train, if I worked hard enough or I communicated well enough that I could fix it. The thing is again sometimes you can’t and sometimes you have to give it to a higher power, and you have to have faith that things are happening for a reason, and that’s it’s going to be ok. And I didn’t have any of that. But I didn’t have any choice after it started happening. That I had to realize that she said the worst things anyone could say in my view about me, and you know what, I woke up the next morning and the sun came up, and I still had people around me that cared for me and loved me. And I was OK. It took my power back, and my spirituality really sky rocketed, and it continues to carry me through now. Monique clearly signals the importance of the aforementioned strategies of having a strong sense of self-worth, in this case also attached to her spirituality and strong commitment to her professional goals. In a second example, Tricia, a white female faculty member, experienced a number of problematic interactions with a white male department chair in her tenure review process that she found to be clearly sexist. During a third year review, she received a written comment on her evaluation by a male faculty observer of her teaching that her voice was too loud and distracted from the comfort level of the classroom. Perceiving this comment to be sexist, Tricia approached the department chair and said that she would like to have it removed. When he refused, Tricia did not back down, but took another tack to both acknowledge and address the criticism. As she explains:43

178

coping with everyday discrimination

I decided ok, if you are going to leave this in, in my response to this, I requested the opportunity to be trained, have some voice training. I have an issue that needs remediation, then you need to provide me with the opportunity to remediate. The chair called me in, and said “No, you are being ridiculous . . . .” He flat out refused any opportunity to have a remediation for my voice, so it stayed in the third year review and became part of my off icial review. That’s one instance where I really point to gender as being the underlying cause. I can’t imagine that happening to a man. My chair kept telling me that I was being ridiculous, and that if I left that in I was going to be calling even more attention to the comments by the reviewer and that other people from outside the department would also think I was being ridiculous, that I should just let it go and probably that no one would notice that this particular comment was in my review. But I doubt that seriously that nobody noticed. However, when Tricia approached the white female faculty dean for assistance regarding this issue, that dean told her to forget about it and that it would not make any difference. Tricia notes her disappointment that a woman in a position of power who could have made a difference dismissed her serious concerns related to gender stereotyping and discrimination. Recalling the motto of “lifting while we climb,” which has its genesis in this country’s first Black Women’s Club, Tricia explains why some powerful women often do not support other women: I think it’s a protection device . . . I have noticed not all, that a lot of women, it’s not lifting while we climb, it’s “I got out here and I’m going to kick the ladder out from underneath you so you can’t get here.” That’s disappointing on so many levels. I never see things as being zero sum, I think that everybody should have opportunities. Three years later, Tricia was unanimously recommended by her department for tenure but then received a negative vote at the college level. The situation was very stressful and came as a surprise to her. As she explains,

coping with everyday discrimination

179

It was obviously very stressful. I had no idea that I was going to get denied. But now looking back on this some 20 years later and as a chair myself and helping assistant professors through the process of tenure, I know just how poorly the whole process worked for me. When you get denied like this, they don’t just deny you at the college level, then it goes to the provost, president, trustees, and each one of them. It’s really humiliating, the whole process. After her tenure denial Tricia’s white male department chair once again intervened and told her that she should leave before the next semester. In her view, “He thought I was going to somehow poison the department in some ways. Somehow it was going to really bother people that I was there, and that I was going to make everyone else uncomfortable if I stayed.” Tricia rejected his biased advice, knowing that she had a terminal year available in her contract, and needing the time to look for another position while she still had her salary and benefits. In addition, she was expecting a child at the time. In her words: I told him basically I am coming back and I am going to take my terminal year and there was not a lot he could do about it since it was guaranteed under my contract. It wasn’t pleasant, but I did it, and I found the job I have now . . . . I got tenure and promoted to full at another institution. Obviously it wasn’t a very good experience for me . . . . I can look back at it now, and think about it in a different way, but then it was devastating. Once again, notice that in coping with the difficult tenure process and her difficult departmental situation Tricia too emphasizes the importance of knowing your own personal and professional value and having a very thick skin. She credits the support of her husband and faculty colleagues at other institutions and her commitment to her child’s future, as well as the positive interactions with many students, as helping her to persevere and succeed: I just put my head down and did my job and looked for another job and found the one I have. I think more than anything I have

180

coping with everyday discrimination

always had the ability to persevere, I think you have to kind of grow armor, a thick skin when you are a woman in higher education. You have to know what your own value is, and how to best navigate a lot of this. It was really difficult. . . . If you had come to me years ago, I would have told you that I thought I would never get past this, but I did. Tricia’s narrative reveals how, despite an unfair, humiliating, and protracted tenure process, she maintained a steady course by keeping her professional and personal priorities at the forefront, asserting her knowledge of her actual contractual obligations, actively seeking employment alternatives, and anesthetizing herself against the negative work experience by knowing her own value and persevering in spite of the odds. In a third example, Vivian, an African American student who took on a social science internship in an external organization overseen by her university, experienced a discriminatory workplace situation that led her to resign and seek another appointment. From the outset in her research internship, Vivian did not receive sufficient guidance from her faculty mentor and was subjected to discriminatory treatment by a white member of the research team. She was eager as a first generation college student to take on the research assignment. But in a situation where no clear supervision was present, the white member of the research team told her the first day, “Hey, you need to dim your light because you are a little too eager.” As Vivian explains, his statement was equivalent to saying “My goal is to make it like you don’t want to be here,” She thought, “Wow, OK. Who says that, number one, and number two, that is extremely unprofessional.”44 Unlike other members of the team, she was not given key access to the work office, and each time she came to work she had to have someone call to let her in. Once, after letting her in, this same white colleague said, “I couldn’t see you because you blended in with the darkness and you look like a thug.” Vivian was taken aback by the racist statement and went home to google the implications of his statement on her visual appearance. As she noted,

coping with everyday discrimination

181

I have dreadlocks in my hair. Obviously I know that any kind of national hair styles that a black woman wears it’s automatically like sometimes like, “Oh.” I felt he was joking, but at the end of the day I also know that he was being definitely racist. Later when she had difficulty accessing the work area because her key card did not work, one of the individuals in charge was annoyed at her, rather than at the key system, when she asked for assistance. When she did finally get into the suite, a white colleague exclaimed, “Well, take the hint, maybe we just don’t want you here.” Vivian understood clearly what he meant: “At that point, even if he was joking, he has said enough to me that it makes me even question things to the point where, I was like, you’re probably right.” She reported the incidents to her supervisor. As the only person of color on the research team, she feared she might be viewed as overreacting and that her concerns would be dismissed, with no action taken: I felt a little nervous to report it . . . because I was the only person of color there really on the team. . . . That is very uncomfortable because they’ll be like you’re just being sensitive. . . . I was more so afraid than anything: retaliation or being told that I was overreacting and that nothing would happen. If I were to tell someone, and no one took action to give him some kind of diversity training or making him not an employee anymore, I think that would have hurt if had they not taken action. I never know when to actually speak out about these things, just because I don’t ever want to be told you are overreacting, or that didn’t really happen. Recognizing that she was unwelcome and the difficulty she faced in convincing an all-white constituency of the reality of the discrimination she faced, Vivian made a proactive decision to resign. She explained thus: Breaking with white solidarity is kind of tough. Even if folks have had diversity training, they are going to feel that they know everything about diversity and how to handle it, but they don’t. I feel like they take it as an attack on themselves or their character if I

182

coping with everyday discrimination

say “Hey, I have been discriminated against, can we discuss this in a good way?” Typically if I experience something like that I try to understand one, that white folks in regard to race and especially with black folks, they are not very educated in relation to race, but that doesn’t make it OK. I try to have compassion but then I try to remove myself from it just because I don’t have to deal with it and I know my limits . . . I started becoming almost depressed and could feel like an energy saying, “Oh you’re not welcome here.” Just kind of being in tune with myself, and a higher power kind of thing. This was a wonderful opportunity but it’s no longer worthwhile, it’s not worth the hardships. Vivian essentially took a long view of the situation and put things in perspective, keeping in mind her mother’s admonition “to never dim her light for anyone else.” Despite the mistreatment she faced, her vision remains positive and inclusive, “If anything, [my mother] has taught me to turn other peoples’ lights on, because we can all shine. We can all create synergy.” In all three situations described here, these women surmounted major career obstacles they faced through a very realistic appraisal, a strong sense of self-worth, and agility in navigating the career difficulties and alternatives open to them. Again one observes the great cognitive and emotional labor that dealing with these discriminatory life events involved, likely much more of such labor than average white male academics ever have to exert in their career lives in higher education. Proactive Coping Strategies

Although avoidance can often appear to be a safer strategy when experiencing acts of racial or gender marginalization, people in underrepresented groups may benefit from proactive coping strategies such as making good use of existing institutional resources and exerting assertiveness in calling out a discrimination problem directly, although this depends on one’s positionality in relation to particular discriminators with power. These proactive coping responses can provide the ability to identify, anticipate, and preempt racially or gender framed objections and criticisms that could lead to negative employment-related evaluations and career outcomes.

coping with everyday discrimination

183

Rather than defensiveness, proactive solutions can help an individual stabilize the situation, document efforts to correct identified issues, gain time, and take the initiative. Proactive coping focuses on strategies to identify and reduce negative consequences before or during stressful events.45 One model of such coping identifies five possible phases: (1) building resources such as social support, early planning, and needed skills in anticipation of a stressor; (2) clearly recognizing the stressful event through sensitivity to the environment and signs of harm; (3) taking steps to minimize or prevent an anticipated negative outcome; (4) initial and ongoing coping efforts; and (5) critical self-evaluation and feedback related to the problem and how one coped with it.46 Developing Complex Coping Strategies

Consider the proactive coping strategies undertaken by Marianne, a white faculty member, who experienced a toxic work environment on several fronts simultaneously in her academic department. Other female faculty there had sought to reassign a promising student away from her tutelage by questioning her qualifications and expertise openly in emails sent to both the student and the department head. In addition, after being assigned administrative responsibilities from a white male administrator who had health issues, that male administrator then actively sought to sabotage her work. Thus, as Marianne became increasingly successful in that administrative role, he too berated her with demeaning and dismissive statements, telling her “You’re terrible at this,” and complaining about her to the department head.47 Marianne immediately contacted the department head after this male administrator complained. When her female department head convened a meeting with the male administrator to discuss the situation, he addressed Marianne in a volatile, dismissive tone. He further tried to bolster his position with documentation on whenever she had taken more than 12 hours to respond to his emails. To her surprise, her female department head seemed to side with the male administrator and did not appear to notice his negative tone and dismissive remarks. Marianne then took several steps in what became a broad strategy to cope with the difficult power-imbalanced situation that affected

184

coping with everyday discrimination

her standing in her department, her professional reputation, and her future potential for promotion. She contacted the faculty ombudsperson who advised her on next steps and her array of action options. The assurance from the ombudsperson that her story mattered made a real difference to her both psychologically and practically. As she explained, the ombudsperson had “the ear of people who were keeping track of these kinds of things.” Marianne refused to back away from her difficult situation with some other faculty. She sought out the faculty members individually who had attempted to undercut her expertise, called out the situation for what it was in a dignified and civil manner, offered relevant evidence, and copied the department head when responding to their important correspondence. Further, she sought to build alliances on campus outside of her department with numerous positive and supportive colleagues. The efforts of certain female colleagues to undermine Marianne’s qualifications and expertise again suggest the “queen bee” syndrome. Marianne believes that her interactions with certain female faculty members affected her promotion that year due to their influence in the process, thereby causing her to have to wait more years to be promoted. As she explains: It is surprising to me when women don’t support women . . . not that that they should blindly take the side of someone. But whether it is a male or female, that “power over”—it’s in academia, and I am sorry it is there. Persons interested in having power or exerting power over other people, if they perceive someone to be threatening in any way shape or manner, however innocent that person’s behavior, if it creeps into their own territory where they perceive it to be threatening, then their response is to use power and dismiss or demean or undermine. That seems unfortunate to me. There is so much strength and empowerment in just being direct. You don’t have to raise your voice or be nasty. I think people are astonished when one’s behavior is very professional, and you just come at it form a very assertive standpoint. It is easy to hide, and I think we hide because we experience shame. Shame is a negative emotion that makes us feel like we are somehow flawed. So it takes some work not to close the door and hide, just

coping with everyday discrimination

185

to step forward and say, “Wait a moment, that’s not really what happened here. I won’t be treated this way and I’m happy to be in a relationship with you when I can be treated civilly.” Marianne’s willingness to assert herself in a nuanced and civilized manner and to access available institutional resources clearly exemplifies the proactive resistance strategies that faculty members can use in difficult academic environments, including those involving substantial gender or racial discrimination. Positive Use of Marginality: The “Outsider Within”

Another important coping approach in higher education seeks to build on being an “outsider within” (e.g., a woman or a man of color) and to work to change a white-male-dominated institution from the margins. The theme of “outsiders within” arose from work of scholars like Patricia Hill Collins and has been a frequent theme in the higher education research literature.48 Benjamin Baez notes that the dichotomy in the phrase typically refers to individuals of color who are presumably “without,” while the “within” word refers to settings of traditional whiteness. He suggests the metaphor may be too pessimistic because it suggests a monolithic unity and universality of whiteness that may not exist. Instead, Baez suggests that this dichotomy can be destabilized when minoritized individuals conduct research, teach, or engage in service that to some degree changes the “within.”49 However, Baez’s perspective on the power of “outsiders within” may itself be overly optimistic. We have noted earlier Charmaine Williams’ testimonial that relates to an abuse of power by a white male department head who undermined her work as a doctoral student by failing to take action regarding an abusive racial interaction and keeping her in the dark by excluding her from meetings:50 This experience awakened me to the risk inherent in trying to address racial politics from within institutions that are ruled by white hegemony. As a new scholar, I failed to recognize the seduction of that reservoir of privilege, and the illusion of having moved beyond race, gender, and class to the status of academic and/or activist . . . .

