Behind the Diversity Numbers: Achieving Racial Equity on Campus

Byrd, W. Carson

ISBN 10: 1682536327 / ISBN 13: 9781682536322

Published by Harvard Education Press, 2021

About this Item

Seller Inventory # 26387643086

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Behind the Diversity Numbers: Achieving Racial Equity on Campus
• Publisher: Harvard Education Press
• Publication Date: 2021
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1682536327
• ISBN 13: 9781682536322
• Binding: Soft cover
• Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis

Behind the Diversity Numbers uncovers how frequently used approaches to examine and understand race-related issues on college campuses can reinforce racism and inequality, rather than combat them. The book argues that educational leaders must look beyond quantitative metrics in order to develop institutional policies and practices that promote racial equality.

Utilizing nearly thirty years of data and research, W. Carson Byrd shows that limiting conversations about racial inequality to numeric representation and outcomes fails to take into account that inequality is also an experience. Quantitative-heavy approaches can turn students into numbers, devaluing their lived experiences of marginalization on campus. Byrd repositions these experiences to better understand how to design effective analytic and policy strategies to promote racial equity and justice in higher education.

Behind the Diversity Numbers focuses on how racial stratification and inequality can hide in plain sight behind analyses of diversity, equity, and inclusion. It provides readers with a range of suggestions for institutional change, including how to incorporate racial equity as a central component of higher education, especially when it comes to analyzing and monitoring data that can inform decision-making and policy making. The conclusion offers recommendations for systemic institutional change and for incorporating racial justice and equity as central components of higher education.

Behind the Diversity Numbers will enhance how institutions, higher education agencies, and policy makers think about what should be done to reduce racial inequality and to create diverse and equitable campuses.

About the Author

W. Carson Byrd, Faculty Director of Diversity and Equity Research Initiatives for the National Center for Institutional Diversity at the University of Michigan and associate professor of sociology at the University of Louisville, examines higher education inequality with a particular focus on race and racism. He is the author of Poison in the Ivy: Race Relations and the Reproduction of Inequality on Elite College Campuses (Rutgers University Press, 2017), which explores college students’ beliefs about race and racial inequality and how their social interactions during college can shape these beliefs. He is also the coeditor of Intersectionality and Higher Education: Identity and Inequality on College Campuses (Rutgers University Press, 2019), a compilation of scholarship on how students, faculty, and staff navigate unequal campuses and understand the inequality around them as they live, work, and study. His work has also appeared beyond academic journals in forums such as the Washington Post, InsideHigherEd, and the Chronicle of Higher Education, among others.