The Faces of Institutionalized Discrimination and Systemic Oppression in Higher Education: Uncovering the Lived Experience of Bias and Procedural Inequity

Abstract

With seven cases drawn from both personal experience and informal interviews with colleagues from other research-intensive universities, we attempt to demonstrate the forms institutionalized discrimination and systemic oppression can take and if it is supported by policies or procedures encoded into an institution’s rules and regulations. We suggest heuristics for reexamining such procedures to more fully address such inherent biases. We proffer a qualitative methodological approach not only to explore the lived experiences of faculty of color but also to explore the latent as well as manifest meanings of these experiences for the faculty involved, which are frequently neither obvious nor transparent to both non-minority faculty and those responsible for carrying out institutional policies and regulations. Finally, we offer some criticisms of qualitative research in this arena to which organizational researchers must attend.

Keywords

qualitative case studies qualitative research methodologies decolonizing the academy pedagogy

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Argyris

Schön

D. A.

(1978). Organizational learning. Addison-Wesley.

Beckhard

(1969). Organization development: Strategies and models. Addison-Wesley.

Bollag

(2007). Gay professors face less discrimination, but many still fight for benefits. The Chronicle of Higher Education, 54(5), B10.

Bridges

(1991). Managing transitions: Making the most of change. Addison-Wesley.

Bullock

Trombley

(Eds.). (1999). The Norton dictionary of modern thought. W.W. Norton.

Cannella

G. S.

Manuelito

K. D.

(2008). Feminisms from unthought locations: Indigenous worldviews, marginalized feminisms, and revisioning an anticolonial social science. In Denzin

N. K.

Lincoln

Y. S.

Smith

L. T.

(Eds.), Handbook of critical and indigenous methodologies (pp. 45–59). SAGE.

Carmichael

Hamilton

(1967). Black power: The politics of liberation in America. Vintage Books.

Collins

P. H.

(2000). Gender, black feminism, and black political economy. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 568(1), 41–53.

Dillard

C. B.

(2000). The substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen: Examining an endarkened feminist epistemology in educational research and leadership. The International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 13, 661–681.

10.

Dillard

C. B.

Okpalaoka

(2011). The sacred and spiritual nature of endarkened transnational feminist praxis in qualitative research. In Denzin

N. K.

Lincoln

Y. S.

(Eds.), The SAGE handbook of qualitative research (4th ed., pp. 147–162). SAGE.

11.

Dovidio

J. F.

Gaertner

S. L.

(2004). Aversive racism. In Zanna

M. P.

(Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 36, pp. 1–51). Academic Press.

12.

Feagin

J. R.

(2006). Systemic racism: A theory of oppression. Routledge/Taylor & Francis Group.

13.

Feagin

J. R.

Feagin

C. B.

(1986). Discrimination American style: Institutional racism and sexism. Krieger.

14.

Feagin

J. R.

Vera

(1995). White racism. Routledge.

15.

Foucault

(1972). The archaeology of knowledge. Tavistock Publications.

16.

Guba

E. G.

Lincoln

Y. S.

(1981). Effective evaluation. SAGE.

17.

Gutierrez y Muhs

Niemann

Gonzalez

C. G.

Harris

(Eds.). (2012). Presumed incompetent: The intersections of race and class for women in academia. Utah State University Press.

18.

Harvey

W. B.

(1991). Faculty responsibility and tolerance. Thought and Action, 7(2), 115–136.

19.

Hatzenbuehler

M. L.

McLaughlin

K. A.

Keyes

K. M.

Hasin

D. S.

(2010). The impact of institutional discrimination on psychiatric disorders in lesbian, gay, and bisexual populations: A prospective study. American Journal of Public Health, 100(3), 452–459.

20.

Henkel

K. E.

Dovidio

J. F.

Gaertner

S. L.

(2006). Institutional discrimination, individual racism, and Hurricane Katrina. Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy, 6(1), 99–124.

