The Diversity Bargain

2016-11-15
The Diversity Bargain

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  • Author: Natasha K. Warikoo
  • Publisher: University of Chicago Press
  • ISBN: 022640028X
  • Category : Education
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 304

We’ve heard plenty from politicians and experts on affirmative action and higher education, about how universities should intervene—if at all—to ensure a diverse but deserving student population. But what about those for whom these issues matter the most? In this book, Natasha K. Warikoo deeply explores how students themselves think about merit and race at a uniquely pivotal moment: after they have just won the most competitive game of their lives and gained admittance to one of the world’s top universities. What Warikoo uncovers—talking with both white students and students of color at Harvard, Brown, and Oxford—is absolutely illuminating; and some of it is positively shocking. As she shows, many elite white students understand the value of diversity abstractly, but they ignore the real problems that racial inequality causes and that diversity programs are meant to solve. They stand in fear of being labeled a racist, but they are quick to call foul should a diversity program appear at all to hamper their own chances for advancement. The most troubling result of this ambivalence is what she calls the “diversity bargain,” in which white students reluctantly agree with affirmative action as long as it benefits them by providing a diverse learning environment—racial diversity, in this way, is a commodity, a selling point on a brochure. And as Warikoo shows, universities play a big part in creating these situations. The way they talk about race on campus and the kinds of diversity programs they offer have a huge impact on student attitudes, shaping them either toward ambivalence or, in better cases, toward more productive and considerate understandings of racial difference. Ultimately, this book demonstrates just how slippery the notions of race, merit, and privilege can be. In doing so, it asks important questions not just about college admissions but what the elite students who have succeeded at it—who will be the world’s future leaders—will do with the social inequalities of the wider world.

Balancing Acts

2011-02-09
Balancing Acts

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  • Author: Natasha Kumar Warikoo
  • Publisher: Univ of California Press
  • ISBN: 0520262107
  • Category : Education
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 244

"Balancing Acts is a must-read for social scientists, policy experts, and educators interested in addressing the achievement gap between minority and majority students. This unique comparative study of multi-racial schools in the US and the UK considers through a new lens the impact of peer status on educational achievement for whites, Indians, and blacks. Never has expertise on the second-generation, racial and ethnic boundaries, youth culture, cultural consumption, and education been so skillfully brought together. And best of all, this signal contribution offers practical and sensible policy recommendations for addressing some of the causes of low educational performance."—Michele Lamont, author of The Dignity of Working Men: Morality and the Boundaries of Race, Class, and Immigration "This important comparative study skillfully unpacks the concept of culture and demonstrates with considerable cogency the role played by youth culture in shaping immigrant children's uneven educational achievement. Balancing Acts rightly highlights children's agency in negotiating the pressures of different identities and offers several most valuable recommendations."—Bhikhu Parekh, House of Lords, author of Rethinking Multiculturalism "This important study breaks new empirical ground and brings much needed conceptual clarity to the sociological study of culture, identity, and the schooling of the children of immigrants in the two defining global cities of our era. It achieves a marvelous balance—between London and New York, between institutions, social structures, and human agency, and between various immigrant-origin groups on both sides of the Atlantic. It is a must read for anyone interested in learning what the best of sociological research has to offer to us to elucidate one of the most relevant issues of our times."—Marcelo M. Suárez-Orozco, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, NJ “If this book doesn’t convince us that adolescents’ taste in music and style of dress have more to do with their quest for peer status than their attitudes toward school and achievement, I’m not sure what will. The second-generation immigrant youth in Balancing Acts add to the chorus of compelling young voices forcing us to reconsider how we think about the impact of youth cultures on student achievement. Warikoo’s careful attention to the meanings young people attach to contemporary urban music and style should be required reading for anyone interested in the world of adolescents.”-Karolyn Tyson, Sociology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill "Warikoo does an excellent job describing peer culture and its complex role in the everyday lives of teenagers in London and New York City. This book is essential reading for educators, scholars, and, of course, students."—Margaret M. Chin, author of Sewing Women: Immigrants and the New York City Garment Industry "This provocative and timely book offers a refreshing perspective on the relationship of second-generation immigrants and youth culture. Warikoo makes a bold argument regarding peer culture, status and academic achievement that is sure to take current discourse into a whole new direction."—Gilberto Q. Conchas, author of The Color of Success

