White student leaders’ deflections of diversity conversations

Abstract

Peer socialization agents (PSAs) play an important role in transmitting messages about the culture of higher education institutions (i.e. norms, values, practices, and assumptions) to new students, including messages concerning diversity and inclusion. The transmission of diversity messages depends on how student leaders make meaning of these ideas and who they deem responsible and capable of handling their delivery. By using a conceptual framework consisting of elements of student development theory, whiteness as property, and racial arrested development, we undertook a secondary data analysis of 34 white PSAs to understand their meaning-making concerning diversity and inclusion narratives. Findings demonstrate white PSAs defer conversations about diversity to Peers of Color, thereby avoiding racial discomfort. Participants provided various reasons for diverting these conversations, including following institutional norms, conceiving of knowledge about diversity as belonging to minoritized others and protecting comfort. Authors discuss implications for research, practice, and theory to provide educators tools to disrupt these patterns.

Keywords:

• Peer socialization agents
• diversity
• meaning-making
• critical whiteness studies
• self-authorship
• difficult dialogues

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Following Gotanda's (1991) reasoning for capitalizing Black as summarizing “relations of racial subordination and not capitalizing white due to its embodiment of “racial domination” we leave white in lower case while capitalizing words and phrases that describe racially minoritized people, such as People of Color (p. 4).

2 Crenshaw (1988) introduced the term “perspectivelessness” to characterize supposedly neutrality law pedagogies that actually perpetuate power, privilege, and oppression.

3 We intentionally utilize the term “color-evasive” instead of “color-blindness” as a rejection of the inherent ableism of the latter, and to describe a willful ignorance of racialized knowledge that supports the practice of avoiding conversations about race and racism (Annamma, Jackson & Morrison, 2017).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Kari E. Weaver

Kari E. Weaver is a doctoral candidate in Higher Education and Student Affairs at the University of Iowa.

Alex C. Lange

Alex C. Lange recently received their Ph.D. in Higher Education and Student Affairs at the University of Iowa.

Jodi L. Linley

Jodi L. Linley is an Associate Professor of Higher Education and Student Affairs at the University of Iowa.