Identity capitalists: The powerful insiders who exploit diversity to maintain inequality. By Nancy Leong. Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2021. 240 pp. $28.00 paperback

The Paradox of Integration: Racial Composition of NFL Positions from 1960 to 2020

“…Our analysis demonstrates that organizational diversity alone is compatible with the reproduction of racial hierarchies. Representation in such contexts ultimately does not advance-and may even impede-racial justice (Leong 2021). We also illustrate how professional football is a racialized organization, governed by racial schemas that determine the distribution of resources (Ray 2019), both material and symbolic.…”

The agency of “doing something”: Ethnographic research on subject positions at predominantly White institutions

“…Scholars have argued that DEI initiatives are partially transformed in practices of representation that serve to boost institutional images and rankings (LaDousa, 2018(LaDousa, , 2019Lee & LaDousa, 2015;Urciuoli, 2022) and that colleges and universities' institutionalization of "diversity" in effect obscures racism (Ahmed, 2012). This results in the further reification of identity categories, providing grounds on which such categories-that emerged from historically informed power hierarchies-are transformed to mere signifiers of difference, to be incorporated into capitalist regimes of value accumulation (Leong, 2021;Silver, 2020;Warikoo, 2016). The popularity of DEI initiatives aligns neatly with the neoliberal penetration into the institutional life of higher educational institutions (e.g., Tuchman, 2009).…”

When Race Becomes Capital: Diversity, Faculty Hiring, and the Entrenchment of Racial Capitalism in Higher Education

“…Within higher education contexts, Leong (2012) described how the field has moved beyond outright exclusion to instead engage in predatory inclusion by using "nonwhiteness [as] a recruitment tool" (p. 2191). For instance, HWIs have routinely displayed students of Color in online and print materials to craft an impression of their institution as diverse and progressivesometimes going as far as altering existing photos to include images of racially minoritized students who were not at the events the photos captured (Leong, 2021). These unethical practices can potentially attract a more diverse student body at HWIs and signal a reputation of the institution as inclusive, progressive, and egalitarian.…”

“…As diversity has become commodified and increasingly valued, elite HWIs have attempted to "buy" diversity by selling images of their commitments to DEI (Holland & Ford, 2021;Leong, 2021;Paul & Maranto, 2022), while often leaving intact structures that discriminate and devalue the very diversity they buy (Gerrard et al, 2022). Paul and Maranto (2022) analyzed a sample of 999 faculty job postings, inclusive of social sciences and STEM, during September 2020 to October 2020 and found that 19% of them required a diversity statement and 68% of them used the term diversity.…”