The Grand Food Bargain

2019-03-26
The Grand Food Bargain

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  • Author: Kevin D. Walker
  • Publisher: Island Press
  • ISBN: 1610919475
  • Category : Social Science
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 346

When it comes to food, Americans seem to have a pretty great deal. Our grocery stores are overflowing with countless varieties of convenient products. But like most bargains that are too good to be true, the modern food system relies on an illusion. It depends on endless abundance, but the planet has its limits. So too does a healthcare system that must absorb rising rates of diabetes and obesity. So too do the workers who must labor harder and faster for less pay. Through beautifully-told stories from around the world, Kevin Walker reveals the unintended consequences of our myopic focus on quantity over quality. A trip to a Costa Rica plantation shows how the Cavendish banana became the most common fruit in the world and also one of the most vulnerable to disease. Walker’s early career in agribusiness taught him how pressure to sell more and more fertilizer obscured what that growth did to waterways. His family farm illustrates how an unquestioning belief in “free markets” undercut opportunity in his hometown. By the end of the journey, we not only understand how the drive to produce ever more food became hardwired into the American psyche, but why shifting our mindset is essential. It starts, Walker argues, with remembering that what we eat affects the wider world. If each of us decides that bigger isn’t always better, we can renegotiate the grand food bargain, one individual decision at a time.

Degrees of Inequality

2011-01-03
Degrees of Inequality

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  • Author: Ann L. Mullen
  • Publisher: JHU Press
  • ISBN: 0801899125
  • Category : Education
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 264

2011 Educator's Award. Delta Kappa Gamma Society International2011 Outstanding Publication in Postsecondary Education, American Educational Research Association, Division J Degrees of Inequality reveals the powerful patterns of social inequality in American higher education by analyzing how the social background of students shapes nearly every facet of the college experience. Even as the most prestigious institutions claim to open their doors to students from diverse backgrounds, class disparities remain. Just two miles apart stand two institutions that represent the stark class contrast in American higher education. Yale, an elite Ivy League university, boasts accomplished alumni, including national and world leaders in business and politics. Southern Connecticut State University graduates mostly commuter students seeking credential degrees in fields with good job prospects. Ann L. Mullen interviewed students from both universities and found that their college choices and experiences were strongly linked to social background and gender. Yale students, most having generations of family members with college degrees, are encouraged to approach their college years as an opportunity for intellectual and personal enrichment. Southern students, however, perceive a college degree as a path to a better career, and many work full- or part-time jobs to help fund their education. Moving interviews with 100 students at the two institutions highlight how American higher education reinforces the same inequities it has been aiming to transcend.

Us Plus Them

2012-07-31
Us Plus Them

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  • Author: Todd L. Pittinsky
  • Publisher: Harvard Business Press
  • ISBN: 1422142418
  • Category : Business & Economics
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 268

Moving beyond mere tolerance Us-versus-them is the costly mind-set in which organizations, communities, and whole nations too often find themselves trapped. In fact, recognizing difference as a positive force can bring astonishing value to even the most diverse organizations. In Us Plus Them, leadership scholar Todd Pittinsky introduces a groundbreaking new science of diversity that: • Debunks the assumption that wherever there is difference there will be inherent tension and animosity • Challenges the effectiveness of our standard attempts to fight prejudice and combat hate in our schools and workplaces, our civic and religious lives • Reveals how we benefit from the mixing of different ethnic, racial, national, social, and religious groups in a globalized world Through a wide range of examples—from Maine and Michigan to Rwanda and Bhutan, and from small-town classrooms to corporate boardrooms—Pittinsky opens our eyes to misunderstood yet useful aspects of us-and-them relations, including many of the neglected positive dimensions of difference. He provides a bold new assessment of the popular and scientific approaches to the issue, proving that it’s time to move beyond mere tolerance to build communities in which the two sides of the us-and-them equation engage each other because they both want to. Much as Martin Seligman and positive psychology have shifted the focus from mental illness to mental healthiness, this book shifts our mind-set to diversity as a positive force. Understanding the science and practical use of that energy will help us build the schools, neighborhoods, companies, and nations we want, and not simply avoid the ugliest problems of the past. Pittinsky shows us that our great diversity experiment hasn’t failed—it hasn’t even begun.

