"The Trouble with White Fragility

Abstract

In this dissertation, I show how the racial conflict theory promoted in the book White Fragility isn’t the only useful perspective to explain negative responses to the training and other activities by DEI administrators. Specifically, I argue a class analysis can illuminate the antagonistic relationship between DEI administrators and other stakeholders. Since DEI professionals are an extension of the management class, which is responsible for regulating the behavior of students and employees on behalf of employers in educational institutions, it is predictable that some students and employees will respond with silence, anger, and disengagement. If it is true that these negative responses cannot be reduced to White Fragility, then DEI professionals need to appeal to the interests of their audience and clearly show how their activities can actually be beneficial for students and employees despite the fact that they are extension of management. This dissertation includes three of my articles on administrators in higher education that helped me to develop the aforementioned argument. The first article argues that we should expect race-conscious student services administrators to experience role conflict when students complain about the ways that the executive-level administrators contribute to the reproduction of racial inequality. I contend that role conflict arises because student-centered administrators have to navigate the contradictory expectation of being an advocate for students with grievances about the institution while helping the executive-level administrators improve the reputation and revenue-stream for the university. Therefore, students cannot always expect student-centered administrators to effectively highlight and address their grievances. The second article argues that students who complain about inequity on campus should expect student-centered administrators to respond with self-help coaching. I use the term self-help coaching to capture the process when administrators teach complainants how to highlight and remedy organizational problems themselves. The third article focuses on the ways that student equity administrators (i.e. specialists who work in offices focused on diversity, equity, inclusion, and multicultural affairs) frame their work as beneficial for students. Specifically, I describe three types of frames: expert accountability, affirmation, and advocacy. In the conclusion, I show how DEI professionals can use this information to appeal to the interests of students and employees who recognize their antagonistic relationship with management.