Racial Formation U: How University Websites Routinize, (Re)Present, and Transform Race Categories

• In Event: Marriott Roundtable Session 74
  In Roundtable Session: Images and Imaginaries: Representations and Perspectives of Higher Education

Abstract

Universities represent the diversity of their student bodies through a wide variety of tables and figures on their websites. These representations make visible how each university thinks about racial categories and in turn normalizes new ways of categorizing race/ethnicity. We collected and analyzed website representations of student body racial makeup from over 170 universities. We argue that university websites are important sites of racial projects (Omi and Winant 1986). That is, websites are artifacts of social organizations that are actively routinizing and transforming “the content and importance of racial categories.” We find that race/ethnic categories are: Added, Omitted, Aggregated and Disaggregated. Universities are both subject to and creating new rules of racial categorization and meaning making.

Authors

• Karly Ford, The Pennsylvania State University

• Ashley N. Patterson, The Pennsylvania State University