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  • Challenging Racism in Higher Education: Promoting Justice
  • Gregory M. Anderson (bio) and Sosanya Jones (bio)
Mark Chesler, Amanda E. Lewis, and James E. Crowfoot. Challenging Racism in Higher Education: Promoting Justice. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2005. 352 pp. Paper: $29.95. ISBN: 0-7425-2457-4.

Challenging Racism in Higher Education represents a good start toward developing a dialogue and practical blueprint for transformative change in higher education. Although the narrative of the book can at times be disjointed, skipping quickly from the topic of affirmative action to alternatives to race-conscious policies to prevailing notions of diversity, the authors nevertheless make some interesting and important contributions in their discussion of historical accumulation (or cumulative disadvantage) as well as the differences in wealth and income between Whites and Blacks. Particularly laudable is the comprehensive approach, as the book covers numerous areas for transformative change including recruitment, retention, organizational and leadership structures, institutional policy, multicultural audits and committees, the curriculum, pedagogy, and student affairs programming and initiatives.

The first section of the book moves quickly from discussing the history of race and racism in America, providing an overview of the history of oppressed groups and the struggle for equality, to the role of higher education within the civil rights movement and the challenges facing higher education in adopting diversity as a primary goal. The brief history on affirmative action is probably insufficient for those who have little understanding about the origins or progression of affirmative action discourse and its impact on higher education. In addition, the authors sometimes fail to define the terms they use, assuming that the readers share their understanding of key concepts.

They provide an overview of each tier or institutional type (i.e., two- and four-year, private or public, etc.) of higher education, along with a short but thorough examination of how different institutional types have dealt with the multiple political, social, and historical challenges underpinning various histories of exclusion.

Employing a sociology of organizational theory perspective, the authors describe how organizations are often contested terrains featuring differing interests based on institutional roles, identities, and the realities of competing for scarce resources. The book takes the perspective that universities and colleges are currently inhospitable to diversity and transformative change, pointing out how racial incidents are often blamed on the individual instead of the organization.

A helpful list and description of organizational factors that tend to foment racism along with a model for institutional progression toward embracing diversity are also provided in an effort to inform strategic planners and those seeking to incorporate a new vision of how to create an inclusive campus environment.

The book's second section captures various experiences involving race relations when examining extant research regarding how groups differ in their assessments of campus environments. They report no new research about the benefits of diversity, instead relying heavily on the work of Hurtado (1996), Gurin (2004), and Lewis et al. (2000). A brief but intriguing discussion of resentment and affirmative action could have been expanded and framed as a topic for future research.

The book addresses "promoting justice" from a systemic point of view by highlighting how, at different levels of higher education, important [End Page 69] assessments can occur regarding whether an environment is inclusive for minorities. Yet while focusing on the experiences of minority groups, the second section did not sufficiently underscore the differences within minority groups to further contextualize diversity. In addition, the authors do not adequately grapple with how majority students may feel (rightly or wrongly) that they are victims of reverse discrimination.

Although there is a discussion about an institutional failure to acknowledge covert racism and a very brief examination of racial micro-aggressions, the authors unfortunately fail to showcase how the research on racial micro-aggression could be used to understand examples of covert racism.

The third section provides a good deal of exploration about how the faculty and the curriculum contribute to campus environments particularly regarding low expectations of students of color, faculty behavior toward minority students, and the impact of pedagogical diversity. This section, however, is scant and may inadvertently negate the diversity and complexity of experiences characterizing minority faculty. Similarly, the...

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