NotesFAQContact Us
Collection
Advanced
Search Tips
Peer reviewed Peer reviewed
Direct linkDirect link
ERIC Number: EJ1214681
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2019-Apr
Pages: 41
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: EISSN-1740-2743
EISSN: N/A
Selling Diversity, Promoting Racism: How Universities Pushing a Consumerist Form of Diversity Empowers Oppression
Scarritt, Arthur
Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies, v17 n1 p188-228 Apr 2019
How does racism persist and even worsen on college campuses amidst pro-diversity university efforts? From interviewing college students and interrogating university materials, this article argues that public universities' heightened revenue-generating functions inspire them to sell diversity as an attractive quality, divorced from its association with race and social justice. Because diversity has become a strong discourse, its uncritical university marketing turns it into a commodity at the cutting-edge of cultural capitalism: a consumerist diversity. White students eagerly embrace this university-sponsored version, seeing it everywhere and in everyone. This is a highly individualistic, disposable, and inherently positive diversity that enables students an easy authentic experience of celebrating humanity. Issues of inequality clash against this feel-good understanding, enabling diversity loving white students to regard calls for racial justice as unjust anti-humanist racial attacks. Diversity efforts by the profit-minded university therein empower white students' colorblind and even color conscious racism.
Institute for Education Policy Studies. University of Northampton, School of Education, Boughton Green Road, Northampton, NN2 7AL, UK. Tel: +44-1273-270943; e-mail: ieps@ieps.org.uk; Web site: http://www.jceps.com
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: Higher Education; Postsecondary Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A