186

coping with everyday discrimination

The Latino scholars Aguirre and Martinez similarly argue that the commonplace marginalization of faculty of color in historically white institutions significantly limits their ability to change the distribution of existing power and privilege. Their usual positionality as “outsiders within” often renders faculty of color silent in terms of active leadership participation: “You may see them, but you can’t hear them.”51 While serving on the margins is viewed generally as a detriment to participation, another vantagepoint sees the potential for some advantage in what is termed “positive marginality.” Such marginality can enable white female academics and academics of color to better see and evaluate structures or cultures they bridge and to demonstrate a clear sense of purpose and conviction relative to the most necessary institutional changes. For example, underrepresented faculty and administrators who have been historically sidelined can sometimes press hard for the operationalization of an institution’s stated values and rhetoric of diversity, equity, and inclusion.52 Consider this detailed example. Jennifer, an African American academic who has served as Chief Diversity Officer (CDO) of a major research university explains the advantages and disadvantages of this type of marginality. Due to the positionality of the CDO role and its responsibility for university leadership on diversity and inclusion, her marginality allowed her to maintain a level of independence and hold her ground in relation to the white president and provost:53 Seeing myself as different and as an outsider who can help the inside through this outside lens; seeing myself as someone who hasn’t bought-in hook, line, and sinker to the norms and culture, the status quo of the institution, and thus has a different perspective as an outsider that can inform and enhance the institution. Being in the CDO role exacerbates that stance that many marginalized people have. It can have a negative side, feeling outside, being told in ways in more subtle than direct that you don’t belong. Being a little outside of the norm, not being part of the oldboys network, the white boys network, can position marginalized people to have an insight and perspective that is fresher, not so sullied, not so group think . . . . There is a sense that the CDO is the conscience of the institution vis-a-vis equity and inclusion.

coping with everyday discrimination

187

That’s a stance that I have had that informed how I interfaced with the provost and president. What it helped me to do was to hold my ground, to be somewhat independent, to be clear about what made sense to me and what didn’t, what I would do that fits with the institutional values that we purported to have, and what I would not do, since it didn’t fit with the institutional values . . . seeing myself as on the margin helped me to kind of stand my ground in these asymmetric power relationships. Jennifer further explains this unique institutional conscience and its occasional personal power: It’s having some clarity about what I stand for, what my purpose is, my reason for being there, that became the source of my power, even if it only was powerful for me. . . . it helped to empower me to be in these asymmetric power relationships and to feel that I had a clear sense of and could put forth what I stood for. Faced with a university situation in which she was virtually ordered through an email to carry out a strategy that she felt was not viable in relation to that particular crisis, she insisted upon further discussion of the central issues. Although she paid a price for it later and was not able to “win the day,” Jennifer felt that by not capitulating she was valuing herself: If I had just capitulated, it would have been harder to value myself, and I also thought it wasn’t the right thing to do. It wouldn’t have been a disaster to do X, it didn’t seem like the right thing to do. I took a stand. I think I paid a price for taking the stand down the road. My saying “no” was later held against me, but I think sometimes you do what you have to do, because there are other values that one has to focus on. I wasn’t exactly able to win the day; I was never going to convince the other person that they were wrong to address me that way or their idea was misguided. I didn’t win those battles. In her interview with us Jennifer also emphasizes the structural dynamic present in asymmetrical power relations in which the president, provost,

188

coping with everyday discrimination

president’s chief of staff, and other vice presidents who are not her direct supervisors, had more actual institutional power than she did. From this perspective, she identifies “the triple whammy” of asymmetrical power relations for female administrators of color when they are interacting with more powerful white male administrators: Asymmetry based on formal power, asymmetry based on race and gender, it’s sort of a triple whammy. The white male has more power than me. If they have more formal power, if they’re white that’s another asymmetry, the power asymmetry is exacerbated [for] women of color administrators interfacing with white male administrators. As Jennifer’s complex narrative reveals, asymmetrical power is not limited to dealing with one’s direct supervisor, but also is exercised by more powerful white administrators and faculty throughout the university. Positive Communication Strategies

One of the most important aspects of individual coping with racial and gender discrimination is responding in the moment to unmeritocratic framing and harmful acts. As we have seen previously, those experiencing discriminatory treatment may be unprepared for what occurs or may not have anticipated the intensity or gravity of situations they face. Because of the delicate balance involved in maintaining one’s employment status and not alienating people who hold the levers of significant power, finding the appropriate approach to responding as discriminatory situations unfold is of critical importance to careers and lives. Pam, a female faculty member, describes the differential, gender-related expectations she experienced, especially during her pre-tenure years:54 I think in the institutions themselves, there is a lot of implicit bias. I have been asked to do things because I wasn’t married, because I would have time I could work extra in the evenings, sometimes lab assignments; certainly when I was younger in my career there was a lot of that.

coping with everyday discrimination

189

Pam notes that women faculty undergo much emotional labor on a daily basis, with their actions and responses being viewed differently than their male colleagues. She cites as an example the need to respond more fully to student emails as compared to male faculty: Ultimately emotional labor on a daily basis is different for women faculty. We get more emails, we have to respond more lengthily and not emotionally, we are trying to always be as calm as they want you to be, or assuring as they want you to be, I spent way more time assuring people than my male colleagues would. At Pam’s institution, continuous turnover in leadership and the lack of proactive policies heightened the potential for institutional dysfunction and inequitable treatment within the often difficult work environment: Honestly, within the leadership structure that I am currently working in we have a lot of turnover in leadership. That is difficult to deal with these things because there is no consistency with what the process is going to be like. Our broader institution doesn’t have a lot of proactive policies already on the books, . . . so there is not a lot of structure already to deal with that, and then when your direct leadership is sort of a shifting target, it can be a real challenge. Early in her career, Pam was relatively unaware of how to recognize and defuse inequitable college situations, but as time went on she learned how to protect herself and respond in ways to de-escalate and redirect potentially discriminatory behaviors: When I was younger it was harder to recognize it early and get ahead of it. I think just life experience helps you with that a little bit in being a little smarter in the way that you respond to something or need to make sure that you nip something in the bud. Not that the shift has to be a woman’s responsibility, but if you are just talking about protecting yourself, then those sorts of de-escalation or redirection skills are helpful. Now that I am further along in my career, I tend to usually take a fairly direct approach . . . . It can be, tricky if you are

190

coping with everyday discrimination

dealing with people that are institutionally empowered or in official positions of leadership when they maybe are not as sensitive to their own implicit bias. If they say something that is kind of off, it can be harder to deal with those things. So a range of skills from not responding if you are feeling like you are being sort of baited, to trying to respond proactively, to using it as a teaching moment [such as with students]. Now that she has attained tenure, Pam has taken on the role of advocate for other women facing the types of difficulties she did and engages in active service on committees related to gender issues. She feels that recognition of her role on service committees has also given her an additional layer of protection against gender-related discrimination. Drawing on Social Support Systems

Our field interviews with faculty and administrators consistently indicate the importance of workplace allies and external support systems. These include using family, community, and faith-based resources in the face of racist or sexist threats to an individual’s career and livelihood. Since coping with exclusionary and other discriminatory situations may involve an extended time period, those targeted must sustain themselves despite sustained and challenging circumstances. Consider the case of Megin, a white female tenuretrack faculty member who was notified on the Friday afternoon before Thanksgiving break of a negative recommendation on her tenure and promotion case by the department’s advisory committee. Megin was unprepared for this untimely finding and said she was “in complete shock.” Her first response was to connect with a close female faculty colleague. For the next few weeks, faculty members in the department avoided her. There was no eye contact and no hallway conversation. Fortunately, however, the department head was supportive and told her to wait it out and not to worry about it. While awaiting decisions from the dean, provost, and the president over the next several months, Megin drew on the support systems of close friends, colleagues, her partner, and her

coping with everyday discrimination

191

family. Since she met all the requirements for college tenure, the denial appeared to be for purely subjective reasons. As she indicates: There is nothing that would be clear cut, which is often the case with gender. It seems to be more subtle and insidious. . . . I don’t know if it was a gender thing, but I think it was maybe a power differential. . . . it’s one of those things that if they don’t like you they will find a way, some way, not to keep you. . . . if they don’t think you fit, that is the reason they don’t promote you. They don’t think you are a fit for the future of the department. You felt like you were being sabotaged in a variety of ways, undermining, that sort of environment. . . . it’s a hostile work environment for the most part. Everything that’s done is very insidious. It’s competitive in a resentful kind of way.55 Megin notes the disparate treatment accorded to female candidates compared to male candidates in their tenure process. The year she received the negative recommendation, six women went up for promotion and all were denied. By contrast, male faculty members that went up for tenure did not experience any issues, even with fewer publications, less positive teaching evaluations, and lesser service records. In addition, departmental teaching expectations were different for men than women, with one senior male faculty member only teaching two sections and doubling up on them, while other faculty, including the women, had to carry a four-four-course teaching load. When Megin finally received the dean’s positive recommendation for tenure later in December, she was pleased but still felt unwanted in her department. She received the positive endorsement of the provost and the president a few months later. As she indicates, “That year seems to be a wash for me, from a mental capacity and everything. It was a bad year.” Ironically, Megin was subsequently voted by the faculty in her department to be a member of the advisory committee on tenure and promotion. That is, she had to sit on this committee with faculty who had denied her tenure and also had to listen to tenure comments that she found problematic. Fortunately in this case, Megin was able to attain tenure, yet she still had to contend with a workplace culture that

192

coping with everyday discrimination

had excluded her and caused her great stress. In many cases like this we see the great need for major structural and cultural reforms within such educational institutions. Conclusion

The everyday coping and resistance strategies discussed in this chapter represent a range of approaches adopted by faculty, administrators, and students from underrepresented groups in situations of power asymmetry in the higher education workplace. These narratives reveal that in numerous cases the white or male threats to professional reputation and career status caused significant pain and stress for these individuals over an extended time period. Situations of exclusionary and other discriminatory treatment frequently took shape within toxic or chaotic workplace cultures characterized by a lack of proactive policies, turnover in leadership, and competition even among female faculty and administrators. Much need for institutional change is shown in all these cases. Given the ongoing impact of employment challenges for people of color and white women, future research and analysis are clearly needed to identify practical, nuanced, and viable approaches for these members of nondominant groups to address discriminatory behavior in higher-education working and learning environments. Notes

1 Pierce, C. (1995). Stress analogs of racism and sexism: Terrorism, torture, and disaster. In C. Willie, P. Rieker, B. Kramer, and B. Brown (Eds.), Mental health, racism, and sexism (pp. 277–293, p. 282). Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press. 2 Williams, C. (2001). The angry black woman scholar. NWSA Journal, 13(2), 87–97, p. 94. 3 DiTomaso, N. (2013). The American non-dilemma: Racial inequality without racism. New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation 4 See for example, Bosson, J. K., Johnson, A. B., Niederhoffer, K., and Swann, Interpersonal chemistry through negativity: Bonding by sharing negative attitudes about others. Personal Relationships, 13, 135–150. 5 Picca, L. H., and Feagin, J. R. (2007). Two-faced racism: Whites in the backstage and frontstage. New York, NY: Routledge 6 Roscigno, V. J., Lopez, S. H., and Hodson, R. (2009). Supervisory bullying, status inequalities and organizational context. Social Forces, 87(3), 1561–1589.

