Your Diversity Plan Will Be Televised: Revolutionary Perspectives for Equity and Justice on College Campuses

• In Event: From the Façade of Diversity to the Dream of Transformation: Critiquing and Transforming Higher Education

Abstract

Reflecting on higher education’s present struggles with difference, this paper argues that a shift in the way diversity is understood and addressed is required to move toward a more equitable future. The purpose of this paper is to reconceptualize approaches to diversity in higher education. Specifically, we argue for the need to consider radical possibilities when developing diversity plans. We situate this argument within a contextualize analysis of contemporary approaches, focusing on how they are complicit in discourses of domination and the perpetuation systemic injustice. This analysis highlights the relationship between higher education’s goals in regards to diversity planning and an underlying commitment to conservativism. These plans on their surface seem to support an ethos of liberalism via pluralism, but in fact participate in a neoliberal agenda that commodifies the lives of the most vulnerable (Vue, Haslerig, & Allen, 2017; Stewart, 2017). By applying hooks’ (2015) notion of ‘imperialist white supremacist capitalist patriarchy,’ we are able to excavate the underlying systems of injustice that motivate current approaches to diversity planning. After laying this groundwork, we imagine diversity plans that seek revolutionary pathways to justice on college campuses.

Diversity Discourses of Dominance
Current diversity frameworks are supported by scholarship developed to document the positive effects of affirmative action using the primary line of reasoning recognized by the courts post-Bakke and Grutter (Jayakumar, 2008; Ledesma, 2007, 2013, 2015; Moses & Chang, 2006). Despite the wide-range of educational and societal benefits of diversity (Bowman, 2010; Denson, 2009), many scholars take issue with this “diversity rationale.” These scholars argue it supports upholding affirmative action only insofar as it serves the interests of whites (Bell, 1979), instead of a broader focus on the needs of all students (Yosso, Parker, Solórzano, & Lynn, 2004; Zamani-Gallaher, O’Neil Green, Brown, & Stovall, 2009). As Vue, Haslerig, and Allen (2017) argued, “the dominant contemporary rationale centered on diversity, while informed by a robust and important body of research (e.g., Hurtado, 2005), centers the competencies of white people in a neoliberal marketplace to the neglect of equity.”

Imperialist White Supremacist Capitalist Patriarchy
To clarify the present argument we draw on hooks’ (2015) notion of IWSCP, which she describes as “the interlocking political systems that are the foundation of our nation’s politics” (p. 1). As such, the policies that shape human experience emerge from a frame of inequality necessitating the oppression of some in order to affirm the privilege of others. The maintenance of this system requires the use of violence and the commonplace disregard of marginalized peoples. As such, threats of lynching Black men in fraternity songs (The Oklahoma Daily, 2015) and campus police brutally restraining a Black woman professor for jay-walking (Sabir, 2014) appear unfortunate or politically incorrect, but never evidence of institutional failures of justice.

Analysis and Implications
Throughout our paper, we draw on contemporary examples of diversity planning that apply discourses of dominance and maintain IWSCP. This analysis lays the foundation for a discussion encouraging the development of revolutionary approaches to diversity planning for colleges and universities.

Authors

• Kirsten T. Edwards, University of Oklahoma

• Siduri J. Haslerig, The University of Oklahoma