Whiteness Tempering Transformative Change: A Comparative Case Study of Equity in Graduate Education Programs

• In Event: Disrupting Organizational Structures to Create Transformative Change

Abstract

Graduate education leaders and their organizations have the potential to support or resist whiteness as they implement diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives. In this comparative case study of three graduate programs and a graduate school, I examine how mechanisms of whiteness, especially racialized emotions and nonperformative change, tempered equity and resisted the possibilities of transformative change as leaders planned and implemented DEI. Leaders were well-intentioned and desired to address inequities, yet mostly relatively new to equity. Leaders worked hard to progress their program or school by implementing DEI initiatives, but they were ill-prepared to disrupt whiteness and mechanisms of its persistence. These cases demonstrate why we must notice, critique, and disrupt whiteness if we want to transform our institutions.

Author

• Deborah E. Southern, University of California - Los Angeles
  Presenting Author