Diversity Regimes

Why Talk Is Not Enough to Fix Racial Inequality at Universities

By James M. Thomas

SERIES: The American Campus

Rutgers University Press

2021 Choice Outstanding Academic Title

As a major, public flagship university in the American South, so-called “Diversity University” has struggled to define its commitments to diversity and inclusion, and to put those commitments into practice. In Diversity Regimes, sociologist James M. Thomas draws on more than two years of ethnographic fieldwork at DU to illustrate the conflicts and contingencies between a core set of actors at DU over what diversity is and how it should be accomplished. Thomas’s analysis of this dynamic process uncovers what he calls “diversity regimes”: a complex combination of meanings, practices, and actions that work to institutionalize commitments to diversity, but in doing so obscure, entrench, and even magnify existing racial inequalities. Thomas’s concept of diversity regimes, and his focus on how they are organized and unfold in real time, provides new insights into the social organization of multicultural principles and practices.

A truth-telling sociological masterpiece. With impressive rigor, Thomas offers compelling insights into processes that almost always fail to actualize espoused institutional commitments to diversity, equity, and inclusion. Every college and university leader, especially presidents, should read this important book. Shaun R. Harper, Provost Professor and Executive Director, University of Southern California Race and Equity Center

Thorough and insightful on many levels, Diversity Regimes provides a unique exploration of how the approaches taken to diversity work in higher education can reinforce instead of redress racial inequality on college campuses. W. Carson Byrd, coeditor of Intersectionality and Higher Education: Identity and Inequality on College Campuses

Diversity Regimes: Author discusses his new book on 'why talk is not enough to fix racial inequality at universities,'' by Scott Jaschik
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2020/06/16/author-discusses-his-new-book-universitys-approach-diversity Inside Higher Education

This book is critically important reading for scholars of racism, higher education, organizations, and critical studies of discourse. Diversity Regimes is also an ideal model for those early career scholars who are moving their dissertation to book due to its clarity of exposition and tight argumentation. Many college presidents, diversity officers, student affairs professionals, and diversity workers will recognize condensation, decentralization, and staging diversity in their own institutions. They should all read this book. As Maya Angelou said, ‘Know better, do better.’ Ethnic and Racial Studies

The Happy Talk of Diversity: How Can American Colleges Affect Real Change?' excerpt from Diversity Regimes
https://publicseminar.org/2020/07/the-happy-talk-of-diversity/ Public Seminar

Thomas analyzes in-depth interviews with 26 administrators, faculty, staff, and students according to central themes he summarizes from his fieldwork engaging in campus diversity events and reading institutional documents....Both his sharp critiques of the status quo throughout the book and his four insightful recommendations at the end afford opportunities for readers, especially university leaders and educators, to advance racial equity. Essential. Choice

JAMES M. THOMAS (JT) is an associate professor of sociology at the University of Mississippi in Oxford. He is the author of Working to Laugh: Assembling Difference in American Stand-up Comedy Venues, and the coauthor of Affective Labor: (Dis)Assembling Difference and Distance and Are Racists Crazy? How Prejudice, Racism, and Antisemitism Became Markers of Insanity.

1. Introduction
2. Under the Live, Old Oaks
3. Condensation and the Alchemy of Diversity
4. Go Your Own Way: The Organizational Structure of Diversity
5. Staging Difference, Performing Diversity
6. Diversity Regimes and the Reproduction of Racial Inequality
Acknowledgments
Appendix
Notes
Bibliography
Index

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