The Place of Diversity: Race, Space and Higher Education in the Post-Civil Rights South Open Access

Abstract

In the current era, diversity has become the symbolic and structural framework through which universities and colleges express racial and ethnic difference and often seek to remedy racial conflict on their campuses. The meaning of diversity is highly contested in both academic and public discourse. On one hand, diversity is critiqued for being deliberately vague, universal, and apathetic toward racial and ethnic power relations. On the other, affirmative action and diversity have been consistently challenged in the courts for being discriminatory and detrimental to the "business of education." As such the production of diversity, what I call diversity formation, is a tenuous endeavor that universities continue to engage but also resist defining in concrete ways. I suggest that by addressing the local, place-based processes through which particular definitions of diversity are created and implemented, one can understand more fully the limitations of diversity as a higher education framework for addressing racism. I use semi-structured interviews and participant observations of 40 staff, faculty, and students that work within offices and committees related to diversity at an urban, majority-minority university in the southeast United States. My findings draw attention to the social and spatial factors that make diversity programs incompatible with efforts to diminish social segregation along racial and ethnic lines, provide substantive opportunities for the recruitment and advancement of non-white faculty and administrators, or address the racial, ethnic and socioeconomic relations that come into play in the building of a university campus.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements.................................................................................................7

Prologue: An Introduction to Diversity........................................................................8

Chapter I: Research Methods..................................................................................19

Chapter II: Review of Literature...............................................................................40

Chapter III: Histories of Race, Space and Education....................................................57

Chapter IV: The ‘Everyday Life' of Diversity................................................................91

Chapter V: The Place of Diversity...........................................................................146

Chapter VI: Findings and Conclusion........................................................................196

References.........................................................................................................226

Appendix............................................................................................................238

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School	Laney Graduate School
Department	Graduate Institute of the Liberal Arts
Degree	PhD
Submission	Dissertation
Language	English
Research Field	Education, Higher American Studies Sociology, Ethnic and Racial Studies
Keyword	placemaking higher education racial narratives diversity formation
Committee Chair / Thesis Advisor	Jackson, Regine, Agnes Scott College Forman, Tyrone, Emory University
Committee Members	Lewis, Amanda Evelyn, Emory University

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