Confronting Racism in Higher Education

Racism and ignorance churn on college campuses as surely as they do in society at large. Over the past fifteenyears there have been many discussions regarding racism and higher education. Some of these focuson formal policies and dynamics such as Affirmative Action or The Dream Act while many more discussionsare happening in classrooms dorm rooms and in campus communities. Of course corollary to theseconversations some of which are generative and some of which are degenerative is a deafening silencearound how individuals and institutions can actually understand engage and change issues related to racism in higher education. This lack of dialogueand action speaks volumes about individuals and organizations and suggests a complicit acceptance tolerance or even support for institutional andindividual racism. There is much work to be done if we are to improve the situation around race and race relation in institutions of higher education.There is still much work to be done in unpacking and addressing the educational realities of those who are economically socially and politicallyunderserved and oppressed by implicit and overt racism. These realities manifest in ways such as lack of access to and within higher education inequitable outcomes and in a disparity of the quality of education as a student matriculates through the system. While there are occasional diversity andinclusion efforts made in higher education institutions still largely address them as quotas and not as paradigmatic changes. This focus on countingtoward equity rather than creating a culture of equity is basically a form of white privilege that allows administrators and policymakers to showincremental progress and avoid more substantive action toward real equity that changes the culture(s)of institutions with longstanding racial histories that marginalize some and privilege others.Issues in higher education are still raced from white perspectives and suffer from a view that race andracism occur in a vacuum. Some literature suggests that racism begins very early in the student experienceand continues all the way to college (Berlak & Moyenda). This mis-education mislabeling andmistreatment based on race often develops as early as five to ten years old and follows them to postgraduateeducation and beyond.