Diversity Regimes and Racial Inequality: A Case Study of Diversity University

Abstract

Despite record investment in diversity infrastructure, racial inequality persists in higher education. This article examines, through a case study of diversity’s articulation process, how diversity is defined, organized, and implemented within an American public flagship university. My findings reveal what I characterize as a diversity regime: a set of meanings and practices thatinstitutionalizes a benign commitment to diversity, and in doing so obscures, entrenches, and even intensifies existing racial inequality by failing to make fundamental changes in how power, resources, and opportunities are distributed. My concept of a diversity regime helps explain how and why organizational commitments to multiculturalism and diversity often fall short in practice. The concept of a diversity regime also helps us better understand the underlying processes that perpetuate racial inequality.

Diversity Displays and Organizational Messaging: The Case of Historically Black Colleges and Universities

“…Schools that discuss “diversity beyond race” exhibit the expansiveness of diversity discourse and its many forms. This category aligns with the “condensation” found in James M. Thomas’s (2018a:145) diversity regimes in which “seemingly unrelated phenomena, or signifiers, are condensed under the sign, ‘diversity’.” This category is not without nuance. Institutions who discuss diversity as beyond race either include race as one dimension or use the term diversity broadly to leave room for interpretation.…”

“…College students themselves argue that their universities are more likely to promote diversity programs (e.g., multicultural weeks) on their websites rather than delve into issues even more pressing to minority students, such as campus climate (Lowe et al 2013). The effect is a regime that helps to “institutionalize a benign commitment to diversity, [that] obscures, entrenches, and even intensifies existing racial inequality” (Thomas 2018a:143). The result, moreover, is one in which diversity efforts center more so on intent rather than results, celebration rather than inclusion, and commodification rather than representation (Embrick 2011; Smith and Mayorga-Gallo 2017).…”

“…Second, it adds to how “diversity” as a goal tends to crowd out, neglect, or sideline racial equity (Bell and Hartmann 2007; Dobbin 2009; Kelly and Dobbin 1998; Okuwobi 2019). Indeed, in obscuring histories and ongoing manifestations of racial inequality, diversity work, especially when largely symbolic, is perhaps best viewed as a racial project—a racial project that alters the meaning of racial equity within the social structure to symbolically signify racial integration (Omi and Winant 2014; Thomas 2018a).…”

Perceptions of workplace climate and diversity, equity, and inclusion within health services and policy research

“…Those who tend to benefit from DEI initiatives (e.g., underrepresented racial/ethnic groups, female, LGBQI+, and people with a disability) will conclude such efforts are tokenistic if existing hierarchies remain, 29 as initiatives come and go. Prior studies in higher education have found that a lack of consistent leadership commitment, coupled with a lack of lived experience of historical and structural exclusion, also undermines the effectiveness of DEI workplace initiatives 29–31 …”

“…Prior studies in higher education have found that a lack of consistent leadership commitment, coupled with a lack of lived experience of historical and structural exclusion, also undermines the effectiveness of DEI workplace initiatives. [29][30][31] Our participants may have also perceived their workplace initiatives as superficial because they more often observed their organizations conducting "planning" rather than "implementation." For example, only about one-fourth of our participants witnessed initiatives that directly support historically and structurally excluded HSPRers, such as mentorship, networking opportunities, and pathway programs.…”