The Enigma of Diversity

2015-05-15
The Enigma of Diversity

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  • Author: Ellen Berrey
  • Publisher: University of Chicago Press
  • ISBN: 022624637X
  • Category : Social Science
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 361

Diversity these days is a hallowed American value, widely shared and honored. That’s a remarkable change from the Civil Rights era—but does this public commitment to diversity constitute a civil rights victory? What does diversity mean in contemporary America, and what are the effects of efforts to support it? Ellen Berrey digs deep into those questions in The Enigma of Diversity. Drawing on six years of fieldwork and historical sources dating back to the 1950s and making extensive use of three case studies from widely varying arenas—housing redevelopment in Chicago’s Rogers Park neighborhood, affirmative action in the University of Michigan’s admissions program, and the workings of the human resources department at a Fortune 500 company—Berrey explores the complicated, contradictory, and even troubling meanings and uses of diversity as it is invoked by different groups for different, often symbolic ends. In each case, diversity affirms inclusiveness, especially in the most coveted jobs and colleges, yet it resists fundamental change in the practices and cultures that are the foundation of social inequality. Berrey shows how this has led racial progress itself to be reimagined, transformed from a legal fight for fundamental rights to a celebration of the competitive advantages afforded by cultural differences. Powerfully argued and surprising in its conclusions, The Enigma of Diversity reveals the true cost of the public embrace of diversity: the taming of demands for racial justice.

Race and College Admissions

2024-07-22
Race and College Admissions

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  • Author: Jamillah Moore
  • Publisher: McFarland
  • ISBN: 1476646880
  • Category : Education
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 325

In the United States, elite colleges and universities have historically catered primarily to wealthy, predominantly white Americans, creating barriers to entry for students of color. Legal statutes have entrenched discriminatory practices within the admissions process, perpetuating the underrepresentation of students of color at top-tier institutions. Given this reality, the imperative for institutions to promote diversity through affirmative action remains crucial. However, recent legal challenges against affirmative action threaten to reinforce the status quo, potentially perpetuating the dominance of predominantly white institutions in higher education. This book takes an historical look at the pivotal role affirmative action has played in higher education. It examines the admissions process through the eyes of a beneficiary of affirmative action and is the first text to share insights on the role eligibility plays in allowing universities to consider race in admitting applicants. Detailed are the different types of affirmative action and how some colleges and universities use the policy as a tool to consider race and ethnicity as part of a holistic evaluation of applicants. This work makes the case that race-conscious admissions practices remain necessary in the fight for racial equity in higher education.

The Diversity Style Guide

2018-10-15
The Diversity Style Guide

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  • Author: Rachele Kanigel
  • Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
  • ISBN: 1119055245
  • Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 424

New diversity style guide helps journalists write with authority and accuracy about a complex, multicultural world A companion to the online resource of the same name, The Diversity Style Guide raises the consciousness of journalists who strive to be accurate. Based on studies, news reports and style guides, as well as interviews with more than 50 journalists and experts, it offers the best, most up-to-date advice on writing about underrepresented and often misrepresented groups. Addressing such thorny questions as whether the words Black and White should be capitalized when referring to race and which pronouns to use for people who don't identify as male or female, the book helps readers navigate the minefield of names, terms, labels and colloquialisms that come with living in a diverse society. The Diversity Style Guide comes in two parts. Part One offers enlightening chapters on Why is Diversity So Important; Implicit Bias; Black Americans; Native People; Hispanics and Latinos; Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders; Arab Americans and Muslim Americans; Immigrants and Immigration; Gender Identity and Sexual Orientation; People with Disabilities; Gender Equality in the News Media; Mental Illness, Substance Abuse and Suicide; and Diversity and Inclusion in a Changing Industry. Part Two includes Diversity and Inclusion Activities and an A-Z Guide with more than 500 terms. This guide: Helps journalists, journalism students, and other media writers better understand the context behind hot-button words so they can report with confidence and sensitivity Explores the subtle and not-so-subtle ways that certain words can alienate a source or infuriate a reader Provides writers with an understanding that diversity in journalism is about accuracy and truth, not "political correctness." Brings together guidance from more than 20 organizations and style guides into a single handy reference book The Diversity Style Guide is first and foremost a guide for journalists, but it is also an important resource for journalism and writing instructors, as well as other media professionals. In addition, it will appeal to those in other fields looking to make informed choices in their word usage and their personal interactions.

