The vacuous rhetoric of diversity: exploring how institutional responses to national racial incidences effect faculty of color perceptions of university commitment to diversity

Abstract

Recent news cycles have illuminated the disparate, racialized experiences of Black people in the United States but university leadership responses have been reactionary, or worse non-responsive. This study examines how university responses to national racial incidences such as the police brutality affect how faculty of color in one discipline understand the university’s commitment to diversity and ultimately how it affects the faculty experience. Illuminating how university actions affect not only faculty attitudes, but also faculty work has implications on broader university diversity outcomes and rectifying the racist, colonial founding of universities as national institutions. Findings show that there was increased race-related service taxation that was paired with resiliency and resistance tactics, and self- and community-driven coalition building. There are implications for institutional leaders around increasing a diversified student body through attention to community incidences and redefining community relationships to the university.

Keywords:

• Racism
• university
• rhetoric
• diversity
• faculty of color

Notes

1. It should also be noted that many conversations of gendered racism stemmed from the Welfare Queen narrative of the 1990s. In this narrative, Black women were wrongly positioned against all others, particularly White women, as using disproportionate amounts of social support services. This narrative reinforced a Black–White dichotomy within a broader racial project that included/s many other racial and ethnic peoples, including Whites (Spade, 2011).