In 1967, George Henderson, the son of uneducated Alabama sharecroppers, accepted a full-time professorship at the University of Oklahoma, despite his mentor's warning to avoid the "redneck school in a backward state." Henderson became the university's third African American professor, a hire that seemed to suggest the dissolving of racial divides. However, when real estate agents in the university town of Norman denied the Henderson family their first three choices of homes, the sociologist and educator realized he still faced some formidable challenges. In this stirring memoir, Henderson recounts his formative years at the University of Oklahoma, during the late 1960s and early 1970s. He describes in graphic detail the obstacles that he and other African Americans faced within the university community, a place of "white privilege, black separatism, and campus-wide indifference to bigotry." As an adviser and mentor to young black students who wanted to do something about these conditions, Henderson found himself at the forefront of collective efforts to improve race relations at the university. Henderson is quick to acknowledge that he and his fellow activists did not abolish all vestiges of racial oppression. But they set in motion a host of institutional changes that continue to this day. In Henderson's words, "we were ordinary people who sometimes did extraordinary things." Capturing what was perhaps the most tumultuous era in the history of American higher education, Race and the University includes valuable recollections of former student activists who helped transform the University of Oklahoma into one of the nation's most diverse college campuses.

"It's kind of an odd thing, really, because it's not like I'm one or the other, or like I fit here or there, but I kind of also fit everywhere. And nowhere. All at once. You know?" — Florence "My racial identity, I would have to say, is multiracial. I am of the future. I believe there is going to come a day when a very, very large majority of everybody in the world is going to be mixed with more than one race. It's going to be multiracial for everybody. Everybody and their mother!" — Jack Kristen A. Renn offers a new perspective on racial identity in the United States, that of mixed race college students making sense of the paradox of deconstructing racial categories while living on campuses sharply divided by race and ethnicity. Focusing on how peer culture shapes identity in public and private spaces, the book presents the findings of a qualitative research study involving fifty-six undergraduates from a variety of institutions. Renn uses an innovative ecology model to examine campus peer cultures and documents five patterns of multiracial identity that illustrate possibilities for integrating notions of identity construction (and deconstruction) with the highly salient nature of race in higher education. One of the most ambitious scholarly attempts to date to portray the diverse experiences and identities of mixed race college students, the book also discusses implications for higher education practice, policy, theory, and research.

"Kernahan argues that you can be honest and unflinching in your teaching about racism while also providing a compassionate learning environment that allows for mistakes and avoids shaming students. She also differentiates between how white students and students of color are likely to experience the classroom, helping instructors provide a more effective learning experience for all students"--

Annotation An exploration of how race is explicitly and implicitly handled in school.

We’ve heard plenty from politicians and experts on affirmative action and higher education, about how universities should intervene—if at all—to ensure a diverse but deserving student population. But what about those for whom these issues matter the most? In this book, Natasha K. Warikoo deeply explores how students themselves think about merit and race at a uniquely pivotal moment: after they have just won the most competitive game of their lives and gained admittance to one of the world’s top universities. What Warikoo uncovers—talking with both white students and students of color at Harvard, Brown, and Oxford—is absolutely illuminating; and some of it is positively shocking. As she shows, many elite white students understand the value of diversity abstractly, but they ignore the real problems that racial inequality causes and that diversity programs are meant to solve. They stand in fear of being labeled a racist, but they are quick to call foul should a diversity program appear at all to hamper their own chances for advancement. The most troubling result of this ambivalence is what she calls the “diversity bargain,” in which white students reluctantly agree with affirmative action as long as it benefits them by providing a diverse learning environment—racial diversity, in this way, is a commodity, a selling point on a brochure. And as Warikoo shows, universities play a big part in creating these situations. The way they talk about race on campus and the kinds of diversity programs they offer have a huge impact on student attitudes, shaping them either toward ambivalence or, in better cases, toward more productive and considerate understandings of racial difference. Ultimately, this book demonstrates just how slippery the notions of race, merit, and privilege can be. In doing so, it asks important questions not just about college admissions but what the elite students who have succeeded at it—who will be the world’s future leaders—will do with the social inequalities of the wider world.

Race, while drawn from the visual cues of human diversity, is an idea with a measurable past, an identifiable present, and an uncertain future. The concept of race has been at the center of both triumphs and tragedies in American history and has had a profound effect on the human experience. Race Unmasked revisits the origins of commonly held beliefs about the scientific nature of racial differences, examines the roots of the modern idea of race, and explains why race continues to generate controversy as a tool of classification even in our genomic age. Surveying the work of some of the twentieth century's most notable scientists, Race Unmasked reveals how genetics and related biological disciplines formed and preserved ideas of race and, at times, racism. A gripping history of science and scientists, Race Unmasked elucidates the limitations of a racial worldview and throws the contours of our current and evolving understanding of human diversity into sharp relief.

White Guys on Campus is a critical examination of the role of race in higher education, centering Whiteness, in an effort to unveil the frequently unconscious habits of racism among white male students. It details many of the contours of contemporary, systemic racism, while continually engaging the possibility of White students to engage in anti-racism.

A revised edition of the classic text, illuminating the linkages between race and higher education.

In the United States, elite colleges and universities have historically catered primarily to wealthy, predominantly white Americans, creating barriers to entry for students of color. Legal statutes have entrenched discriminatory practices within the admissions process, perpetuating the underrepresentation of students of color at top-tier institutions. Given this reality, the imperative for institutions to promote diversity through affirmative action remains crucial. However, recent legal challenges against affirmative action threaten to reinforce the status quo, potentially perpetuating the dominance of predominantly white institutions in higher education. This book takes an historical look at the pivotal role affirmative action has played in higher education. It examines the admissions process through the eyes of a beneficiary of affirmative action and is the first text to share insights on the role eligibility plays in allowing universities to consider race in admitting applicants. Detailed are the different types of affirmative action and how some colleges and universities use the policy as a tool to consider race and ethnicity as part of a holistic evaluation of applicants. This work makes the case that race-conscious admissions practices remain necessary in the fight for racial equity in higher education.

Includes bibliographical references (p. 279-303) and index.