Responding to the Realities of Race on Campus (New Directions for Student Services #120) (review)

Responding to the Realities of Race on Campus is a timely, cogent, direct, and thought provoking look at the complexities of racial dynamics on campuses. The editors identify this pressing concern at the beginning of the book by poignantly stating, "The reality is that many people, including college students, administrators, and faculty make racist statements; engage in racially oppressive actions; and maintain exclusive memberships in racially segregated social networks" (p. 1). Naming the racial realities present on campuses, Harper and Patton then hold student affairs accountable both for the existence of the dynamics of race and racism and to a higher standard in working more intentionally to directly confront these realities. This is a discourse missing in the field of higher education and student affairs. To engage this dialogue and expose the "realities of race," Harper and Patton bring together a number of well-known scholars in higher education and student affairs who are able to apply empirical research to the everyday lived experience reflected in campus-based incidents.

In the first chapter, Shaun Harper and Sylvia Hurtado take on several areas of focus. They begin by presenting nine themes that emerged from a synthesis of the published research on campus racial climates since 1992. Their results are also displayed in a very helpful table that organizes these studies by three categories of focus and includes detail about research design, sample size, and respondents.

They go on to then present the findings from a multi-site qualitative study of campus racial climates in order to probe the realities of race at greater depth. They conclude with implications from these studies for institutional transformation. Because of the scope of this chapter, readers will find an excellent review of existing research in this area. Indeed, each section of this chapter could easily constitute a chapter of its own.

A very strong chapter and great contribution to this book is Mitchell Chang's chapter on cross-racial interactions among undergraduates. Drawing primarily on his own substantive body of research, Chang persuasively provides empirical evidence for the "diversity rationale" and educational outcomes. His discussion of cross-racial engagement and the conditions needed to promote cross-racial interactions provides a good summary of the literature focused on these questions. He identifies some of the pitfalls associated with achieving positive race relations such as conditional effects, artificial efforts toward improvement, and racial stratification present in K-16. Chang concludes by offering suggestions for addressing artificial integration by reimagining what higher levels of cross-racial interaction might actually look like, which necessarily draws the reader back to practical implications for engaging the realities of race.

In a multi-authored chapter by Lori Patton, Marylu McEwen, Laura Rendón, and Mary Howard-Hamilton, several topical areas are covered: the use of theory in higher education and student affairs, and the racelessness present in many student development theories; the potential of critical race theory as an organizing framework that better informs theoretical and practical realities; and the relationship of race to other social identities. Perhaps the result of multiple contributors to this chapter, the sections on student development theory and critical race theory were not well integrated. The focus of the presentation of critical race theory was on education, broadly defined, and then related to student affairs practice, rather than back to examining the possibilities for student development theory. In other words, if Chickering's theory were examined through a critical race theory framework, how might student development look different? The authors conclude with five recommendations for practice which include an emphasis on theory, practice, and the individual. Despite unevenness in voice in this chapter, it covers important theoretical terrain and offers readers new ways to think about theory and practice informed by this theory.

In chapter 4, Stephen John Quaye and Marcia Baxter Magolda explore the possibilities for deepening racial self-understanding with [End...