‘Crossing lines of difference’: how college students analyse diversity

Abstract

Contemporary American college students confront increased diversity during their college years—in race, class, nationality, religion, ethnicity, language, sexual orientation, age, and disability. Yet, how do students conceptualize this diversity, evaluate the options it provides, and assess its limitations? Furthermore, how do those researching diversity develop approaches that are flexible and open enough to reflect emerging student ways of thinking about diversity? Based on work at a diverse US public university—especially a pilot project on free‐form student essays—this paper examines how students conceptually navigate an environment that both encourages and inhibits interaction across difference. These students indicate scepticism about the marketing of diversity and frustration at the limited interaction across difference on campus, yet also an appreciation of the opportunities that diversity provides.

Notes

1. The essays discussed in this paper have now been published in slightly edited form (DRG, 2006), and I have revised direct quotations to match those versions. The editing in that volume was very light and especially aimed at letting emergent thinking remain intact—as in the meanings used for the word diversity itself as will be discussed later in this paper.

2. The decennial census data are derived from the 5% census Public Use Microdata Sample (PUMS). University data on arriving freshmen derive from the 2005 Cooperative Institutional Research Program (CIRP) freshman survey.

3. Again, these are CIRP freshman survey data. The equivalent percentages for all American public universities are 1%, 2% and 2%, respectively. Proportions of the foreign‐born of different religions would, of course, be much higher.

4. To date, we have attempted such joint work in several ways. One is to compel ourselves to develop joint sessions and presentations in venues to which we would individually probably not go. For example, some of us who would otherwise be unlikely to attend an academic type conference (the American Anthropological Association, the American Sociological Association, or the Society for Applied Anthropology in Santa Fe where we actually did this) and others of us who would be unlikely to go to a more programme‐oriented meeting, such as the American Council on Education meetings, where we have also presented a session. Among other issues, and despite general congeniality, there were some mutual shocking moments about divergent research methodologies.

5. Technically, the distinction was as follows: ‘immigrant freshmen’ were students who immigrated at or after the age of 6 years and ‘immigrant family freshmen’ were students born in the US to foreign‐born parents and students who immigrated to the US before the age of 6 years (OIA, 2005).

6. Actual percentages for northern Virginia are as follows, as based on 2000 US census Public Use Microdata Sample (PUMS): Urdu (0.65), Hindi (0.45), Panjabi (0.20), Bengali (0.16), Telugu (0.14), Tamil (0.10), Gujerati (0.09) India nec (0.05), Malayalam (0.04), Marathi (0.03), Kannada (0.01), Pakistan nec (0.01), Sinhalese (0.01). Alternately of those who specifically identified themselves as ‘Indian’, the languages spoken were English (28.15), Hindi (24.18), Panjabi (9.84), Urdu (7.88), Telugu (7.60), Bengali (5.58), Tamil (5.44), Gujerati (4.74), Malayalam (2.58), Marathi (1.74) and less than 1% for Nepali and Kannada. See Kurien (2005) for a particularly useful analysis of South Asians in American higher education.

7. There is potential confusion because residential students at George Mason should show up as an ‘institutional’ population in Northern Virginia whereas Northern Virginia students who are living outside the area should show up in that other area. But with a strongly residential college, these problems are relatively limited at least for these exploratory purposes. The value of linked comparisons among colleges in a region also becomes clear—in our case between George Mason and the northern Virginia community college system, and between George Mason and other large public institutions in the adjoining jurisdictions of DC and Maryland—jurisdictions that are contiguous but quite distinct in the demographics of both the native‐ and foreign‐born.

8. The instructions were indeed quite broad. Students were to ‘take any approach’ they wanted and could discuss any of such options as: diversity as an intellectual issue in the classroom; diversity as a personal issue outside the classroom; how people actually talk about diversity (and use the word ‘diversity’); how different kinds of diversity affect each other; a personal reflection on diversity; a descriptive attempt to look at what happens in particular settings at George Mason; an analysis of what ‘the system’ seems to be saying about diversity; an attempt to identify the lines between when people function across diversity and when they want to be among those who are similar; or almost anything else that starts with ‘Diversity at George Mason…’ This was a small‐scale pilot effort and for that reason I initially invited former students from two of my upper division courses. Both were Asia‐oriented classes and there was some emphasis on diversity in the cultural and national sense, but the guidelines (or ‘unguidelines’ as it were) also noted that ‘other kinds of diversity inevitably interweave with that: class, race, gender, sexual orientation, even educational goals.’ Perhaps, above all, I told them (based on my record with them as a teacher), that I really was ‘looking for fresh thought on this.’ Students were subsequently also recommended by other members of the diversity research group. This is obviously not a representative group in the normal sense, being particularly skewed toward more cognitively‐oriented students who were willing to complete an unsupervised effort, and toward students with international exposure. Regarding international students, it should be noted that several, despite being selected for precisely their international background, ended up discussing other kinds of diversity that seemed more important to them—disability, for example.

9. It may be helpful to consider the analysis of the essays as a three‐level process. Level one is the basic one of assessing common themes. This level treats the essays as sources of information, much as survey responses might be treated. Level two involves tracing the particular logics of individual essays, treating them less as sources of information on diversity than as sources of insight about diversity. Here there can be no attempt to assess ‘representativeness’ since the point of analysis is not to be conventional and representative but to be some mixture of correct, creative and illuminating. Level three involves considering whether there are some parts of the essays that might indicate something about the future. Again there can be no intent toward representativeness since the question itself at level three is what the currently existing essays say about the future. These three levels might be glossed respectively as summative, analytic and projective.

10. There was particularly strong assault on the salience of racial divisions. Several essayists, for example, emphasized the sharp generational shifts in the acceptability of interracial dating and marriage.

11. As an aside, one of the most problematic issues in interacting across difference is who makes the first move. There were some sharp attitudinal positions on that issue. One essayist noted another student’s comment that it was up to newcomers to make the first move—and to accommodate. Anything else was ‘kind of rude’ (DRG, 2006, p. 2).

12. There is an interesting parallel in the use (and overuse) in much academic writing of the word ‘myriad.’ The word is generally allowed as both a noun and an adjective, indicating large numbers of something. But one other and rather more interesting usage is in the context of something singular which is complex in its internal structure and operation—thus, a ‘myriad mind.’ The logic of the student use of ‘diverse’ for individuals and for groups parallels that grammatical and logical span in usage.