“Diversity is a corporate plan”: racialized equity labor among university employees

ABSTRACT

Drawing on ninety-four interviews with university employees at two four-year publics, we identify elements of the “racialized equity labor”, or efforts to challenge racial inequities in the university environment, primarily undertaken by employees of color. We argue that the amount and intensity of racialized equity labor is related to organizational logics of race, or cultural values and beliefs about race that people use to organize their activities in the university. “Diversity” logics, focusing on individual differences in experiences, values, and worldviews, are associated with identity-focused infrastructure and create greater need for racialized equity labor. In contrast, “equity” logics focus on the structural changes needed to address race as a system of oppression and are instantiated in institutionalized infrastructure that alleviates and transforms racialized equity labor. We conclude that diversity logics are profoundly limiting for addressing racial inequities in academia.

KEYWORDS:

• Racialized equity labor
• higher education
• diversity
• BIPOC employees
• cultural centers
• racial equity

Acknowledgements

We wish to thank Jovita Angel, Ashley Bennett, Maria Duenas, Darkari Finister, Rosa Hernandez, Reginald Nelson, Ana Padilla, Patrick Pascual, and Mayra Ramirez for their research support and insights. We also thank Laura Hirshfield and Tiffany Joseph for their work on this special issue.

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1 We use the term “racially marginalized” to refer to groups who are historically excluded in the academy. The terms people of color and BIPOC are broader and encompass those who do not identify as white. Although racial groups are often associated with multiple ethnic traditions, when we refer to Black, Latinx, Asian, or white, we are referring to ascribed racial categories. We capitalize these racial categories (but not “white”) to emphasize the political agency, collective identity, and solidarity of these communities in a racist society. We use Latinx when gender is unspecified, nonbinary, or to mask the gender identity of respondents to reduce identifiability.

2 For Hispanic-Serving Institutions, this threshold is 25 per cent. For Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander-Serving Institutions, this threshold is 10 per cent. Both designations also include additional eligibility requirements for economic disadvantage in the student body.

3 This study was approved by the Institutional Review Boards at UC-Merced and UC-Riverside. Participants provided informed consent.

4 We mask the gender of employees with gender-neutral pronouns to reduce identifiability.

5 In this section we do not identify the race of UCR center staff, to preserve anonymity.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by a William T. Grant Scholars grant awarded to Laura Hamilton and a William T. Grant Scholars Mentoring grant awarded to Veronica Lerma and Laura Hamilton. Opinions reflect those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the granting agency.