coping with everyday discrimination

193

7 See for example, Lilly, F. R. W., Owens, J., Bailey, T. C., Ramirez, A., Brown, W., and Clawson, C. (2018). The influence of racial microaggressions and social rank on risk for depression among minority graduate and professional students. College Student Journal, 52(1), 86–104. Truong, K. A., and Museus, S. D. (2012). Responding to racism and racial trauma in doctoral study: An inventory for coping and mediating relationships. Harvard Educational Review, 82(2), 226–254. 8 Truong and Museus. (2012). Responding to racism and racial trauma in doctoral study. 9 See for example, Evans, A., and Chun, E. B. (2007). Coping with behavioral and organizational barriers to diversity in the workplace. CUPA –HR Journal, 58(1), 12–18. 10 See, for example, Miller, C. T., and Major, B. (2000). Coping with stigma and prejudice. In T. F. Heatherton, R. E. Kleck, M. R. Hebl, and J. G. Hall (Eds.), The social psychology of stigma (pp. 243–274). New York, NY: Guilford Press. Brondolo, E., Brady, B., Pencille, M., Beatty, D., and Contrada, R. J. (2009). Coping with racism: A selective review of the literature and a theoretical and methodological critique. Journal of Behavioral Medicine, 32(1), 64–88. 11 Myers, H. F, Lewis, T. T., and Parker -Dominguez, T. (2003). Stress, coping and minority health: Biopsychosocial perspective on ethnic health disparities. In G. Bernal, J. E. Trimble, A. K. Burlew, and FT. Leong (Eds.), Handbook of racial and ethnic minority psychology (pp. 377–400). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. 12 Sapolsky, R. M. (1998). Why zebras don’t get ulcers: An updated guide to stress, stress-related diseases and coping (2nd ed.). New York, NY: W. H. Freeman. 13 See for example Brondolo et al. (2009). Coping with racism. 14 Lilly, F. R. W., et al. (2018). The influence of racial microaggressions and social rank. 15 Chun, E., and Evans, A. (2012). Diverse administrators in peril: The new indentured class in higher education. Boulder, CO: Paradigm, p. 55. 16 See also Feagin, J., and McKinney, K. (2003). The many costs of racism. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield. 17 Lazarus, R. S. (1990). Theory-based stress measurement. Psychological Inquiry, 1(1), 3–13. 18 Brondolo et al. (2009). Coping with racism. 19 Ibid. 20 Lazarus, R .S., and Folkman, S. (1984). Stress, appraisal, and coping. New York, NY: Springer Publishing Company. 21 Evans, A., and Chun, E. (2007). Coping with behavioral and organizational barriers to diversity in the workplace. CUPA-HR Journal, 58(1), 12–18. 22 Feagin, J. R. (2006). Systemic racism: A theory of oppression. New York, NY: Routledge. 23 See, for example, Liang, C. T., Alvarez, A. N., Juang, L. P., and Liang, M. X. (2007). The role of coping in the relationship between perceived racism and racism-related stress for Asian Americans: Gender differences. Journal of Counseling Psychology 54(2), 132–141; Shorter-Gooden, K. (2004). Multiple resistance strategies: How African American women cope with racism and sexism. Journal of Black Psychology, 30(3) 406–425. 24 Liang, C. T. H. and Fassinger, R. E. (2008). The role of collective self-esteem for Asian Americans experiencing racism-related stress: A test of moderator and mediator hypothesis. Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology, 14(1), 19–28. 25 Shorter-Gooden. (2004). Multiple resistance strategies: How African American women cope with racism and sexism. 26 Lewis, J. A., Mendenhall, R., Harwood, S. A., and Hunt, M. B. (2013). Coping with gendered racial microaggressions among black women college students. Journal of African American Studies, (17), 51–73. 27 Ibid., p. 64.

194

coping with everyday discrimination

28 June, A. W. (2012, November 13). Tenure decisions at Southern Cal strongly favor white men, data in a rejected candidate’s complaint suggest. The Chronicle of Higher Education. Retrieved October 11, 2018, from www.chronicle.com/article/Tenure-Decisions-atSouthern/135754 29 Serhan, Y. (2013, May 2). Prof loses tenure bid after appeal. Daily Trojan. Retrieved October 11, 2018, from https://dailytrojan.com/2013/05/02/prof-loses-tenure-bidafter-appeal/ 30 Ibid. 31 Serhan. (2013, May 2). Prof loses tenure after appeal. See also: Matthew, P. A. Appendix B: University of Southern California Analysis of Data on Tenure. In P. A. Matthew (Ed.), Written/unwritten: Diversity and the hidden truths of tenure (pp. 269–270). Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press. 32 Serhan. (2013, May 2). Prof loses tenure after appeal. 33 Hamilton, M. (2018, May 25). USC President C. L. Max Nikias to step down. The Los Angeles Times. Retrieved October 11, 2018 from www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-memax-nikias-usc-20180525-story.html 34 Subversities blogspot (14 May, 2013). Retrieved October 15, 2018, from http://subversities. blogspot.com/2013/05/uci-executive-vice-chancellor-candidate.html 35 Serhan. (2013, May 2). Prof loses tenure after appeal. 36 Martindale, S. (2013, May 21). UCI hires ex-USC dean as provost over group’s objections. Orange County Register. Retrieved October 15, 2018, from www.ocregister.com/2013/05/21/ uci-hires-ex-usc-dean-as-provost-over-groups-objections/ 37 Gagnon, J. (2018, March 19). Six female American University professors denied tenure, accuse provost of discrimination. The Eagle. Retrieved October 18, 2018, from http:// www.theeagleonline.com/article/2018/03/six-female-american-university-professorsdenied-tenure-accuse-provost-of-discrimination 38 Pennamon, T. (13 July, 2017). A contentious tenure denial. Diverse, pp. 23–24. 39 Morris, C. (18 May, 2016, May 18). Denied tenure at Dartmouth: Aimee Bahng feels diversity efforts ring hollow. Diverse. Retrieved October 15, 2018, from https://diver seeducation.com/article/84350/. 40 Flaherty, C. (17 May, 2016). Tenure denied. Inside Higher Ed. Retrieved April 26, 2019 from www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/05/17/campus-unrest-follows-tenure-denialinnovative-popular-faculty-member-color 41 Confidential interview with E. Chun (2018, November 16). 42 See, for example, Derks, B., Ellemers N., van Laar, C., and de Groot, K. (2011). Do sexist organizational cultures create the Queen Bee? British Journal of Social Psychology, (50), 519–535. Snipes, R. L., Oswald, S. L., and Caudill, S. B. (1998). Sex-role stereotyping, gender biases, and job selection: The use of ordinal logIT in analyzing Likert scale data. Employee Responsibilities and Rights Journal, 11(2), 81–97. 43 Confidential interview with E. Chun (2018, November 15). 44 Confidential interview with E. Chun (2018, November 20). 45 Mallett, R. K., and Swim, J. K. (2006). Bring it on: Proactive coping with discrimination. Motivation and Emotion, 29(4), 411–441. 46 Aspinwall, L. G., and Taylor, S. E. (1997). A stitch in time: Self-regulation and proactive coping. Psychological Bulletin, 121, 417–436. 47 Confidential interview with E. Chun (2018, November 16). 48 Collins, P. H. (1986). Learning from the outsider within: The sociological significance of black feminist thought. Social Problems, 33, 14–32. 49 Baez, B. (2003). Outsiders within? Academe, 89(4), 41–45. 50 Williams, C. (2001). The angry black woman scholar. NWSA Journal, 13(2), 87–97.

coping with everyday discrimination

195

51 Aguirre, A., Jr., and Martinez, R. O. (2002). Leadership practices and diversity in higher education: Transitional and transformational frameworks, Journal of Leadership Studies, 8(3), 53–62, p. 56. 52 Shorter-Gooden, K. (2012). The paradox of the margin: Advantages for institutional transformation. In H. Curtis-Boles, D. Adams, and L. Jenkins-Monroe (Eds.), Making our voices heard: Women of color in academia (pp. 165–175). Hauppauge, NY: Nova Science. 53 Confidential interview with E. Chun (2018, November 9). 54 Confidential interview with E. Chun (2018, November 29). 55 Confidential interview with E. Chun (2018, November 21).

7 MOVING FORWARD ISSUES, STRATEGIES, AND RECOMMENDED SOLUTIONS To truly advance diversity in American colleges and universities, we have to have really critical conversations about racism, sexism, and homophobia, and people don’t want to have those conversations because they tend to refuse to believe that they are racist or sexist or homophobic. (White female chair at a research university)1 In returning to the thesis shared in the first chapter, the rhetorical promises of societal justice and equality articulated in the U.S. Constitution and the Declaration of Independence set a high bar for building inclusive campus environments actually free of racial and gender discrimination. In an embattled political era for diversity, the aspirations of the Preamble to the Constitution written nearly two and a half centuries ago seem ever more distant: We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.2 196

moving forward

197

The often regressive journey toward attaining the goals of equality in U.S. society has been mirrored by what has been described as “glacial” and “excruciatingly slow” progress in the realization of racial and gender equality in higher education.3 Perceptive critics have highlighted the neglect of issues of real racial equity on historically white college campuses and the outright denial there that these issues even exist. Consider, in this regard, the experience of Shaun Harper, while serving as Executive Director of the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for the Study of Race and Equity in Education. When the Center conducted racial climate studies at a number of U.S. universities, he notes that the universities paid large sums of money to remain in denial about their race-related issues. Harper concludes that the price for ignoring racial equity and racist campus climates has translated into lost tuition dollars, attrition of minoritized faculty and staff, and diminished contributions from alumni of color: “Choosing to ignore these realities won’t make them less real. Eventually, colleges and universities will have to pay a much higher price for racism should their leaders choose to ignore our findings, no matter how harsh they seem.”4 Additionally, Mary Beth Gasman, professor of higher education at the University of Pennsylvania, similarly highlights the common lack of decision-makers’ interest in changing the status quo: “The reason we don’t have more faculty of color among college faculty is that we don’t want them. We simply don’t want them.”5 As our historically white colleges and universities look toward the future of ever more “browning of America,” the need for an educational compact that aggressively promotes justice and equality and secures the “blessings of liberty” for increasingly diverse college students has become ever more urgent. As we noted in Chapter 1, major demographic shifts in the U.S. population are accelerating, with only one third of U.S. children under 18 projected to be white by 2060. By 2020 more than half of U.S. children will be nonwhite, and whites are projected to make up only 36 percent of the general population by 2060.6 The advent of “the coming white minority” means that most powerholders over, and in, our colleges and universities are largely unprepared for this looming reality or may have even ignored its potential impact. While increasing numbers of students from historically underrepresented

198

moving forward

groups enroll in college, overall institutional leadership remains remarkably non-diverse. Even today the racial composition of faculty and administrators usually does not parallel the diversity of the student population at our colleges and universities. Despite the enactment of Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act that officially requires public educational institutions to be free of racial discrimination, the structures and processes of higher education have not yet remedied persistent forms of racial exclusion or even ensured that their policies and practices actively promote racial inclusion. To the contrary, scant evidence indicates systematic efforts by most universities and colleges to implement policies and procedures that ensure diversity is operationalized and regularly connected with student learning.7 Title VII of the Civil Rights Act prohibits employment discrimination on and off campuses based on race, color, national origin, religion and sex. Title VI pertains to federal financial assistance to educational and other programs, under which funded programs no one cannot be denied benefits or participation on the basis of race, color, or national origin. As a result, institutions of higher education have a mandate to eliminate racial discrimination and provide equal access and treatment to students and employees in programs, processes, and services. Educational policies and practices that appear neutral but have racially discriminatory impact must be eliminated, unless a nondiscriminatory objective is shown.8 Contrary to the stated objectives of Title VI, however, the prevalence of colorblind rhetoric and system-justifying framing has permitted institutions of higher education to maintain a façade of integration and diversity, even as racially based and gender-based discrimination and inequities persist within organizational structures, processes, and dayto-day interactions. Vague college statements on diversity are typical, even forgotten. For example, consider the reactions of several black faculty members who in interviews indicated that they did not know the content of their religiously-affiliated institution’s mission statement. One stated, “To be honest, I am not even sure what the mission is. I just have an idea of it but it’s like . . . it’s not something that I can recall.” Another indicated, “I can give you some of the catchphrases that I think

moving forward

199

are part of the mission. So . . . social justice, community, and excellence.” And a third black faculty member explained: I guess it’s one of those things that I don’t think of in the top of my head about Saint Alexander University. I do not think about diversity and inclusion because it’s just not here. I see things like emails and stuff like that but the major things I would see on a flyer around the university, but when talking about who they are, I don’t really see diversity or inclusion.9 At times, even the mention of value terms like racial inclusion or social justice may be seen as outside the mainstream. Accenting a Better Analytical Framework: Systemic Racism and Sexism

As we have underscored previously, the conceptual inadequacy of the current terminology of microaggressions, microinequities, and implicit bias indicates the need for a deeper explanatory framework that accounts for centuries of pervasive racist and sexist framing and resulting discrimination. In seeking a broader theory to unravel the threads of racialand gender-based oppression, the concepts of a centuries-old white racial frame and of a male sexist frame, as we have seen throughout this book, yield important insights into the social reproduction of inequalities within the higher education workplace. Instead of a focus just on individual racism and sexism, accenting the still dominant frames of systemic racism and systemic sexism, as well as the overarching elitewhite-male-dominance system, provides a profounder understanding of the asymmetrical structures of power and privilege that negatively shape and affect the day-to-day experiences of faculty, administrators, and staff from nondominant groups in higher education. The numerous first-hand narratives included in this and previous chapters demonstrate the need for a much more robust vocabulary to describe the career and life-altering impacts of exclusionary behaviors and actions on individuals facing overt, covert, and subtle discrimination that is contextually supported. As a result, we abandon the relative safety of

