Racialized power and whiteness: Leveraging whiteness as a credential to support or resist faculty diversity

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Friday 9:45 am - Gold 1
  In Roundtable Session: Faculty Issues amid Political Change in Academia

Abstract

Over the past decade, there has been increased attention on faculty diversity in higher education with many student activists across the country demanding more diverse faculties. In response, institutional initiatives and leaders have created incentives and hiring guidance to increase faculty racial diversity. However, structures of higher education are fundamentally designed to privilege whiteness. To understand more about the organizational change process and the potential to advance racial justice, we studied how two departments and their faculty navigated institutional incentives and calls to increase faculty diversity. We discuss how faculty exercised their racialized power, their proximity to whiteness in particular, and leveraged the legitimacy of whiteness within their department to support or resist faculty diversity and organizational change.

Authors

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

• Mitchell J. Chang, University of California - Los Angeles

• Gabriel Lê Espiritu, University of California - Los Angeles