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9 d i V e r s i t Y a s to P o g r a P h Y The Benefits and Challenges of Cross Racial interaction in the Writing Center Kathryn Valentine and Mónica F. Torres In November of 2006, the executive board of the International Writing Centers Association approved a statement in which it announced a major diversity initiative. This statement opens with an acknowledgement of writing centers as “inherently multicultural and multi-lingual sites that welcome and accommodate diversity.” It strikes us that one goal of this collection is to consider the ways in which racial diversity operates in writing centers and to examine whether they have, or have not, “welcomed and accommodated” that diversity. The emphasis on accommodation , both in writing center scholarship and in the International Writing Centers Association statement on diversity, implies that diversity is a problem to be solved. While it is true that cultural differences are, in fact, something that colleges and universities need to thoughtfully engage, seeing them as a problem is, perhaps, less than productive. The question that keeps coming back to us is, can we see diversity as something other than a problem? In the last fifteen to twenty years, empirical research coming out of colleges of education has attempted to answer this very question. This work by scholars such as Patricia Gurin, Sylvia Hurtado, and Mitchell Chang reframes the “problem” of diversity. These scholars, at least in part responding to legal attacks on affirmative-action admissions policies , suggest that rather than being a “problem,” diverse student populations offer potential benefits for both individuals and institutions. Primarily they suggest that culturally diverse student populations, and more particularly meaningful interactions across those populations, offer students important opportunities for cognitive and social development . That is, interacting across cultural differences positions students to perceive and think and act in ways that contribute to their intellectual Diversity as Topography 193 development. Diversity may be a “problem” in that such interaction will not necessarily be easy, comfortable, or neat, but these very challenges may also serve a fundamental mission of higher education—the cognitive and social development of its student population. We believe writing centers provide an ideal site for thinking about the academic benefits of cross racial interactions. First, they are by definition places of interaction. The tutorial operates in and through interaction between writer and tutor. From the beginning, writing center tutors, directors, and scholars have been working to understand interaction as a productive strategy for learning. In addition, we believe writing centers are also ideal sites for thinking about issues of diversity on their respective campuses. Because they often serve students enrolled in general-education writing programs, writing center staff are likely to work with a full range of the students enrolled at the college or university , including students from racially and ethnically diverse populations. Given these two circumstances—the writing center as a site of student interactions, in general, and the potential for cross racial interactions, in particular—this educational research on the value of cross racial interaction on college and university campuses seems particularly useful. In this chapter, we attempt to enter into these conversations. We do that by first outlining the scholarship in both writing center research and education research on the instructional value of interactions, and more specifically, cross racial interactions. We believe these reviews of the scholarship provide what we think of as topographic detail: the contours of the discussions that have occurred over the last few decades in both arenas. We next present findings from our own empirical study of cross racial interactions in colleges and universities on the U.S. side of the United States-Mexico border. We offer this part of the chapter as an illustration of the sort of journey we think awaits us when we choose to explore cross racial interactions as a productive strategy for student development—the trail may be clearly marked in some places but may take an unexpected turn or head up a steep hill just down the road. Our findings were often counterintuitive and sometimes troubling. These results required that we actively engage with students’ perceptions, with the scholarship, and with each other as we navigated in and through the data. Finally, we offer recommendations for both practice and research based on what we are learning from our work. Ultimately, we argue that what this engagement tells us is that racial identities and racial interactions are not only complicated at a theoretical level...

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