200

moving forward

the “micro” terminology and propose a continuum of macroaggressions and macroinequalities. This continuum begins with more subtle forms of mistreatment; progresses to hostility, marginalization, and harassment; and then proceeds to process-based institutional discrimination. Unlike much previous research, however, we do not relegate the manifestation of these everyday macroaggressions to the realm of the perpetrator’s unconscious, but understand a great many discriminatory actions and behaviors as motivated by relatively conscious or accessible racist or sexist framing. Furthermore, they provide evidence of institutionalized racial and gender systems that are perpetuated through the normative contexts and climates of particular departments, divisions, and leadership structures of U.S. institutions, including those of higher education that we emphasize in this book. In Figure 7.1 below, we summarize the foundations of contemporary racial and gender macroinequalities in higher education through a depiction of the elite-white-male dominance system and The Elite White Male Dominance System: Systemic Racism and Systemic Sexism

Lack of Structural Diversity Exclusionary Culture and Climate

Isolation, Tokenism, and Stereotyping Misrecognition and Imposed Identity

Discriminatory Behaviors and Interactions

Differential Treatment Lack of Support and Failure to Allocate Resources Racial Hostility Racial/Gender-based Mistreatment Bullying/Harassment

Long-term Processes and Persisting Outcomes

Unmeritocratic Decision-making Process-based Discrimination with Career Consequences

Figure 7.1  Dimensions of the elite white male dominance system in historically white higher education

moving forward

201

its operationalization in the lack of structural diversity, exclusionary interactions, and long-term processes and outcomes that can occur in historically white institutions. Inadequate attention has been paid to the significant career, psychological, physical, and personal impact of recurring racial and gender discrimination (i.e., macroaggressions) on members of nondominant groups and their families. The actual voices and counter-framed views of faculty, administrators, and staff facing marginalization and other mistreatment in the college workplace have not yet gained sufficient attention either in the research literature or in higher education policy domains. Take, for example, the experience of Monique, the white female faculty member cited earlier, when the white male president of her institution told her administrative support person that he did not want Monique to interview a candidate for a faculty position in the program she supervised. The president stated, “I don’t think I want Monique there when I am talking to this person and don’t tell her that.” Monique recalls her shocked reaction:10 Of course I lost it . . . . I went to the provost who has been just so instrumental in my work and runs everything and he said, “Let it go.” I said I could go anywhere I wanted, and that’s true. I don’t want to be in place where I am not respected. The President told him that I make him very nervous, like I intimidate him. I have had tons of leadership positions. Apparently it really intimidates him. The fact that powerful white male executives such as that university president here can be threatened by the expertise of talented subordinates demonstrates the tenuous and often politicized nature of the academic workplace. Were it not for the protection of a powerful guardian, in this case the provost, the situation could have had a career-shattering impact. The fact that Monique had faculty tenure also served as a protective shield enabling her survival. This protection is, of course, unavailable to many other nondominant faculty and staff members. The emotional and cognitive labor and racial battle fatigue experienced by members of nondominant groups in response to exclusionary behaviors and other discriminatory actions exact a very high toll not

202

moving forward

only on the individuals themselves, but also on their families and close friends. From an institutional standpoint, these inequitable actions and processes greatly diminish a college’s or university’s capacity to optimize vital talent resources in support of student learning and other mission-centered goals. The persistence of blatant white favoritism, exclusionary networks, denigrating behaviors, and differential expectations erodes the façade of institutional inclusion and equity. As we have detailed, few effective channels are available to individuals facing institutionalized discrimination in terms of external legal redress. For this reason, the distinctive perspectives garnered through interviews and other qualitative research provide critical insights into counter-framing and coping strategies that may enable members of nondominant groups to chart a path forward when facing unmeritocratic treatment and other discriminatory actions. As we discussed in Chapter 3, recent IAT-related research on the biologization of racism has taken an unproductive turn in the effort to establish neuroscientific, physiological evidence of racism in the human brain. While the deceptive simplicity of the IAT in measuring implicit bias has had considerable appeal, the methodological concerns related to the test’s reliability, validity, and lack of predictive power override its potential contributions and value to diversity efforts. Confusion about whether implicit bias is conscious, half-conscious, or unconscious has further muddied the research and application waters. Even more important is the way in which the IAT-type emphasis in diversity discussions and efforts often takes us away from the foundational and systemic realties of racial and gender discrimination. Given the significant concerns about current diversity concepts and approaches that we have identified in this book, we offer below a number of important recommendations for addressing racial and gender discrimination and inequality within historically white educational institutions, both for the U.S. as a whole and within specific campus contexts. The goal of these strategies is to assist college and university administrators and faculty, as well as concerned regents and legislators, in their efforts to create campus environments characterized by equitable empowerment and to solidify organizational safeguards against

moving forward

203

process-based discrimination and inequalities. Campuses can take the necessary steps to build awareness of behavioral and organizational forms of discrimination and create an infrastructure of policies, processes, and programs that will build a participatory culture of genuine campus inclusion and equity. Solutions for Two-Tiered Apartheid in Higher Education

Finding solutions for the problem of the two-tiered public education system discussed in Chapter 1 (see pp. 38–42) are complicated by the 20 or so generations of racial oppression and inequality of this society. The racial inequality of our systemically racist society is both cause and effect of systemically racist educational institutions. Quality college degrees provided disproportionately for whites routinely bring access to better jobs and higher incomes. This greater socioeconomic opportunity provides them with resources to live in more affluent neighborhoods with better schools and educations for their children, which in turn means access to better-resourced colleges and universities and more advantageous degrees for them (and then for their children, and so on). Sadly, this process is very circular and self-repeating, and ultimately grounded in the unjust enrichment of white families and unjust impoverishment of families of color over many generations of systemic racism in this country. As the Georgetown Report noted in Chapter 1 indicates, a major and obvious way to actually increase the diversity often touted by many senior college and university administrators at the selective four-year public institutions is to recognize the racially biased framing involved in using mostly white-crafted tests and testing procedures that, for well-known reasons, are biased against qualified-for-college black and Latino students and some other students of color. Since the ranking of these selective public institutions is partially based on the average standardized test scores of students accepted, their mostly white administrators are unlikely to abandon this current racially biased testing without increased public pressure. Another major systemic U.S. problem is the often weaker high schools that students of color are more or less forced to attend, which usually do not prepare them to compete well with affluent white students from better-funded high schools.11

204

moving forward

In contrast, the generally higher incomes and wealth of white families means that their students get better (public or private) primary and secondary educations, yet another advantage for getting into the selective colleges and universities. Though politically difficult, the solution for this racialized reality lies, at least in part, in legislators providing many more places in much better funded public institutions, including fouryear colleges and community colleges. The policy solution also entails providing all public educational institutions with the monetary and educational resources to have high-quality academic and student support programs that often do not now exist.12 Long central to the publicly heralded values of U.S. society—and most especially when inexpensive, well-resourced schooling was almost exclusively for whites—is the great value of education. In the past and today, the “greater the government support for higher education, the greater the chance that students and families have agency toward their own goals and that communities can be happier, healthier, more resourceful and more productive.”13 The major legislated cutbacks in funding for higher education over the last few decades has led to major backtracking on the possibility of realizing these important family and community goals. Interestingly, sociologist Randolph Hohle has accented how many K-12 level private schools today do, to some degree, help their children learn to value diversity even though the children’s day-to-day lives are full of children just like them. . . . The emphasis on diversity is designed to enrich the lives of young white children. It has replaced the emphasis of integrating schools to better the lives of young black children. Diversity helps elite white children learn how to interact with minorities so that they will be better CEOs, lawyers, teachers, and managers of firms in the future. Schools want some racial difference but not too much.14 As we see it, this is also true for many historically white colleges and universities. Well-off, mostly white parents and senior college administrators often prize a modest amount of college diversity so that their affluent children will be better qualified for their likely future in much more diverse, and often globalized, corporate and other major workplaces.

moving forward

205

Still, as with the K-12 schools, most whites view racial diversity in higher education as having significant limits. Two strategies are frequently used to set these limits. If it is possible, at numerous colleges and universities diversity changes are not allowed by regents, trustees, and senior administrators to extend beyond modest or slowly growing numbers of students and (especially) modest numbers of faculty of color. That is also why many campus diversity training and educational programs are relatively modest. Various kinds of ethnic studies programs were developed on historically white college campuses in the decade or two after the 1960s rights movements, but then allowed later on to be weakened or eliminated. In addition, a second broad strategy has been implemented on historically white campuses with varying degrees of student diversity. The educational structures of these historically white campuses, still being explicitly or implicitly white-normed, are usually managed so as to make sure most students of color there are pressured to assimilate and conform to those white norms. In this way white students will have the “appropriate” (i.e., unthreatening) students and faculty of color with whom they can interact. Remember that, for decades now, the real limits on the numbers of students and faculty of color, and on the scale of diversity courses and racially integrative programs, are still mostly set by the white educational elite. Most of the latter do not want a fully racially integrated, just, and equitable society, yet most also do not want the obviously racist educational segregation of Jim Crow days. In many ways, often more covert these days, the elite-white-male dominance system is still fully in control in the realm of U.S. higher education. Take, for example, an equity study of 506 public colleges and universities that graded institutions on four equity indicators relating to black students: (1) representation equity in the undergraduate student population relative to 18–24-year-old citizens in the state population; (2) gender equity of the share of black women compared to black men undergraduate enrolment; (3) completion equity in terms of six-year graduation rates of black students; and (4) black studentto-faculty ratios. The study found few exemplars among institutions of higher education. While 9.8 percent of full-time undergraduate

206

moving forward

students seeking degrees are black, blacks make up 14.6 percent of 18–24-year-olds in the relevant state populations. In terms of degree completion in six years, 39.4 percent of black students reached this goal at public institutions, compared to some 50.6 percent of undergraduates overall. And perhaps the most startling statistics were that 40 of these public educational institutions had no full-black faculty and fully 44 percent of institutions employed very few (10 or fewer) full-time black faculty.15 Given these major problems of equity on contemporary campuses, in the next section we address specific diversity leadership strategies that seriously address compositional diversity in both the faculty and student body, as well as other institutionwide practices that significantly enhance diversity and inclusion. Diversity Leadership Strategies

We next consider concrete diversity leadership strategies that can help advance the goals of equity and social justice on historically white campuses. Such strategies address the need for systematic and sustained approaches to operationalizing diversity and inclusion within a given campus ecosystem. What are the major consequences of not bringing about significant diversity changes, or of simply repeating past diversity efforts? More and more evidence correlates the impact of increased diversity with an organization’s financial performance and other outcomes. In our typically resource-constrained college environments, such data have particular relevance with import for the continued viability, innovative potential, and even survival of institutions of higher education. Most research on racial and gender diversity and financial performance focuses on businesses in the private sector. In that regard, a significant body of empirical findings gives insight into the link between diversity and organizational success in such competitive environments. These studies highlight the importance of both leadership and team diversity. For example, one study of 1700 companies in eight countries found that companies with the greater management diversity were also the most innovative in terms of product portfolios. The study concluded

moving forward

207

that diversity needs to be enabled at multiple levels and that the right conditions must be in place for diversity to thrive, including enabling practices like participative management, active management support for diversity, transparent and open communication practices, a non-hostile work environment, and an organizational culture where diverse ideas are welcomed and free to compete.16 Another study of 1000 companies in 12 countries found that companies in the top quartile for gender diversity were more likely to experience above-average profitability. Similarly, companies with greater racial/ethnic or cultural diversity on the top executive team outperformed other companies.17 In addition, research on venture capitalists, a group predominantly composed of white men, found that homogenous white male teams have worse investment outcomes, likely due to the need for a broader range of creative thinking in uncertain, competitive conditions.18 From an educational perspective, the significant value of college experiences of diversity in terms of student learning outcomes has been demonstrated through an extensive body of research studies. Such outcomes include, for students, enhanced critical thinking and cognitive growth; prejudice reduction; more aware identity formation; and better civic engagement, leadership skills, and acceptance of pluralistic approaches.19 In our studied view, these important research findings accentuate the need for leadership accountability in overcoming discrimination and inequality in the structure of higher education workplaces and, thus, in creating the conditions for racial and gender diversity to thrive. As a result, we offer here a number of multi-level strategies that can enhance that leadership accountability, create institutional momentum, and ensure continuous progress on diversity matters. Conduct an Institutional Diversity Audit

From a holistic standpoint, all institutions of higher education, public and private, will benefit from regularly conducting a major diversity audit in order to ensure rigorous analysis of current diversity structures and avoid repetitive and self-defeating diversity cycles. Through a researchbased, data-driven approach to the examination of institutional processes,

