Addressing Racial Awareness and Color‐Blindness in Higher Education

Abstract

Racial awareness is a critical foundation to racial sensitivity, and it is a necessity for future professionals who want to be prepared to succeed in an increasingly diverse society. Several factors have been shown to influence racial awareness in professionals including their own race, their personal experience with racism, and the amount/quality of training they receive on the topic of race. Institutions of higher education that pride themselves on preparing students to work in a global and diverse market should make a purposeful effort to teach students how to address issues related to race and racism. This chapter offers recommendations for how to transform traditional programs into programs with a focus on antiracism using a Critical Race Theory paradigm. For example, curricula should be designed to challenge students to focus on their personal experiences of racism and racial identity rather than simply studying others’. Student resistance can be minimized by recruiting faculty and students with not only racial diversity, but with diversity of experiences with racism. Finally, by purposefully engaging in interdisciplinary work on campus, smaller departments or more homogeneous departments can provide racial minority students with much needed opportunities for racial identity development and cross‐racial interactions.