Devil's Bargains

1998
Devil's Bargains

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  • Author: Hal Rothman
  • Publisher:
  • ISBN:
  • Category : Business & Economics
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 456

The West is popularly perceived as America's last outpost of unfettered opportunity, but twentieth-century corporate tourism has transformed it into America's "land of opportunism." From Sun Valley to Santa Fe, towns throughout the West have been turned over to outsiders—and not just to those who visit and move on, but to those who stay and control. Although tourism has been a blessing for many, bringing economic and cultural prosperity to communities without obvious means of support or allowing towns on the brink of extinction to renew themselves; the costs on more intangible levels may be said to outweigh the benefits and be a devil's bargain in the making. Hal Rothman examines the effect of twentieth-century tourism on the West and exposes that industry's darker side. He tells how tourism evolved from Grand Canyon rail trips to Sun Valley ski weekends and Disneyland vacations, and how the post-World War II boom in air travel and luxury hotels capitalized on a surge in discretionary income for many Americans, combined with newfound leisure time. From major destinations like Las Vegas to revitalized towns like Aspen and Moab, Rothman reveals how the introduction of tourism into a community may seem innocuous, but residents gradually realize, as they seek to preserve the authenticity of their communities, that decision-making power has subtly shifted from the community itself to the newly arrived corporate financiers. And because tourism often results in a redistribution of wealth and power to "outsiders," observes Rothman, it represents a new form of colonialism for the region. By depicting the nature of tourism in the American West through true stories of places and individuals that have felt its grasp, Rothman doesn't just document the effects of tourism but provides us with an enlightened explanation of the shape these changes take. Deftly balancing historical perspective with an eye for what's happening in the region right now, his book sets new standards for the study of tourism and is one that no citizen of the West whose life is touched by that industry can afford to ignore.

The Cost of Inclusion

2020-07-17
The Cost of Inclusion

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  • Author: Blake R. Silver
  • Publisher: University of Chicago Press
  • ISBN: 022670405X
  • Category : Education
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 252

Young people are told that college is a place where they will “find themselves” by engaging with diversity and making friendships that will last a lifetime. This vision of an inclusive, diverse social experience is a fundamental part of the image colleges sell potential students. But what really happens when students arrive on campus and enter this new social world? The Cost of Inclusion delves into this rich moment to explore the ways students seek out a sense of belonging and the sacrifices they make to fit in. Blake R. Silver spent a year immersed in student life at a large public university. He trained with the Cardio Club, hung out with the Learning Community, and hosted service events with the Volunteer Collective. Through these day-to-day interactions, he witnessed how students sought belonging and built their social worlds on campus. Over time, Silver realized that these students only achieved inclusion at significant cost. To fit in among new peers, they clung to or were pushed into raced and gendered cultural assumptions about behavior, becoming “the cool guy,” “the nice girl,” “the funny one,” “the leader,” “the intellectual,” or “the mom of the group.” Instead of developing dynamic identities, they crafted and adhered to a cookie-cutter self, one that was rigid and two-dimensional. Silver found that these students were ill-prepared for the challenges of a diverse college campus, and that they had little guidance from their university on how to navigate the trials of social engagement or the pressures to conform. While colleges are focused on increasing the diversity of their enrolled student body, Silver’s findings show that they need to take a hard look at how they are failing to support inclusion once students arrive on campus.