Cultural and Reparative Frames and Diversity Rhetoric in U.S Law

• In Event: 30283 - Cultural Mechanisms of Inequality

Abstract

I investigate how the law has justified the explicit consideration of race in higher education. Particularly, I ask how rhetoric around race in higher education is tied to different constructions of Blackness. Through coding a sample of Supreme Court cases litigating affirmative action, I find the centrality of two frames that defend considerations of race in higher education–the reparative frame and the cultural frame. While both of these frames can be used to defend considerations of race in higher education, I particularly argue that these frames speak to different constructions of Blackness. Specifically, I argue that the dominance of the cultural frame over the reparative frame in conversations about race in education is a major mechanism creating disproportionate representation of Black ethnic students in higher education. While many scholars have examined the constructions of diversity in legal decisions and broader rhetoric, they often focus on how these frames benefit white people and harm people of color as a whole (exceptions include Massey et al. 2007; Park, Hernández, & Lee 2024). This research considers how conversations about race and education are based in understandings of Black inclusion and exclusion from the nation state as a whole.

Author

• Michaela McMillian Jenkins, Rutgers University