208

moving forward

colleges and universities can align their structures, policies, and practices related to diversity with significant diversity accreditation criteria. Such accreditation provides a medium for asking critical institutional questions and determining the real level of institutional progress in support of the goal of continuous diversity improvement.20 Take, for example, the innovative Academic Quality Improvement Project (AQIP), one of the three pathways to accreditation of the Higher Learning Commission (HLC) that serves educational institutions in 19 states in the North Central region. The AQIP model offers a method for measuring progressive diversity change through an analysis of institutional processes and results. Processes are viewed as decisive actions taken by an institution in relation to identified diversity and inclusion goals. The AQIP framework evaluates campus work and performance excellence in relation to six discrete dimensions: (1) helping students learn; (2) meeting student and other stakeholder needs; (3) valuing employees; (4) planning and leading; (5) knowledge management and resources stewardship; and (6) quality overview.21 It also defines the stages of systems maturity on a progressive continuum as: (1) reacting; (2) systematic; (3) aligned; and (4) integrated. AQIP identifies attributes of organizational processes that are particularly relevant to measuring diversity progress as follows: 1. Formally defined in policy; 2. Aligned with mission-based diversity goals; 3. Connecting discrete activities with larger processes that contribute to diversity progress; 4. Efficient, but inclusive without unnecessary steps.22 Documentation of systems progress requires convincing evidence in terms of concrete assessment measures and in terms of the ways in which assessment data are actually used to enhance real-world effectiveness. Establish Top-Level Strategies and Expected Outcomes Based on Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Principles

Strategic planning processes are integral to establishing a sustained framework for diversity and inclusion progress with institutional benchmarks

moving forward

209

and milestones. Consider, as a best practice example, the University of California at Berkeley’s (UCB) Strategic Plan for Equity, Inclusion, and Diversity established in 2009, which sets the path for the university’s diversity progress until 2020. UCB is a major public doctoral university with high research activity located in Berkeley, California, currently with 41,891 students. The UCB plan is explicitly built upon the guiding principles of excellence, equity, and inclusion; and it identifies specific university outcomes expected over a ten-year period. Key facets of the plan include managerial direction through senior campus leaders that include deans and vice chancellors, substantial managerial accountability, and important reward structures. The university plan sets specific timelines and milestones to be accomplished and offers top-level and specific strategies for accomplishing its bold diversity goals.23 Another best practice example for implementing sustained diversity and inclusion changes can be found in Utah Valley University’s plan, titled the Inclusion Plan Framework. Utah Valley University is a public, master’s level university located in Orem, Utah, with 37,282 students. The university plan sets explicit diversity objectives with specific goals for each objective and then addresses administrative imperatives of assessment and accountability as well as budget and fundraising. The comprehensive plan for diversity and inclusion was developed after an intensive analysis of 42 such strategic plans, which found that 32 of the plans only focused on two areas of improvement: the racial makeup of students and of faculty. Half of the plans examined did not involve an overarching explanatory framework, and 28 did not include concrete action steps to diversity goals. The value of an overall planning framework lies in creating a clear roadmap for actual change, one specifying accountability of units, creating opportunities for diverse collaboration, and building a collective understanding across the campus spectrum.24 Regardless of institutional type, clearheaded planning is an essential vehicle for the attainment of an educational institution’s mission-critical diversity and inclusion goals. Call Out the Difficult Issues

Earlier in the book we noted the problematical deflection that can take place when campus leaders fail to call out racial issues and

210

moving forward

hesitate to use what might be viewed by conservatives as “loaded” terms such as racism, white nationalism, and anti-Semitism. With the flurry of racial incidents and hate-based flyers that have surfaced on many historically white public and private campuses in recent years, senior college administrators and other campus leaders are faced with the need to respond in a timely, knowledgeable, and effective manner. As we discussed in the first chapter, the election of a nationalistic President Donald Trump in 2016 further polarized the U.S. population, with a significant white backlash arising from fear of immigrants of color and of imminent demographic change (“browning of America”). Trump’s periodic nativistic rants, intimations of white supremacy garbed in the veil of political nationalism, and open attacks on immigrants and other nondominant groups helped to increase the atmosphere of fear among many whites and created a more permissive societal environment for the normalization of extreme racist, anti-immigrant, anti-Semitic, and anti-Muslim speech on and off college campuses. In recent years, the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment has frequently been cited in efforts to defend white nationalist speakers and other white supremacist events on U.S. campuses, including racist demonstrations on or near them. College and university presidents have periodically been faced with the dilemma of determining whether to allow scheduling of white nationalist and other white supremacist speakers whose organizations have often been backed by wealthy white arch-conservatives and whose goals have included the recruitment of local college students and staff to white-nationalist causes. However, the commonplace contention that white nationalist speakers and others who engage in openly racist speech and demonstrations on campuses are protected by the First Amendment’s protection of free speech needs to be carefully rethought and put into historical context by college administrators. First Amendment scholars Wendy Leo Moore and Joyce Bell have shown that abstract free speech arguments in support of allowing white nationalist and other racist events on campuses downplay or disregard the perspectives and concerns of the Americans of color there. Decontextualized and abstract free speech defenses of

moving forward

211

white nationalist and other openly white-racist speakers on campuses reflect a normalized white racial framing of the important issues: The Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which requires equal protection of the law, and the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which in Title VI requires that public educational institutions not permit racial discrimination, should guarantee people of color the right to participate meaningfully in U.S. colleges and universities. . . . Instead we see continued examples of [white] expressions and activities that evoke a history of racial oppression, violence, and terrorism, reifying the boundaries of white institutional space and functioning to limit the meaningful participation of people of color. Powerful [white] activists . . . have fought for legal protections for those who engage in such racism, and the U.S. courts [mostly white judges] have codif ied a color-blind racist discourse protecting the rights of racist speakers over the rights of people of color in colleges and universities.25 Yet, in a truly democratic society the voices and rights of people of color on campuses must, in this considered view, be fully taken into account and much more vigorously protected than is currently the common practice by top college administrators. The complexity of these important issues for institutional leadership can be challenging, as the important principle of free speech needs to allow for processbased rights of free expression and the right to hear different voices on campuses.26 Balancing this need for free speech with protection against aggressive racial harassment and violent hate speech for the campus members of nondominant groups is necessary, albeit a daunting challenge. The American Civil Liberties Union suggests that such legal issues require case-by-case review and notes that “real social change comes from hard work to address the underlying causes of inequality and bigotry, not from purified discourse.”27 Here the ACLU seems rather naïve about the fact that whites’ pervasive racist framing of people of color is a major underlying cause of overt white supremacist language, speeches, and events. These events involve hate speech acts that are intended to be racially disruptive and to inflict pain on people of color on and off campuses. In trying to resolve the dichotomy between free

212

moving forward

speech protections and the potential for hate speech to lead to violence, john a. powell, a UC Berkeley law professor explains: . . . it’s not that I don’t understand or care deeply about free speech. But what would it look like if we cared just as deeply about equality? What if we weighed the two as conflicting values, instead of this false formalism where the right to speech is recognized but the harm caused by that speech is not? In his view, Consider the classic liberal justif ication for free speech. “Your right to throw punches ends at the tip of my nose.” This is taken to mean that speech can never cause any kind of injury. But we have learned a lot about the brain that John Stuart Mill didn’t know. So these students are asking, “Given what we now know about stereotype threat and trauma and P.T.S.D., where is the tip of our nose, exactly?”28 Significantly, one study of how 18 college and university presidents responded to racial incidents on campus reveals the tendency of these educational leaders to speak in broad terms about these incidents without mentioning detailed accounts of what occurred. While 13 presidents only addressed the individuals or group who had perpetrated the racial act, just 3 presidents acknowledged the presence of important contexts such as the broader social or campus environment that imbeds and perpetuates institutional forms of racial discrimination.29 This study suggests the need for senior campus leadership to engage in a much more direct and frank dialogue, including with all campus members, about the underlying historical and social contexts that give rise to what are likely numerous (known and unrecognized) racist incidents on their campuses. Proactively Address Underrepresentation of Nondominant Faculty

Underrepresentation of faculty of color and white women remains an ongoing problem at many colleges and universities. A recent (2016)

moving forward

213

tabulation of full-time faculty in all ranks in U.S. colleges and universities showed that 76 percent were white, 10 percent were Asian/ Pacific Islander, 6 percent were black, 5 percent were Hispanic. The remaining percentage was made up American Indian/Alaska Native and multiracial faculty. Unsurprisingly, there were dramatic differences by faculty rank. At the full professor rank 82 percent were white, 10 percent were Asian/Pacific Islander, 4 percent were black, and 2 percent were Hispanic men. Hispanic women and the other groups of color made up the remaining small percentage. In contrast, at the assistant professor rank, 73 percent were white, 13 percent were Asian/ Pacific Islander, 7 percent were black, and 6 percent were Hispanic. American Indian/Alaska Native and multiracial Americans made up the remainder.30 As of that date white Americans made up a disproportionate percentage of all full-time faculty, including those in these two listed professorial ranks. Another recent study examined 2015–2016 data on the representation of white women and faculty of color in tenure-track positions in six major fields—biology, chemistry, economics, education leadership and policy, English, and sociology—at the top 40 ranked public universities. Researchers found that black and Latino professors were underrepresented, while white and Asian professors were overrepresented. Women of all backgrounds were also underrepresented. In their analysis of several thousand faculty members the researchers found that most of the underrepresentation of black and Latino men, and of women of all backgrounds, was in the physical science and math-intensive fields.31 Some might think that active recruiting of significantly underrepresented faculty of color or women would (or should) mean better average salaries for them compared to overrepresented groups. In the major study mentioned above this was not the case. This study’s 2015–2016 data on the salaries of faculty in tenure-track positions in these six major fields at top ranked public universities found that underrepresented faculty of color and women (of all backgrounds), who clearly enhance increase campus diversity, did not get higher salaries for that important diversity contribution. Indeed, many actually averaged lower salaries than white men in their fields.32

214

moving forward

Monitor Institutional Processes for Equitable Outcomes

One of the key responsibilities of higher education’s leadership, including boards of trustees, is to conduct serious ongoing and indepth reviews of institutional process-based outcomes (e.g., tenure reviews, promotions) for members of nondominant groups in order to ensure fair and equitable treatment. Such serious reviews mean digging deeper and examining patterns of racial and gender discrimination and inequities that may occur in specific departments, divisions, and colleges. Findings from the private sector illuminate the need for in-depth monitoring of institutional processes and outcomes. A recent study of 14,000 employees in 16 countries concluded that members of majority groups tend to underestimate the obstacles faced by minoritized employees in the workplace. Half of all female and minority participants indicated that their companies lack the appropriate institutional mechanisms for critically examining major decisions such as promotions, evaluations, and stretch assignments. For employees of color, who have first-hand knowledge of the impact of daily biases in the workplace, the top obstacle reported in this study was job advancement.33 Another important research study specific to the higher education environment indicates that some university boards have not established formal mechanisms for reviewing practices in order to ensure that the college administration is truly accountable for the diversity and inclusion of faculty, administrators, and students. Typically, boards of trustees only receive summary reports after actions such as appointment, tenure attainment, promotion, and termination have been taken, with little opportunity for intervention.34 More in-depth review by both the executive leadership and the boards of trustees necessarily involves establishing real accountability mechanisms for key gatekeeping actors that involve regular review of relevant decision-making processes. For example, we have discussed research findings relating to unfairly low performance evaluations for high-performing individuals from nondominant groups. Questions to be asked in terms of these discriminatory process-based outcomes are the criteria applied in such cases, as well as the level of support,

moving forward

215

resources, and feedback provided to those individuals of color and white women. In addition, for deans, more senior administrators, and line supervisors, awarding of merit increases and promotions needs to be contingent on concrete, empirically demonstrated success in diversity and inclusion efforts. Invest in Systematic and Sustained Diversity Education

In Chapter 3, we identified some major issues with diversity education programs such as the tendency to be piecemeal and atheoretical and having a lack of follow-up and transfer of learning to the actual workplaces. For the most part, these training programs are not sustained over an extended time period and tend to be offered as stand-alone events. In addition, diversity education programs very frequently suffer from a lack of top leadership commitment, limited budgetary investment, and the absence of an iterative process for gauging campus needs, evaluating outcomes, and developing effective interventions tailored to the needs of specific audiences, including faculty, administrators, staff, and students. We have also identified one of the major difficulties in approaches to systematic diversity learning in educational organizations as the strong resistance to real institutional change on the part of important administrators and faculty members. Workplace diversity and inclusion programs that threaten the status quo, and discussions of systemic racism or sexism and related inequalities, often provoke considerable backlash and controversy. Diversity learning practices for students need to provide opportunities for student interactions and engagement across their social differences. Such curricular and co-curricular programs can enhance diversity learning outcomes. More structured programs offered with greater frequency and multiple interactions have been shown to strengthen diversity learning outcomes.35 Certainly, these programs will likely have varying degrees of efficacy based on student backgrounds and readiness. Studies indicate that students who enter college with a strong belief in social justice have lower levels of belief in deflective “colorblind” notions, demonstrate a more critical understanding of racial inequality, and tend to seek out racial diversity experiences on campus. One four-year longitudinal study tested 857 white college students with a Color-Blind Racial Attitudes Scale. Researchers

