Diversity as interest-convergence in academia: a critical race theory story

Abstract

This paper presents a critical race theory story regarding diversity and affirmative action in academia. The story's purpose is to raise issues regarding the treatment of diversity as a commodity in academia and how white faculty seek to privilege themselves in the diversity discourse. The story raises questions regarding the costs and benefits of diversity and affirmative action for minority faculty. The story illustrates how white faculty privilege themselves in diversity discourses by silencing diversity.

Keywords:

• critical race theory
• narrative
• diversity
• minority faculty

Acknowledgements

The critical race theory in this paper has benefited from my conversations with Ruben Martinez and Ray Padilla. I also thank my graduate students for listening and commenting on my stories in the graduate seminars.

Notes

1. An overview of Critical Race Theory and the centrality of narratives to CRT is found in Delgado and Stefancic (2001). In the social sciences, ‘autoethnography’ is utilized as a methodology for treating personal experience as a topic of investigation in its own right (see Ellis & Bochner, 2000; Stanley, 2006).

2. The majority (white) uses the ‘stock story’ to present arrangements of power and distribution of resources as a neutral process; that is, one that typifies social reality as it really is. According to Delgado and Stefancic (2001), stock stories are ‘Tales that a people commonly subscribe to and use to explain their social reality; for example, that African Americans who try hard will be accepted and succeed’ (p. 155).

3. Some of the Rodrigo chronicles can be found in Delgado (1995). Bell's conversations with Geneva can be found in Bell (1994). Much of the literature regarding perceptions of minority faculty in higher education is narrative in its methodology. That is, the literature consists of autobiographical accounts by minority faculty regarding their presence in academia. Narrative accounts that focus on situating the life experiences of minority faculty in academia can be found in the following references: Altbach and Lomotey (1991); Jacobs, Cintron, & Canton (2002); Cleveland (2004); Luna (2000); Padilla & Montiel (1998); Padilla & Chavez (1995); Rodriguez (2006); Stanley (2006); Valverde & Castenell (1998)).

4. Derrick Bell is credited with the origin of the term interest convergence. Bell coined the term in order to argue that the ‘majority group tolerates advances for racial justice only when it suits its interests to do so’ (Delgado & Stefancic, 2001 p. 149). Bell used interest convergence to argue that Brown benefited whites more than blacks because it failed to end educational inequality for black children (Bell, 1980). For a discussion of how interest convergence affects other groups, such as poor whites, see: Delgado and Stefancic (2004).

5. See Aguirre (2000b) for Professor Dia's argument that affirmative action initiatives for hiring minority faculty result in unintended benefits for white faculty. From Professor Dia's perspective the dominant group (white faculty) only initiates practices, such as a diversity rationale, that are designed to shield access to valued resources from competitors (minority faculty).

6. For a discussion and overview of the diversity rationale in higher education, including Justice Powell's decision in Bakke, see Aguirre and Martinez (2003). The use of a diversity rationale in college admissions has assumed center stage in Gratz v. Bollinger and Grutter v. Bollinger (Bunzel, 2001).

7. Minority faculty encounter challenges and obstacles to their professional development in academia. Minority faculty argue that by failing to respond to diversity initiatives higher education institutions create barriers to their tenure and promotion, resulting in a hostile organizational climate for minority faculty (Diggs, Garrison-Wade, Estrada, & Galindo, 2009; Ponjuan, 2006; Solorzano, 1998; Stanley, 2006; Turner, 2003).

8. See Aguirre (2000a).

9. For a discussion of how minority faculty are marginalized by white faculty regarding their research and teaching of ethnic studies classes, see Aguirre (1999).

10. Writing in The Souls of Black Folk (1903), Du Bois noted, ‘After the Egyptian and Indian, the Greek and Roman, the Teuton and Mongolian, the Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world, – a world which yields him no true self-consciousness but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world. It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his two-ness, – an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder’ (p. 3). In a sense, double-consciousness refers to the perception held by people of color that their everyday life is often void of value in the eyes of white society. Du Bois’ notion of double-consciousness has been expanded by critical race theory scholars into multiple consciousness – a consciousness that recognizes all forms of oppression and does not give precedence to one form of oppression over another (Barnes, 1990; Matsuda, 1989).

11. For a discussion of how minority faculty perceive their role in the classroom relative to white student and white faculty perceptions, see Bernal and Villalpando (2002); Hamilton (2002); Harris (1992); Hendrix (1998); Johnsrud & Sadao (1998); Lopez (2003); Robinson (1997).

12. For a discussion of Brown's legacy and the Cold War, see Dudziak (1988, 1987).