Whiteness in Higher Education: The Invisible Missing Link in Diversity and Racial Analyses

The Property Functions of Whiteness Within Fraternity and Sorority Culture and Its Impact on Campus

“…In the 1950s, the stance of several universities and subsequent court decisions pushed national campus fraternity and sorority (F&S) organizations to desegregate, if not integrate, even before passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act (Torbenson & Parks, ). While the majority of de jure white clauses were removed from HWFS by the 1970s, de facto exclusion remains today with many of these social organizations (Cabrera et al., ; Syrett, ). The legacy of de jure exclusion may explain why HWFS communities continue to be one of the most exclusive and racist spaces at HWIs (Harper & Hurtado, ; Sidanius, Van Laar, Levin, & Sinclair, ).…”

“…Whiteness is a social location as well as an ideological and “political construct of power” that systemically privileges white people and oppresses People of Color (Gusa, , p. 468; Omi & Winant, ). Whiteness is embedded throughout U.S. higher education and works to ensure that campus environments at historically white institutions (HWIs) unilaterally value and reflect white culture, offering most white students “prime opportunities to thrive in these environments” (Patton, Harper, & Harris, , p. 196; see also Cabrera, Franklin, & Watson, ; Gusa, ).…”

“…Whiteness is omnipresent and embedded throughout higher education, including in policies and procedures, the built environment, research and theory, and organizational culture (Cabrera et al., ; Gusa, ; Patton et al., ). Guided by the work of Lindsay Pérez Huber (), we capitalize “Asian,” “Black,” and other minoritized groups, including “People of Color,” as a form of linguistic empowerment.…”

White Immunity: Working Through Some of the Pedagogical Pitfalls of “Privilege”

“…Epistemology of ignorance is a structured way of White people not knowing the realities of White supremacy that serves to leave this oppressive system in place. White privilege pedagogy represents a method for disrupting epistemologies of ignorance by having White people explore the unearned social benefits they receive as a result of being White (Applebaum, 2010;Cabrera, Franklin, & Watson, 2017). To assist in this process, Peggy McIntosh (1989) created a list of social privileges that she as a White woman enjoyed that People of Color do not (e.g., being assured that when her children learn history, people like them will be positively represented in the text).…”

Working With Faculty of Color at a Predominantly White Institution: Challenging Whiteness and Model Minority Stereotypes

“…Gusa (, 465) writes, “Today's PWIs do not have to be explicitly racist to create a hostile environment. Instead, unexamined historically situated White ideology embedded in the language, cultural practices, traditions, and perception of knowledge allow these institutions to remain racialized.” Whiteness manifests everywhere: in the curriculum (Gusa ; Harper and Hurtado ); the co‐curriculum (Cabrera, Franklin, and Watson ); the hidden curriculum, which is the unspoken and implicit social values and standards in classrooms (Brunsma, Brown, and Palcier ; Leonardo ); the demographics of who holds instructor, staff, and leadership positions (Brunsma, Brown, and Placier ; Cabrera, Franklin, and Watson ); and the physical spaces (Bondi ; Harper and Hurtado ).…”