Estela responds to “How a Damning Racial Climate Report Divided a Campus.”

Sep 11

The Greenfield Community College president wanted to know more about the college’s

racial climate before hiring a chief diversity officer for the college and hired a consulting

firm to do a climate study. She did not like the report submitted by the consulting

group and dismissed them. Greenfield’s reaction to what appears to be an honest

report exemplifies attempting to do “equity and diversity” “a la white.” Sure, leaders do

not like to be criticized, especially when they think they are doing the right thing. Based

on the article, it is clear that Greenfield has a racial problem and is not able to provide a

high-quality education to minoritized students (who they are recruiting to address their

enrollment problems). Greenfield is not alone; nationally, colleges fail to create

successful outcomes for racially minoritized students. The most effective way of dealing

with this problem is for campus actors to recognize they have a problem (as Greenfield

did) but instead of putting the blame on students, they need to admit they do not know

their own practices are part of the problem. Greenfield’s leaders and practitioners need

to interrogate the curriculum, their assumptions about race, study faculty pedagogical

approaches for racialization, determine faculty racial literacy, etc.

Simply put they need to look inside Greenfield and learn the many ways in which racialization

is being created by race neutral practices. This should be done by institutional actors,

including the president, under the guidance of an expert in action research. When practitioners

and leaders study their practices, they are more likely to change themselves than when outside experts are hired as

consultants. Tools to conduct a racial investigation of Greenfield can be found at

Additionally. Massachusetts has an exemplary consortium of colleges collaborating on

racial equity. If Greenfield is not a member, they should join immediately to receive

guidance from more experienced colleagues. https://reji-bsu.org