216

moving forward

found that those engaging in college experiences that included cross-racial peer interactions, diversity courses, and diversity programs had a greater decline over time in problematical Color-Blind Scale scores than students without these diversified experiences. However, this shift in views was measured by rather superficial survey items. Some of the easily decoded statements included phrases like “social policies, such as affirmative action, discriminate unfairly against white people” and “talking about racial issues causes unnecessary tension.”36 Unfortunately, such simplistic questions can be readily answered by students with an eye toward social acquiescence— and without actually revealing white participants’ true racial sentiments and deeper framing. They have limited utility in measuring numerous critical aspects of the troubled campus racial climates discussed throughout this book. Still, it is likely that much more extensive anti-racist, anti-sexist, and other social justice education might well have even greater impacts than these studies show. For faculty, administrators, and staff, in-depth diversity education programs will benefit from research-based offerings that address both behavioral and process-based issues. While implicit bias training can sometimes provide a gateway to further discussions by reducing defensiveness and offering approaches to overcoming a few stereotypes, all campuses will benefit from approaches that lead to a deeper examination of issues of campus climate and social justice. An indispensable aspect of serious diversity education is regular process-based training on recruitment, hiring, evaluation, and promotion policies and practices that addresses how many aspects of the dominant white racial frame or male sexist frame can lead to inequitable actions and outcomes. In addition, well-crafted experiential training programs for supervisory staff and employees, such as those that involve role-playing or improvisational theater calling out these oppression frames, can depersonalize the issues, facilitate greater awareness of behavioral and organizational barriers, and promote civility and interpersonal understanding. Create an Institutional Safety Net

Institutional offices and programs that provide for independent support will allow members of nondominant groups to safely access resources

moving forward

217

and advice. Recall how Marianne, the female faculty member, consulted with a savvy ombudsperson who gave her valued advice and provided both psychological and practical support. These important offices include the ombudsperson, the employee assistance program, employee relations in human resources, an affirmative action office, or the campus’s chief diversity officer. In many cases they can offer assistance in terms of understanding institutional policies and processes, as well as offer strategies for addressing difficult situations including exclusionary behaviors and actions. In addition, formal and informal mentoring programs can assist diverse faculty members, administrators, and staff in navigating workplace hurdles by introducing individuals to the unwritten rules of a historically white institution, building awareness of political minefields, and ensuring a thorough understanding of policy requirements and practices. They must also provide such information in a truly independent and confidential way. Assess Impact of Admissions Criteria and Financial Aid on Underrepresented Students

We have discussed the fact that conventional SAT/ACT test scores used by most college admission departments are weak predictors of college success, and relatively higher scores substantially reflect the socioeconomic advantages of affluent students, who are usually enrolled in more amply resourced secondary schools with access to advanced learning resources that enhance college opportunities. By contrast, first generation college students, who tend to be disproportionately Latino/a or African American, are less likely to have enrolled in advanced placement courses, more likely to have scored lower on SAT/ACT tests, and have families who are less able to support their college attendance. And they are four times more likely to drop out after the first year than students without these disadvantaged risk factors.37 For this reason, much greater consideration needs to be given to the impact of racially and class biased admissions policies and entry requirements that create barriers and disadvantages for these first generation and underrepresented students. As law professor Lani Guinier argues, the admissions system that relies on testing or what she terms “testocratic merit” needs to be replaced with

218

moving forward

“democratic merit,” the emphasis on education as a public good that enables individuals from a variety of racial, gender, and socioeconomic backgrounds to attain socioeconomic mobility and to contribute significantly to a bettering of society.38 One major hidden feature of how the selective public institutions operate is that they turn away three quarters of those potential students whose standardized test scores indicate they are indeed ready for college, including disproportionately large numbers of black and Latino/a students. The latter often do not have test scores that, while indicating ability for college success, are on average high enough to compete with the yet higher average test scores of the white, racially and economically privileged, students who get admitted to selective public institutions in disproportionate numbers. Current testing procedures regularly privilege white students from more affluent families. Still, one can easily envision how greater equality of representation in selective colleges might be accomplished. The aforementioned Georgetown report underscores the point that “there are more than enough Black and Latino students who score above average on standardized tests to fill the seats that would be required to secure” fully equal student representation in our disproportionately white selective public colleges and universities. Many senior white college administrators ignore, often intentionally, the reality that many students of color do reasonably well on college screening tests and are thus qualified for these selective institutions that routinely deny them entry. With an anticipated drop of about 10 percent in the demand for higher education seats by the year 2029, these college admissions officers need to increase their outreach to first generation and underrepresented students, particularly in numerous regional markets. Nathan Grawe has developed a formula called the Higher Education Demand Index (HEDI) that assesses current demographic trends in regard to past college-going rates and estimates the impact on colleges and universities in the future.39 As Grawe acknowledges, this approach is backwardlooking in its forecasting model.40 As such, the model presumes the continuation of past college-going rates for Latino/as, blacks, and Asians that have actually been influenced by multiple factors, including

moving forward

219

the conservative state legislators’ defunding of public higher education, rising tuition costs, modest family incomes, and financial aid based on high grade-point and test score averages. While Grawe emphasizes the coming decline in white middle class students who can afford to pay for college, his analysis does not deal comprehensively with these types of legislative and other policy interventions and initiatives that have negatively impacted access to higher education for less affluent students and would, if altered, significantly increase the college-going rates of members of underrepresented groups. Such positive action would mean an actual increase in the demand for higher education by 2029. In contrast to Grawe’s problematical estimates, in his landmark study, When Affirmative Action Was White, Ira Katznelson reminds us that, during the 1930s and 1940s and continuing until the 1970s, large-scale federal government programs administered by state and local officials greatly increased the number of white college students. Thus, the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act (“G.I. Bill of Rights”) was funded by the federal government but was intentionally directed by white state and local officials for white socioeconomic advancements. They largely denied benefits to thousands of black veterans and made it difficult for them to obtain college educations, home mortgages, business loans, and job training, while granting significant advantages in all these areas to white Americans.41 Given this historical example, relatively modest government funding programs that address the societal disadvantages faced by underrepresented college students could easily counterbalance the expected decline in the numbers of white, middle-class college-going students in the near and distant future. These programs would include, among others, restoring state legislative funding of public higher education, reducing huge tuition and fee increases, aggressive outreach to underrepresented students, and enhancement of need-based financial aid. To address growing concerns about student enrollment shifts, and in light of recent Supreme Court cases that limit the use of race-sensitive affirmative action criteria in college admissions, some institutions have established strategic enrollment planning councils and multiyear plans that address ongoing demographic changes and the access,

220

moving forward

recruitment, and retention of underrepresented students of color. Consider, for example, the California State University at Chico’s Strategic Plan for the Future (2012–2017) that articulates guiding principles that include recruiting, admitting, enrolling, retaining, and graduating a diverse student population. The plan actively recognizes the importance of being the “institution of choice for an increasingly diverse student population” and seeks to prepare students to be “gainful members of the 21st century workforce” ready for the challenges of citizenship in a democratic society.42 Critically Evaluate Faculty Workforce Models

In Chapter 1 we noted a radical societal change in recent decades that has resulted from the prevalent defunding of public higher education led by conservative legislators. The interconnected effects of these budgetary reductions have triggered a veritable educational tsunami. The trillion-dollar defunding of public higher education has required institutions to offset budget reductions with major tuition increases. While the corporatization of public colleges and universities has been another avenue to rebuilding necessary revenue, it has exacerbated the neoliberal shift toward the privatization of public institutions. Underrepresented and low-income students have been particularly affected by these changes and often have been forced to take out large student loans, work too long at part-time jobs while in school, and draw down modest family savings (if they exist) in order to continue their education. One study found that tuition increases at open-access, non-selective four-year institutions are negatively associated with the racial diversity of their student bodies.43 Channeling of underrepresented students to community colleges has also been partially a result of rising college costs. In addition, as state funding has sharply decreased, the faculty workforce model has also undergone radical change, with only one third of faculty now serving in tenure-track or tenured positions. Nearly half (47 percent) of those in the college faculty workforce are employed in part-time adjunct positions while another 19 percent

moving forward

221

work in full-time non-tenure track roles.44 This major change has led to the unbundling of the traditional faculty responsibilities for teaching, research, and service and has thereby reconfigured the educational landscape. Underrepresented scholars have less opportunity for full-time, tenure-track employment today and are more likely to enter the workforce in low paid, part-time, and contingent faculty positions. A recent report by the American Association of University Professors indicates that this “casualization” of much academic labor also means a decline in academic freedom, as more and more faculty members lack the employment security necessary to research and teach in ways critical of societal institutions.45 The decline of fulltime tenure-track and tenured faculty has had a ripple effect that extends to the classroom, as underrepresented students may not have the needed role models for success in various professorial positions or other areas of society. The relatively small number of scholars of color further results in these faculty members being called upon too frequently to mentor diverse students and to serve as diversity representatives on university or college committees—thereby limiting their capacity to conduct their own research, including much-needed research on racial and other social inequalities.. For all these reasons, public institutions of higher learning are faced with a difficult conundrum in terms of devoting sufficient financial resources to strengthening the tenured and tenure-track faculty workforce and at the same time to ensuring greater access and financial aid support for underrepresented students. Indeed, reconsideration of this problematical faculty workforce situation in light of extraordinarily important student needs and of keeping educational quality should be an important national priority and will necessitate long-term increase in and reallocation of budget dollars by the relevant legislative authorities. Given the decentralization of faculty hiring processes at most colleges and universities, one study of 278 academic administrators found a lack of sound decision-making practices by many deans when they were faced with reduced financial resources. Only a third of their presidents were brought into serious conversations regarding faculty composition. Deans also reported having little time to reflect and gather the requisite

222

moving forward

organizational data, although they indicated they did have time to strategize. Only 28 percent of the deans were actually held accountable for following general campus staffing plans. These troubling findings point to the need for much more consultation of these important college administrators with their upper-level presidents and boards of trustees on faculty workforce strategies and to the importance of decisionmaking capabilities related to data collection and planning. They also accent the need to restructure and reform academic governance structures in order to ensure that the institutional resources are actually aligned with the college mission and goals.46 Conduct Research on Demographic Changes and Inclusion

The limited research aimed at documenting and enhancing the coping strategies for members of nondominant groups who experience discrimination represents an unmet need. Statistical and qualitative research studies need to examine the impact of asymmetrical power on career outcomes for members of nondominant groups; and they also need to indicate concrete approaches and communication strategies for responding to inequitable racial or gender treatment. Further, with the acceleration of demographic change, research needs to track the interaction between the growing multiracial college-age populations and higher education. In building more inclusive campus environments, historically white colleges and universities will benefit from research that addresses how to overcome the barriers of imposed identity and conventional prescriptive framing that preclude the progress and success of diverse students, staff, faculty, and administrators. Conclusion

Taking into account the major historical and contemporary societal trends that have shaped current realities in U.S. higher education, our analysis seeks to provide a broader and more critical framework for understanding the dynamics of our still systemic forms of exclusion and oppression. As we have seen, this framework suggests the need for reformulating the tenuous language of implicit bias, microinequities, and microaggressions

moving forward

223

in light of the significant, career-derailing, life-changing consequences of the concrete acts of exclusion and marginalization faced today by members of nondominant groups. We have highlighted the ways in which current institutional processes and rationales of our historically white colleges and universities often mask unequal racial or gender outcomes, without significant critical oversight. And we have seen how the strong voices and considered perspectives of members of nondominant groups facing mistreatment offer much insight into the subtle, covert, and overt ways in which everyday discrimination transpires in higher education. We also have emphasized the lack of effective legal remedies available to these faculty and staff facing discriminatory treatment and the high bar set by the existing legal and other redress options for proving discrimination. Building much more diverse and inclusive living, learning, and working environments is an ongoing project and urgent priority for all U.S. institutions of higher education. With projected future declines in student enrollments, continuing reductions in government aid to public higher education, and increasingly constrained college budgetary environments, the need to dramatically reformulate current admissions and financial aid policies is of paramount concern. The luxury of time may no longer be available in light of increasingly bleak revenue and enrollment forecasts for higher education. At the same time, the limited effective outreach and lack of availability of need-based financial aid, the excessive emphasis on biased standardized test scores, and the privileging of students from affluent (usually disproportionately white) families have limited the access of large numbers of underrepresented students who would likely do well in higher education. A major challenge for most historically white colleges and universities that have espoused the language of diversity and inclusion is to operationalize these important ideals in their concrete policies and practices. High on the institutional priority list is attainment of greater structural diversity in their executive, administrative, faculty, and staff ranks. A truly representative administrative bureaucracy and faculty structure with role models for students of all racial and gender backgrounds directly impacts the educational process. Yet, this building upon the bricks and mortar of structural diversity, including the slow work of

