Does Status Matter When Commodifying Race?

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session 5
  In Roundtable Session: The Theoretical Power of Identity Capitalism to Exam Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Higher Education

Abstract

I have examined the ways faculty hiring is a racialized structure rife with racial meanings that advantage whites and disadvantage Black, Latinx, Indigenous, and other racially minoritized people. Over the last year, a colleague and I have used racial capitalism to investigate how the faculty job market is raced and gendered and to conceptualize it as a place where the commodification of race organizes relationships and interactions among potential employees (e.g., faculty job applicants) and employers (e.g., faculty search committee members). We focused on the experiences of Ph.D. students of color active in the faculty job market and found that participants engaged in what Leong (2021) defined as identity entrepreneurs. According to Leong (2021), identity entrepreneurs are individuals who leverage their outgroup identity to benefit themselves. Our participants’ identity entrepreneurship was an internal contestation of authenticity and performativity. Participants were aware of universities’ DEI efforts to recruit and hire people of color but were cognizant that Historically White Institutions often fail to change work environments hostile to people of color.
Leong’s (2021) work on identity capitalism is a powerful analytic tool to conceptualize the commodification of race in the faculty job market. In an effort to extend my research project on faculty hiring, I am conceptualizing how faculty search committees, department chairs, and deans act as racial capitalists within the DEI context. In a separate study with colleagues, we found that Ph.D. programs’ status influenced their understanding of DEI which informed how they reformed their qualifying exams. Given the role of status in how Institutions of Higher Education respond to DEI, an area of interest is whether the status of universities shapes how they engage with the commodification of race in their hiring efforts. I am currently reading and outlining how to integrate identity capitalism with racial capitalism, theories of status and legitimacy, and racialized organizations to investigate the ways organizational status shapes the behaviors of racial capitalists and racial entrepreneurs.

Author

• Román Liera, Montclair State University