21.

Johnsrud

L. K.

Des Jarlais

C. D.

(1994). Barriers to tenure for women and minorities. The Review of Higher Education, 17(4), 335–353.

22.

Johnsrud

L. K.

Heck

R. H.

(1994). A university’s faculty: Identifying who will leave and who will stay. Journal for Higher Education Management, 10(1), 71–85.

23.

Katz

Berman

(2017). If not now, when? Achieving equality for women attorneys in the Courtroom and in ADR. Report of the commercial & federal litigation section task force on women’s initiatives. New York State Bar Association.

24.

Krippendorf

(1980). The SAGE CommText series. Content analysis: An introduction to its methodology. SAGE.

25.

Law

Phillips

Turney

(2004). Institutional racism in higher education. Trentham Books.

26.

Macpherson

(1999). The Stephen Lawrence inquiry. The Stationary Office.

27.

McIntosh

(1992). White privilege and male privilege: A personal account of coming to see correspondences through work in women’s studies. In Anderson

Collins

P. H.

(Eds.), Race, class and gender: An anthology (pp. 76–87). Wadsworth.

28.

Menges

R. J.

Exum

W. H.

(1983). Barriers to the progress of women and minority faculty. Journal of Higher Education, 54(2), 123–143.

29.

Ogbu

J. U.

(1978). Minority education and caste: The American system in cross-cultural perspective. Academic Press.

30.

O’Grady

Balmer

N. J.

Carter

Pleasence

Buck

Genn

(2005). Institutional racism and civil justice. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 28(4), 620–629.

31.

Olivas

M. A.

(1986). Research on Latino college students: A theoretical framework and inquiry. In Olivas

M. A.

(Ed.), Latino college students (pp. 11–15). Teachers College Press.

32.

Pincus

F. L.

(2000). Discrimination comes in many forms: Individual, institutional, and structural. In Adams

Blumenfeld

W. J.

Castaneda

Hackman

Peters

M. L.

Zuniga

(Eds.), Readings on diversity and social justice (pp. 31–35). Routledge.

33.

Reyes

M. L.

Halcon

J. J.

(1988). Racism in academia: The old wolf revisited. Harvard Educational Review, 58(3), 299–314.

34.

Rohmann

(1999). A world of ideas: A dictionary of important theories, concepts, beliefs, and thinkers. Ballantine Books.

35.

Scheurich

J. J.

(1993). Toward a white discourse on white racism. Educational Researcher, 27(8), 5–10.

36.

Scheurich

J. J.

Young

(1997). Coloring epistemologies: Are our research epistemologies racially biased? Educational Researcher, 26(4), 4–16.

37.

Scheurich

J. J.

Young

(1998). Rejoinder: In the United States of America, in both our souls and our sciences, we are avoiding White racism. Educational Researcher, 27(9), 27–32.

38.

Stanley

C. A.

(2006). Faculty of color: Teaching in predominantly White colleges and universities. Anker.

39.

Stanley

C. A.

Lincoln

Y. S.

(2005). Cross-race faculty mentoring. Change, 37(2), 44–50.

40.

Tierney

W. G.

(1992). Building academic communities of difference. Change, 24(2), 40–46.

41.

Tierney

W. G.

(1993). Academic freedom and the parameters of knowledge. Harvard Educational Review, 63(2), 143–160.

42.

Tierney

W. G.

(1997). Academic outlaws: Queer theory and cultural studies in the academy. SAGE.

43.

Turner

C. S. V.

Gonzalez

J. C.

Wood

J. L.

(2008). Faculty of color in academe: What 20 years of literature tells us. Journal of Diversity in Higher Education, 1(3), 139–168.

44.

Valenzuela

(2004). Leaving children behind: How “Texas style” accountability fails Latino youth. State University of New York Press.

45.

Yoder

J. D.

(1985). An academic woman as a token: A case study. Journal of Social Issues, 41(4), 61–72.