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Critical Race Humor

One thing can be said with confidence about much of the research that wafts up like malodorous mist from the swamp of our schools of education: it never ceases to amuse. Take a recent study (Please!) of 43 colleges? 30-second recruiting videotapes, described by Peter Schmidt in the Chronicle of Higher Education, based on a paper summarizing the study recently presented at the annual conference of the American Educational Research Association.

The authors, two assistant professors of education at the University of Alabama, ?analyzed the images, narration, characters, scenes, and music in the ads, applying key concepts from the field of critical race theory.? These ads ?depict their campuses as overwhelmingly white, privileged environments, likely deterring many minority students from applying.?

The researchers found that the overwhelmingly majority of the students and alumni depicted in the advertisements were white, with minority members generally being depicted only as token members of larger groups. The common image of a group of students strolling the campus, for example, typically depicted three or four white students and a single student of color.

Schmidt observes that ?[s]ome of the universities examined by the researchers have enrollments that are so overwhelmingly white that advertisements depicting large numbers of minority students arguably could be called misleading,? but the researchers clearly believe that misleading is preferable to the portrayal of ?tokenism.? I suspect, in fact, that at least some of these videos that ?typically depicted three or four white students and a single student of color? in groups ?strolling the campus? were strolling on campuses where the minority student population is actually considerably less than the 25% or 33% portrayed in those videos. But, hey, do we want these videos to provide an accurate idea of what their campuses are really like or promote ?diversity??

Schmidt?s review of the summary paper is short, and so it?s not possible to tell from it whether the authors presented any evidence ? or, in the absence of evidence, any compelling exposition of ?critical race theory? ? to support their conclusion that videos portraying majority white institutions as, well, majority white institutions have in fact dissuaded minority students from applying, or why they are likely to. That is, do they seriously believe that minority students don?t know that majority white institutions are majority white institutions?

Moreover, does ?critical race theory? provide a sound basis for concluding that every minority student in a group containing three or four non-minority students feels him- or herself to be merely a ?token?? Are there any Asian students in those groups? If so, are they ever the ?single student of color??

Do the authors, drawing as they do not only on ?critical race theory? but its ?key concepts,? seriously propose that every institution actually be split 50-50 between minorities and non-minorities, or merely that they be portrayed that way for recruitment purposes? If not 50-50, what? Obivously 75-25 or 67-33 won?t do.

Finally, why is it necessarily bad if some students are dissuaded from applying to majority white institutions? Don?t they then apply to historically black institutions? Do the authors believes that?s bad? If so, perhaps in their next study they will apply their ?critical race theory? to an analysis of the recruiting videos of HBCUs, concluding that by presenting those institutions as majority black they will deter some students from applying.

ADDENDUM

An example of applied critical race theory at the University of Wisconsin?

The University of Wisconsin at Madison recently admitted that school officials could not find an existing example of racial diversity during a sports event there, so a publicity photo on the cover of its 40-page fall admissions brochure was doctored to include a Black student among a crowd of White football fans.

Attempting to explain the reason that the Black student was added to the photo, Paul Barrows, vice chancellor for student affairs at UW-Madison, said a lack of diversity can be a vicious cycle, since the scarcity of minority students can intimidate other prospective non-White students.

?You?ve got to have enough people so that if I?m a young Black student, I?m not the only one in class, the only one in the dorm,? Barrows said.

Barrows said the university will reprint all 106,000 copies of the brochure, which will cost about $64,000, to remove the picture of senior Diallo Shabazz, who said he had never even attended a football game. University officials said they won?t discipline those involved because they admitted their mistake and apologized to Shabazz....

The fact that officials couldn?t find a photo of White and Black students together may not be surprising. The percentage of Black students at UW-Madison has decreased from 2.19 percent in 1980 to 2.15 percent in 1999-2000.

Full post as published by Discriminations on March 25, 2008 (boomark / email).