224

moving forward

creating inclusive cultures within all college divisions and departments, has only begun to take shape in most educational institutions. Asking the right questions will enable a better evaluation of institutional progress and insure greater accountability for gatekeeping actors. More than an abstract theoretical undertaking, operationalizing meaningful campus diversity and inclusion will mean moving beyond a thin veneer of civility language and vague diversity rhetoric and asking the difficult questions about systemic oppressions and solutions that can move an institution significantly forward. Looking ahead, there are some promising signs of the realization of the ideals of equity and justice articulated in the U.S. Constitution’s Preamble. The 2018 U.S. election marked a watershed in U.S. history with the seating of the 116th Congress and the most racially and gender diverse first-year class of the House of Representatives in more than 200 years. The new and diverse Democratic majority in the House led to the assumption of the speakership by Nancy Pelosi of California for the second time. Pelosi is the first and only woman to ever hold that powerful position. In addition, the first two Native American congresswomen were elected as well as the first Palestinian American woman, the first Somali American, and the first Korean American in 20 years. Twenty-four people of color joined the first-year class, all from the Democratic party, many representing predominantly white districts.47 Still the new class of lawmakers is less diverse than the U.S. population, with Latinos/as accounting for 8 percent of Congress versus 18 percent of the population and African Americans accounting for 9 percent of Congress versus 12 percent of the population. In addition, women still only account for 23 percent of lawmakers in Congress versus 51 percent of the population.48 The religious diversity of the House and Senate also changed, with the highest number of non-Christian members to date—63 members, almost all Democratic, representing the Jewish, Buddhist, Hindu, and Muslim faiths.49 Nonetheless, despite the increased diversity of the U.S. House of Representatives, major questions remain as to the pace and future of diversity progress at various levels of higher education. Will they continue to lag behind population diversity? Will diversity and inclusion become embedded within institutional process-based outcomes

moving forward

225

for faculty, administrators, and staff? Will greater accountability be realized for campus diversity outcomes? Will the voices of members of nondominant groups be seriously recognized and acted upon? And will significant diversity and inclusion become more than “polite speech,” and genuinely embraced within organizational cultures and structures? As U.S. colleges and universities prepare students for greater civic participation, building a truly inclusive campus community that values diverse voices, transcends traditional white dominance, and creates an enduring fabric of social justice and equity, will yield the benefits of creativity and social innovation and ensure the continued vitality of institutions of higher education and, perhaps, the old ideals of “liberty and justice for all.” Notes

1 Chun, E., and Evans, A. (2015). The department chair as transformative diversity leader: Building inclusive learning environments in higher education. Sterling, VA: Stylus, p 120. 2 Constitution for the United States—We the People. Retrieved December 24, 2018, from http://constitutionus.com 3 Marschke, R., Laursen, S., Nielsen, J. M., and Rankin, P. (2007). Demographic inertia revisited: An immodest proposal to achieve equitable gender representation among faculty in higher education. Journal of Higher Education, 78(1), 1–26. 4 Harper, S. R. (10 December, 2015). Paying to ignore racism. Inside Higher Ed. Retrieved December 8, 2018 from www.insidehighered.com/views/2015/12/10/colleges-should-stoppaying-money-ignore-racial-problems-essay 5 Gasman, M. (20 September, 2016). The five things no one will tell you about why colleges don’t hire more faculty of color. The Hechinger Report. Retrieved December 10, 2018, from https://hechingerreport.org/five-things-no-one-will-tell-colleges-dont-hire-facultycolor/ 6 See Chun, E., and Evans, A. (2018). Leading a diversity culture shift in higher education: Comprehensive organizational learning strategies. New York, NY: Routledge. 7 Goodman, K. M., and Bowman, N. A. (2014). Making diversity work to improve college student learning. In G. L. Martin and M. S. Hevel (Eds.), New Directions for student services: No. 147. Research-driven practice in student affairs: Implications from the Wabash National Study of Liberal Arts Education (pp. 37–48). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. 8 Civil rights requirements—A. Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, U.S.C. 2000d et seq. (“Title VI”). Health and Human Services. Retrieved December 23, 2018, from www.hhs. gov/civil-rights/for-individuals/special-topics/needy-families/civil-rights-requirements/ index.html 9 Hutchins, D. (2009). Let my people in: A comparative study of diversity rhetoric to reality in institutions of higher education. Unpublished Master’s degree thesis, Marquette University, pp. 42–43. Retrieved December 10, 2008, from https://epublications.marquette.edu/cgi/ viewcontent.cgi?article=1441&context=theses_open 10 Confidential interview with E. Chun (2018, November 16). 11 Carnevale, A. P., Van Der Werf, M., Quinn, M., Stroh, J., and Repnikov, D. (2018). Our separate & unequal public colleges: How public colleges reinforce white racial privilege and

226

12 13

14 15

16 17

18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26

27 28

moving forward

marginalize Black and Latino/a students. Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce. Washington DC: Georgetown University, pp. 43–45. Ibid., p. 44. Huelsman, M. (2018, February 22). The unaffordable era: A 50-state look at rising college prices and the new American student. Demos. Retrieved January 14, 2019 from www. demos.org/publication/unaffordable-era-50-state-look-rising-college-prices-and-newamerican-student Hohle, R. (2018). Racism in the neoliberal era. New York, NY: Routledge, 2018, p. 185. Italics added. Harper, S. R., and Simmons, I. (2019). Black students at public colleges and universities: A 50-state report card. USC Race and Equity Center. Retrieved January 16, 2019, from https://race.usc.edu/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Black-Students-at-Public-Collegesand-Universities-A-50-State-Report-Card-Harper-and-Simmons-1-9-26.pdf Lorenzo, R., and Reeves, M. (30 January, 2018). How and where diversity drives financial performance. Harvard Business Review. Retrieved January 2, 2019, from https://hbr. org/2018/01/how-and-where-diversity-drives-financial-performance Hunt, V., Prince, S., Dixon-Fyle, S., and Yee, L. (2018). Delivering through diversity. McKinsey and Company Report. Retrieved January 3, 2019, from www.mckinsey. com/~/media/McKinsey/Business%20Functions/Organization/Our%20Insights/ Delivering%20through%20diversity/Delivering-through-diversity_full-report.ashx Gompers, P., and Kovvali, S. (2018). The other diversity dividend. Harvard Business Review. Retrieved January 3, 2019, from https://hbr.org/2018/07/the-other-diversity-dividend See Chun, E., and Evans, A. (2016). Rethinking cultural competence in higher education: An ecological framework for student development. ASHE Higher Education Report 42(4). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Chun, E., and Evans, A. (2019). Conducting an institutional diversity audit in higher education: A practitioner’s guide to systematic diversity transformation. Sterling, VA: Stylus. AQIP pathway systems portfolio and appraisal. Retrieved December 29, 2018, from http:// download.hlcommission.org/AQIPPathway-SystemsPortfolioAppraisal_PRC.pdf Higher Learning Commission. (2013). Systems portfolio guide: Academic quality improvement program. Retrieved December 29, 2018, from http://eac.edu/surveys/ PortfolioGuide2014.pdf UC Berkeley strategic plan for equity, inclusion, and diversity. Executive Summary. Retrieved January 2, 2019 from https://diversity.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/executivesummary_ webversion.pdf Reyes, K. A. (n.d.). Developing a strategic inclusion & diversity action plan: Lessons learned from research & practice. Utah Valley University. Retrieved December 31, 2018, from www. sreb.org/sites/main/files/file-attachments/diversity_and_inclusion_webinar.pdf Moore, W. L., and Bell, J. M. (2017). The right to be racist in college: Racist speech, white institutional space, and the First Amendment. Law & Policy, 39(2), 99–120, p. 115. For further discussion see Campus free-speech legislation: History progress, and problems. American Association of University Professors Retrieved December 24, 2018, from www.aaup.org/report/campus-f ree-speech-legislation-histor y-progress-andproblems?smid=nytcore-ios-share Speech on campus (n.d.). American Civil Liberties Union. Retrieved December 26, 2018, from www.aclu.org/other/speech-campus. Quoted in Marantz, A. (2018, July 2). Letter from Berkeley: How social media trolls turned U.C. Berkeley into a free-speech circus. The New Yorker. Retrieved July 27, 2019, from www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/07/02/how-social-media-trolls-turned-ucberkeley-into-a-free-speech-circus

moving forward

227

29 Cole, E. R., and Harper, S. R. (2017). Race and rhetoric: An analysis of college presidents’ statements on campus racial incidents. Journal of Diversity in Higher Education, 10(4), 318–333. 30 Race/ethnicity of college faculty. Fast facts (2016). The National Center for Education Statistics. Retrieved January 15, 2019, from https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display. asp?id=61 (accessed May 13, 2019) 31 Li, D., and Koedel, C. (2017). Abstract: Representation and salary gaps by race-ethnicity and gender at selective public universities. Educational Researcher, 46, 343–354. We draw on the analysis of these data in Flaherty, C. (2017, August 22). The missing black professors: Study of top public universities finds limited faculty diversity, yet signs of progress— except for African-Americans in STEM. Inside Higher Ed. Retrieved January 16, 2019 from https:// www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/08/22/study 32 Flaherty (2017 August 22). The missing black professors: Study of top public universities finds limited faculty diversity, yet signs of progress—except for African-Americans in STEM. 33 Krentz, M. (2019, February 19). Survey: What diversity and inclusion policies do employees actually want? Harvard Business Review. Retrieved February 6, 2019 from https://hbr. org/2019/02/survey-what-diversity-and-inclusion-policies-do-employees-actually-want 34 Chun, E. (2017). The balancing act between governing boards and college and university administration on diversity and inclusion. In K. Ducey and R. Thompson-Miller (Eds.), Systemic racism: Making liberty, justice, and democracy real (pp. 79–110). New York, NY: Palgrave McMillan. 35 Bowman, N. (2012). Promoting sustained engagement with diversity: The reciprocal relationships between informal and formal college diversity experiences. Review of Higher Education, 36(1), 1–24. For further discussion see Chun, E., and Evans, A. (2015). Affirmative action at a crossroads: Fisher and forward. ASHE Higher Education Report, 41(4). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. 36 Neville, H. A., Lewis, J. A., Poteat, V. P., and Spanierman, L. B. (2014). Changes in white college students’ color-blind racial ideology over 4 years: Do diversity experiences make a difference? Journal of Counseling Psychology, 61(2). 179–190. 37 Kuh, G. D., Kinzie, J., Buckley, J. A., Bridges, B. K., and Hayck, J. C. (2006). What matters to student success: A review of the literature. Commissioned report for the National Symposium on Postsecondary Student Success. National Postsecondary Education Conference. Retrieved December 31, 2018 from https://nces.ed.gov/npec/pdf/kuh_team_report.pdf 38 Guinier, L. (2015). The tyranny of the meritocracy: Democratizing higher education in America. Boston, MA: Beacon Press. 39 See Grawe, N. D., (2018). Demographics and the demand for higher education. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. See also, Jaschik, S. (2018, January 8). Are prospective students about to disappear? Inside Higher Ed. Retrieved January 1, 2019, from https://www.insidehighered.com/admissions/article/2018/01/08/new-book-arguesmost-colleges-are-about-face-significant-decline 40 Ibid., p. 116. 41 Katznelson, I. (2005). When affirmative action was white: An untold history of racial inequality in twentieth-century America. New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company. 42 California State University, Chico. Strategic enrollment management plan, 2012–2017, pp. 12–13. Retrieved December 31, 2018, from http://www.csuchico.edu/pres/_assets/ documents/strategic-enrollment-management-plan.pdf 43 Allen, D., and Wolniak, G. (2018). Exploring the effects of tuition increases on racial/ ethnic diversity at public colleges and universities. Research in Higher Education. Retrieved January 2, 2019, from https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11162-018-9502-6

228

moving forward

44 Yakoboski, P. J. (2018). Adjunct faculty: Who are they and what is their experience? TIAA Institute. Retrieved January 2, 2019, from www.tiaainstitute.org/publication/adjunctfaculty-survey-2018 45 Flaherty, C. (2018, October 12). A non-tenure-track profession? Inside Higher Ed. Retrieved January 2, 2019, from www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/10/12/about-three-quartersall-faculty-positions-are-tenure-track-according-new-aaup 46 Kezar, A., and Gehrke, S. (2014). Why are we hiring so many non-tenure-track faculty? Liberal Education, 100(1). Association of American Colleges & Universities (AAC&U). Retrieved January 2, 2019, from www.aacu.org/publications-research/periodicals/why-arewe-hiring-so-many-non-tenure-track-faculty 47 Edmondson, C., and Lee, J. C. (2019, January 3). Meet the new freshmen in Congress. The New York Times. Retrieved January 5, 2019, from www.nytimes.com/ interactive/2018/11/28/us/politics/congress-freshman-class.html 48 Linke, M. (2018, November 15). Just how diverse is the new congress? The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved January 5, 2019, from www.wsj.com/articles/just-how-diverse-is-thenew-congress-1542285001 49 Scott, D. (2019, January 3). There will be more non-Christians in the Congress than ever before. Vox. Retrieved January 5, 2019, from www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/ 2019/1/3/18166762/116th-congress-swear-in-demographics-first-muslim-woman

