Whiteness and Neoliberal Diversity: The (Re)production of Ideology through College Students’ Diversity Discourse

Abstract

Diversity has become a proxy term used to talk about racism and other forms of systemic oppression on college campuses and in the classroom. Although scholars have suggested connecting diversity to power, privilege, and systemic oppression, whiteness can be used to challenge these systemic conversations bringing into question the usefulness of this suggestion. Based on interviews with 15 college students, I argue that college students’ diversity discourse functioned to (re)produce whiteness and neoliberal diversity by promoting individualism and meritocracy. I also suggest that instructors’ abilities to intervene in the (re)production of harmful ideologies are limited because students wanted classroom diversity discourse to focus on their perspectives and opinions which could challenge instructors’ attempts to connect individual discourses to systemic analyses. In turn, I propose dialogic instruction and critical communication pedagogy as an intervention. As instructors engage in these practices they should work to shift students’ understandings of racism, sexism, and other forms of oppression from an individual level toward systemic analyses.