Challenging Normalized Gendered Racism in Departmental Efforts to Broaden Participation in Computer Science

Abstract

In recent decades, initiatives to diversify post-secondary educational spaces have blossomed. Many of these “broadening participation” efforts are in STEM undergraduate departments that, historically and presently, predominantly serve white men. Using a raced-gendered theoretical lens, we conducted a narrative analysis of interviews with 55 faculty, staff, students, and administrators at four public universities, individuals who had all been identified as leaders of diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts in their universities’ computer science departments. Our findings across institutions illustrate how their efforts often contravened the stated goals of diversity initiatives, especially for Women of Color, and continued to reproduce white supremacy in computer science. This intersectional inquiry affirms prior scholars’ calls to name and confront how diversity initiatives and their leaders deflect to gender while being race-avoidant, a pattern that functions to further marginalize Women of Color in higher education.