INDEX

Page numbers in italics refer to figures. Academic Quality Improvement Project (AQIP) 208 “acting white” 63 adjunct positions 220–221 admissions policies 39–41, 203, 217–220 ADVANCE (Advancement of Women in Academic Science and Engineering Careers) grants 112 affirmative action programs 43–44, 147–148, 219 African American Voices Project 168 Agerstorm, J. 89 Aguirre, A., Jr. 186 American Association of University Professors 221 American Association of University Women (AAUW) 67, 76 American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) 211 American Council of Education (ACE) 57 American University 15–16, 172–173 Andrews, Dorinda J. Carter 60–61 anti-bullying code, challenge to 2 Arcidiacono, Peter 147–148 Asian Americans: leadership positions and 124–125; stereotypes of 145–148 assaults 16 asymmetrical power relations 187–188 at-will positions 67–68 Baez, Benjamin 75, 185 Bahng, Aimee 173–174

Banaji, Mahzarin 84, 87, 88–89 Bass, Scott 172–173 behavior expectations, racially differential 63 Bell, Joyce 210 Berdahl, J. L. 146 Bias Response Team 2 biologization of racism 86–87, 113, 202 Black Students United 16 Black Women’s Club 178 Blain, Keisha 57 Blum, Edward 147–148 “both sides” arguments 13 Bracey, Glenn 63 Brown, Carolyn 172–173 “browning of America” 17, 20, 197 Brown University 14 Buchanan, Patrick 21 bullying 2, 126–127, 163, 165–166 California State University at Chico 220 Card, David 148 career alternatives 174–182 career costs 170–182 Carter, Robert 64 Chang, Mitchell 148 Charlottesville, Virginia 12–14 Chatelain, Marcia 13–14 Chimbganda, Tapo 143–144 Chou, Rosalind 145

229

230

index

Civil Rights Act (1964) 68–69, 71, 75, 93, 98, 198, 211 civil rights movements 28, 33 Clemson 16 Clinger, Catherine 76 Clinton, Hillary 20 Coates, Ta-Nehisi 31 college tuition increases 34–38 Collins, Patricia Hill 49, 185 “colorblindness” 5, 27–29, 30–31, 43, 198 Color-Blind Racial Attitudes Scale 215–216 “coming white minority” 17–19, 197 communication strategies, positive 188–190 comprehensive plans 209 Concerned Graduate Students of Color 14 Constitution 196, 224 coping responses: proactive 182–192; types of 163–164, 166–169 Cornell University 16 corporate contributions 44–45 Crandall, Chris 22–23 Crisis of Democracy, The 30 Cross, Mai’a K. Davis 171–172 Cruz, Dulce 149 Dartmouth College 173–174 de facto segregation in higher education 38–42 Delgado, Richard 128 Democratic Party 20 demographic changes: “coming white minority” 17–19, 197; context and consequences of 19–26; research on 222 descriptive stereotypes 146–147 differential power 122 discrimination: everyday 117–131, 162–192; political and psychological dynamics of 139–141; resisting and coping with 162–192 discriminatory practices: long-term impacts of 61–67; resistance to 67–78; in tenure and evaluation 56–61 disparate impact 69, 70, 94 disparate treatment 69–71, 94 DiTomaso, Nancy 125, 163 diversity audits, institutional 207–208 Diversity Explosion (Frey) 19 diversity leadership strategies 206–222 diversity training/education: demand for 16; implicit bias and 108–112;

organizational 97; relative modesty of 205; social conditions and 90; systemic and sustained 215–216; terms and concepts in 78, 84 Dovidio, John 60 dual-processing theories 90 Ducey, Kimberley 46 Duster, Troy 88 education: reduced state spending on 32–34, 220; residential segregation and 26 elite-white-male dominance system 200–201, 200, 205 emotional and cognitive labor, effects of 61–67 emotion-focused responses 167 Equal Employment and Opportunity Commission (EEOC) 8, 68–69, 72–75, 124 Equal Pay Act (EPA; 1963) 69 Equal Protection Clause 43 equity study 205–206 evaluation hurdles 60–61 Evans, Louwanda 62 exclusion, behavioral and “process-based” 2 faculty workforce models 220–222 false moral equivalency 13 Feagin, Joe 22, 46, 145 financial aid, availability of 35–36 First Amendment 210–211 Forscher, Patrick 90 Fourteenth Amendment 43, 211 fraternities 16 free speech arguments 210–212 Frey, William 19 Gasman, Mary Beth 197 gender-related discrimination 24 general processing speed (GPS) 85 Georgetown Report 39–41, 203, 218 Gertner, N. 70 G.I. Bill of Rights 219 glass ceilings 124–125 Goldwater, Barry 20 Gonzalez, Maria Christina 149–150 government aid programs 32 Grawe, Nathan 218–219 Greenwald, Anthony 84, 88–89 Griggs v. Duke Power Co. 93

index guardian model 163 Guinier, Lani 217–218 harassment 126–127 Harjo, Susan Shown 153 Harlan, John Marshall 27–28, 30 Harper, Shaun 197 Hart, M. 70 Harvard University 147–148 hate/bias incidents, increase in 15–16 hate speech 128, 211–212 Hayes, Cleveland 58–59, 61, 71 hierarchical positionality 169 Higher Education Demand Index (HEDI) 218–219 Higher Learning Commission (HLC) 208 hiring discrimination 89 Hohle, Randolph 204 homophobia 23 hostile work environment 71–72 Hutchison, Phillip 28 hypodescent 156

231

Kelly, John 12–13 King, Martin Luther, Jr. 28–29 King, Steve 25, 101 Kubota, J. T. 87 Ku Klux Klan 23, 27 Latino/a framing, negative 149–151 leadership positions, lack of diversity in 3–4 Lee, Robert E. 12–13 “legacy” bias 148 legal system, use of 68–72 Lemon, Don 106–107 Lever, Janet 77 Lewis, Amanda 137 LGBTQ community 23–24 “lifting while we climb” 178 Lilienfeld, Scott 97–98, 127–128 López, Nancy 136–137

James, Lebron 106–107 Jim Crow 27–28, 32 job access, nonmeritocratic 125 job information networks 125, 163

macroaggressions 119–120, 200 macroinequalities 200 Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) 87 maintaining white dominance 31–45 male sexist frame 47, 103–104 Mannheim, Karl 102 marginality, positive use of 185–188 marginalization 48 Martinez, R. O. 186 Martinez, Tiffany 150–151 mascots, Native American 152–153 matrix of oppression 49 Matthew, Patricia 58, 59, 61, 120–121 McDonnell Douglas Corp. v. Green 69–70 merit-based aid 36–37 microaggressions: coining of term 94–95; as inadequate term 2, 62, 78; questioning 83–84, 93–98; reformulating concept of 117–131; reframing 127–130; rethinking 5–6 micro-assaults 97, 127 micro-inequities 2, 95–96 micro-insults 96, 97 micro-invalidations 96–97 Min, J.-A. 146 “model minority” myth 145 Moore, Wendy Leo 63, 210 multiracial Americans 154–156

Kahn, Jonathan 87 Kanoute, Oumou 134–135 Katznelson, Ira 32, 219

National Science Foundation (NSF) 112 Native Americans 151–154 nativism 23

identities: imposed racial 9, 133–157; self-chosen 2, 5 “I have a dream” speech 28–29 Implicit Association Test (IAT) 84–93, 97, 110, 113, 202 implicit/unconscious bias: diversity training and 108–112; as problematical term 2, 8–9, 78; questioning 83–93; rethinking 5 imposed racial identity 9, 133–157 inadvertent cultural slights 97 “incel” activists 129 inflation-adjusted tuition 35 institutional conscience 187 institutional diversity audits 207–208 intentionality 127–129 internalized oppression 163 intersectionality 49 isolation in workplace 124–125 Iwamura, Jane 172

232

index

need-based aid 36 New Deal 32 Newfield, Christopher 45 “new normal” 12–49 NFL 24–25 Niemann, Yolanda Flores 62 Nixon, Richard 20 Nosek, Brian 88–89, 91 Obama, Barack 31 “one drop” rule 156 Orfield, Gary 26 organization of book 7–10 “outsiders within” 185–188 Patton, Tracey Owens 104–106 pay discrimination 69 Pelosi, Nancy 224 Peralta, Dan-el Padilla 100–101 performance and promotion discrimination 122–123 Pfeffer, Jeffrey 122 Phelps, Elizabeth 87 Picca, Leslie Houts 22, 65 Pierce, Chester 94–95, 98 pilots and flight attendants, African American 62–63 Plessy v. Ferguson 27–28, 30 “post-raciality” 31 powell, john a. 212 Powell, Lewis 43 Prescod-Weinstein, C. 71 prescriptive stereotypes 147 presidential positions, lack of diversity in 3–4 primary appraisal 166 privatization 44–45 proactive coping strategies 182–192 problem-focused responses 167 process-based decisions/discrimination 2, 60–61, 214–215 “prove it again” (PIA) 123 Pulido, Laura 171 “queen bee” syndrome 175–176, 184 “race tests” 63 racial battle fatigue (RBF) 63–64, 143, 201 racial diversity: increasing 17–19; safety and 26; white fear of 20–21 racial framing, contemporary 104–109

racial identities, imposed 9, 133–157 racialized violence 16 racial segregation 27–28 racism: biologization of 86–87, 113, 202; systemic 40, 46–49, 98–109, 130, 199–203, 200; two-faced 22, 163 racist incidents, increase in 15–16 racist partying 16 Reconstruction 27 “Redskins” football team 152–153 Regents of the University of California v. Bakke 43 reparations 29, 30, 43–44 reparative programs, rejecting 43–44 Republican Party 20, 25 research questions 6–7 residential segregation 25–26 resistance, active 67–78 resistance strategies 168 resources, failure to allocate 125–126 Rooth, D-O 89 Rowe, Mary 95–96 safety net, institutional 216–217 Saigo, Ray 146 salaries 213 Santa Clara University 16 SAT/ACT tests 39, 41, 203, 217–218 schemas 102 scholarships, availability of 35–36 secondary appraisal 166 segregation in higher education, de facto 38–42 Servicemen’s Readjustment Act 219 Sessions, Jeff 2 sexist framing 2, 3, 4–5, 60–61 “shithole countries” comment 24 Shorter-Gooden, Kumea 111 Silver, Mariko 61 Siyonbola, Lolade 65, 133 Smith, William A. 63 Smith College 133–135 social equality 27 social support systems 190–192 Society for Classical Studies 100–101 Soros, George 108 Southern Poverty Law Center 15 “southern strategy” 20 standards, shifting 60–61 state spending on higher education, reduced 32–34, 220

index Stefancic, Jean 128 stereotype threat 140–141 Stewart, Abigail 86, 102, 119 strategic planning 208–209, 220 “street race” 137 stress, effects of 61–67, 165–166 student loan debt 37 Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA) 147–148 Sue, Derald Wing 96–97, 127–128, 129 Sullivan, Teresa 14 support, lack of 125–126 Sy, Thomas 124 systemic racism: analytical framework for 199–203; conceptual approach to 46–49; effects of on higher education 40; graphic summary of 200; understanding 130; white racial framing and 98–109 systemic sexism 46–49, 103–104, 130, 199–203, 200 “taking a knee” protest 24–25 tenure hurdles/denials 57–59, 67, 71, 74, 76–77, 120–121, 170–174, 178–180, 190–192 terminations 68, 70–71 Title VI 198 Title VII 68–69, 71, 75, 93, 198 transgender people 24 traumatic stress, effects of 63–67 Trilateral Commission 30 Trump, Donald 12–13, 15, 20–25, 31, 101, 106–108, 124, 210 tuition, inflation-adjusted 35 tuition increases 34–38 two-faced racism 22, 163 two-tiered apartheid, solutions for 203–206 “Unchosen Me” 141 underrepresentation of nondominant faculty, addressing 212–213

233

“Unite the Right Rally” 12–14 University of California at Berkeley (UCB) 209 University of Connecticut 16 University of Mississippi (UM) study 118–119 University of Southern California (USC) 171–172 University of Virginia (UVA) 14 U.S. Congress, diversity in 224 U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) 2 Utah Valley University 209 Valian, Virginia 86, 102, 119 Vance, Maetta 71 Vance v. Ball State University 71 Wal-Mart v. Dukes 70 Waters, Maxine 107 West, Nicole 48 When Affirmative Action Was White (Katznelson) 219 White, Mark 22–23 white dominance, maintaining 29–45 white nationalists/supremacists 12–14, 19, 22, 31, 129, 210–211 white racial framing 23, 47, 60–61, 92, 98–109 white silence 4 white-voter strategy 20 “whitopias” 25–26 Why We Can’t Wait (King) 29 Williams, Charmaine 140, 163, 185 Winkle-Wagner, Rachelle 141 WISELI (Women in Science and Engineering Leadership) Institute 112 Wu, Cynthia 173 Wu, Frank 146 Yale University 14, 133