A Critical Race Analysis of University Responses to Racist Histories: The Limited Potential of Racial Symbols

• In Event: Perpetuating Inequalities: The Role of Political Distraction in Education Policy Making

Abstract

Objectives/Purpose
University connections with slavery, the confederacy, and vulgar manifestations of racism are ensconced in the names of university spaces and memorialized in statues. Some universities, it seems, are taking steps in the “right” direction and engaging with their troubled histories and removing monuments and memorials to racists (Chan, 2016). This paper is written in response to universities’ taking positive actions to engage with their racist pasts. Examples include universities removing monuments, renaming building, and constructing memorials acknowledging racist histories. From student governments voting to remove statues and change names (Brookbank, 2018) to board of trustees’ decisions to keep/remove monuments (Svrluga, 2019)—how universities engage with their racist histories is political.

Theoretical Perspectives
This theoretical paper draws from Critical Race Theory, which holds that race, regardless of the situation, is always at play (Leonardo, 2013). Specifically, I employ Derrick Bell’s (1992) concept of racial symbols, to analyze how universities respond to their racist histories. Bell, a foundational Critical Race Theorist, suggested a holiday commemorating Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., was a racial symbol—challenging readers to consider how, if at all, the holiday improves the material condition of Blacks in terms of jobs, education, and wealth. A university’s process of wrestling with its racist history as well as the school’s ultimate decision of how to engage with the history, I suggest, are racial symbols.

Modes of Inquiry and Evidence
I begin with a discussion of campus racial climate research in relation to place-naming on campuses. Next I use Critical Race Theory to analyze how three universities—University of Mississippi, Georgetown University, and Brown University—engaged with their racist histories through racial symbols. As such, this paper is a situated essay, drawing upon statements made my university leaders.

Results and Substantiated Conclusions
I suggest that university decisions concerning racial symbols are policy distractions that can potentially obscure more pressing race-related issues occurring on the same campus.

Scientific/Scholarly Significance
Much has been made, with good reason, about the removal of statues of Confederate officers on college campuses. Schools across the world will likely continue to wrestle with the naming/renaming of campus buildings carrying the names of slaveholders and others who held white supremacist ideologies. Little research, however, examines racial symbols.

Author

• Antar Akari Tichavakunda, University of Cincinnati