When Diversity Drops: Race, Religion, and Affirmative Action in Higher Education

The Cultural and Organizational Contexts of Race, Religion, and Higher Education

13 Several scholarly examinations of campus fellowships focus on how these groups function as oppositional subcultures that shield evangelical Christian students from the ungodly influence of the secular university (see, for example, Bramadat ; Bryant ; Magolda and Ebben Gross ). In the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, issues of race and diversity have been among the most hotly contested topics within the university , but they scarcely register in the lives of the mostly white students depicted in these narratives. In such accounts, evangelical college students inhabit a university where race is more or less a non-issue. In this book, I provide a different depiction of evangelical Christian life during the college years by showing how race became a front-and-center issue in IVCF. I begin by discussing the context of racial diversity in higher education and show that the racial composition of student subcultures matters because these groups are filtering agents between the macrolevel structural diversity of an institution and the microlevel interactions that students have across race. Further, the ability to sustain diverse organizational subcultures is contingent on a racially diverse student body. Lastly, I explain the legacy of racial divisions in evangelical Christianity in the United States and its influence on various models of organizational culture. 1 The Cultural and Organizational Contexts of Race, Religion, and Higher Education 14 WHEN DIVERSITY DROPS The Context of Racial Diversity in Higher Education American colleges and universities have experienced a significant demographic transformation over the past several decades. Although the majority of undergraduates nationwide are white, the tide has shifted in certain states and metropolitan areas (Kim ). For instance, in California, students of color made up . percent of first-time students in the public postsecondary education system in  (California Postsecondary Education Commission ). Although this statistic may suggest that California has achieved racial equity for students of color, a closer look at the prestigious UC system reveals persistent racial divides, In , URM students made up  percent of high school graduates but only  percent of firstyear students in the UC system (Chang and Rose ). These gaps are even more pronounced in the system’s most selective institutions. In , black students only made up  percent of undergraduate enrollment at UC Berkeley,  percent at UCLA, and  percent at UCSD (University of California , Office of the President ).1 Why are these numbers so low? Both in California and nationwide, black, Latino/a, Southeast Asian American, Pacific Islander, and Native American students encounter pervasive barriers to accessing higher education , often because they attend struggling K– schools that face numerous challenges in supporting a college-going culture (Massey, Charles, Lundy, and Fischer ; Solórzano and Ornelas ; Swail, Cabrera, and Lee ). California has widespread racial and socioeconomic disparities related to education (Gándara ; Teranishi and Parker ). While no panacea, affirmative action was one tool that helped broaden access to UC institutions prior to Prop. , which was passed in . The measure, titled the “California Civil Rights Initiative,” banned affirmative action in the state’s public institutions. Other states followed: Initiative  in Washington, the Hopwood decision in Texas, and Prop.  in Michigan. Since the passing of Prop. , the UC system has used multiple strategies to try to recoup diversity. In an amicus brief filed in the Supreme Court case Fisher v. Texas, wherein plaintiff Abigail Fisher challenged the use of race-conscious admissions at the University of Texas, the president and chancellors of the UC system commented on the efficacy of its efforts to attract diversity using race-neutral admissions policies: CULTURAL AND ORGANIZATIONAL CONTEXTS 15 To date, however, those measures have enjoyed only limited success. They have not enabled the University of California fully to reverse the precipitous decline in minority admission and enrollment that followed the enactment of Proposition , nor to keep pace with the growing population of underrepresented minorities in the applicant pool of qualified high school graduates. These effects have been most severe and most difficult to reverse at the University’s most highlyranked and competitive campuses. (Brief of the President and Chancellors of the University of California , ) Beyond affecting enrollments at more selective UC institutions, Prop.  has had ripple effects on postsecondary enrollment across institutional type. In their analysis of state enrollment trends, Eric Grodsky and Michal Kurlaender (a) identified a process of “resorting” that took place as a result of Prop. , in which black and Latino/a students were shuffled into less selective institutions. It has also adversely affected diversity at...