The New Affirmative Action and the Burden of Diversity Work

• In Event: 1284 - Section on Racial and Ethnic Minorities Refereed Roundtable Session
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 20. Race/Ethnicity and Higher Education

Abstract

In the wake of ongoing attacks on affirmative action, programs have emerged on majority white campuses to attract students of color without acknowledging them as such. Through the present study, I am asserting that the advent of a hip hop arts scholarship program, that does not officially present itself as a remedial affirmative action program, but in fact recruits a substantial number of students of color to a majority white campus, serves the tricky purpose of “providing diversity” without making race a criteria for admissions, and consequently, leaves students of color with a heavy burden to provide said diversity, without sufficient resources – emotional, financial, -- to successfully negotiate a majority white and sometimes openly hostile campus. Drawing on two years of fieldwork with a hip hop arts scholarship program at a large Midwestern university I am calling Westrock, this paper shows how students of color both find support in such a program and face the burden of providing diversity to the rest of campus.

Author

• Amy Elizabeth Jones, University of Wisconsin-Madison