2008 UW Diversity Forum
Integrating HWCUs
Integrating HWCUs
that understanding racism as a systematic manner is missing in the discussion. And if we don’t have that understanding, we will never understand why it is that
these policies of diversity are, for the most part, bound to fail.”
According to Bonilla-Silva, while the modern civil rights movement dismantled the outward appearance of an institutionalized system of racism, the system
itself was merely transformed. “A new system of practices and behaviors has emerged at all levels: politically, socially and economically that maintains a
systematic advantage for Whites and disadvantages for non-Whites,” Bonilla-Silva said.
How does it come to pass that while the legal vestiges of racism were dismantled that a system of institutionalized racism still exists? “I call it the New
Racism,” Bonilla-Silva said. “And New Racism practices tend to be subtle and have an apparently nonracial character, which allows them to maintain racial
inequality, but in a way that is blinded from engagement. For example, today a realtor may steer Blacks and Whites into different neighborhoods and that level
of steering may or may not be understood by the prospects of those people looking for a house. So you may be steered into a particular area without knowing.
Therefore, if you were to try to go to a court of law and claim discrimination and your claim is ‘This person was really nice to me and showed me 50 houses, I
believe I experienced discrimination,’ the court of law will look at you like you are crazy. But we know. We now have systematic studies where the Housing and
Urban Development Dept. as well as a number of private enterprises have done systematic research where they send people out there. And what they find is that
realtors maintain the racial composition of neighborhoods by showing people different neighborhoods. ‘This is a good neighborhood for you. That is a good
neighborhood for another client.’”
This system of New Racism may be kinder and gentler, but it is just as devastating as the old racism. “So we have developed what some moralists call
‘smiling discrimination’ and it is as effective as the nasty, in-your-face discrimination,” Bonilla-Silva asserted. “It’s like Roberta Flack’s song ‘Killing Me Softly.’ So
killing me softly racism still maintains my secondary standing in the U.S. and it does so in a way where you have more legal protection because it is much harder
to prove your case.”
What keeps this system in view, in Bonilla-Silva’s view is the philosophy of ‘Abstract Liberalism,’ that is actually expressed most often by neoconservatives in
opposing affirmative action in higher education. “That is the frame by which White folks can say something like ‘I’m all for equal opportunity,’” Bonilla-Silva said.
“’That is why I oppose Affirmative Action.’ Excuse me, can you run that by me again? ‘I believe in equal opportunity. I believe that you people are getting all
kinds of advantages in life. Therefore, you are engaging in reverse discrimination. And I like Martin Luther King, want people to be judged by the content of their
character and not by the color of their skin.’”
While in the abstract, the concept sounds wonderful and ideal, in reality they are keeping inequities in place, which brings us back to the discussion about
diversity programs failing at HWCUs. While most of the traditional trappings of a university appear to be benign, they are actually symbols of another time. “We
first have to understand that Wisconsin, Michigan and others are historically White colleges and universities,” Bonilla-Silva said. “They have demography, a
climate, a set of traditions, a culture, a curriculum and a set of symbols that sort of signify Whiteness. Until we address that, that history, which unfortunately is the
reality of these colleges, these diversity programs are bound to ultimately fail.”
In essence, Bonilla-Silva is saying that students of color come onto a campus filled with the traditions and symbolism that were developed when the
institution was almost solidly Euro-American and still today are part of an environment that is more conducive to Euro-American students to succeed.
“Remember that Wisconsin is trying to attract minority faculty like me to go there,” Bonilla-Silva said as an example. “So I go and it is ‘Okay, congratulations, you
are THE minority faculty in a certain department at Wisconsin.’ So you go ‘Okay.’ And you have no community, but they say ‘We love you. We are all for
diversity.’ So it is really hard.’
“And then when you are walking the streets — obviously I don’t walk around with a sign that says ‘I am a special person of color, please don’t discriminate
against me’ — on these college campuses, we do experience discrimination,” he continued. “For example, if I forget something and I need to come to the
campus at night, I can guarantee you that the campus police will come with some nonsense. And they come with some nonsense at a HWCU because we are
still viewed as we don’t belong. A Black person or a Latino person walking the university at 11 p.m. — actually almost walking any time of the day — we are sort
of oddities and therefore the police are always thinking ‘Why is this dark person doing around here?’ In my case, it actually happened with students. I remember
at Michigan going back to my office in the early evening around 7 p.m. carrying books from the library and a graduate student looks at me entering the building
and asked me ‘May I help you?’ And I said ‘Yes, help me get these books to my office.’ And then he realized ‘Oh, you are a professor.’ I said ‘Yes and I need your
assistance. By the way, who are you? Are you a student?’”
So in Bonilla-Silva’s view, diversity programs on a campus like UW-Madison are bound to fail if people look at it just as an individual problem of students of
color and don’t analyze and address the institutional aspects of a university that keep things the way they are.
Next issue: Thwarted diversity efforts, Obama and social movement politics.
these policies of diversity are, for the most part, bound to fail.”
According to Bonilla-Silva, while the modern civil rights movement dismantled the outward appearance of an institutionalized system of racism, the system
itself was merely transformed. “A new system of practices and behaviors has emerged at all levels: politically, socially and economically that maintains a
systematic advantage for Whites and disadvantages for non-Whites,” Bonilla-Silva said.
How does it come to pass that while the legal vestiges of racism were dismantled that a system of institutionalized racism still exists? “I call it the New
Racism,” Bonilla-Silva said. “And New Racism practices tend to be subtle and have an apparently nonracial character, which allows them to maintain racial
inequality, but in a way that is blinded from engagement. For example, today a realtor may steer Blacks and Whites into different neighborhoods and that level
of steering may or may not be understood by the prospects of those people looking for a house. So you may be steered into a particular area without knowing.
Therefore, if you were to try to go to a court of law and claim discrimination and your claim is ‘This person was really nice to me and showed me 50 houses, I
believe I experienced discrimination,’ the court of law will look at you like you are crazy. But we know. We now have systematic studies where the Housing and
Urban Development Dept. as well as a number of private enterprises have done systematic research where they send people out there. And what they find is that
realtors maintain the racial composition of neighborhoods by showing people different neighborhoods. ‘This is a good neighborhood for you. That is a good
neighborhood for another client.’”
This system of New Racism may be kinder and gentler, but it is just as devastating as the old racism. “So we have developed what some moralists call
‘smiling discrimination’ and it is as effective as the nasty, in-your-face discrimination,” Bonilla-Silva asserted. “It’s like Roberta Flack’s song ‘Killing Me Softly.’ So
killing me softly racism still maintains my secondary standing in the U.S. and it does so in a way where you have more legal protection because it is much harder
to prove your case.”
What keeps this system in view, in Bonilla-Silva’s view is the philosophy of ‘Abstract Liberalism,’ that is actually expressed most often by neoconservatives in
opposing affirmative action in higher education. “That is the frame by which White folks can say something like ‘I’m all for equal opportunity,’” Bonilla-Silva said.
“’That is why I oppose Affirmative Action.’ Excuse me, can you run that by me again? ‘I believe in equal opportunity. I believe that you people are getting all
kinds of advantages in life. Therefore, you are engaging in reverse discrimination. And I like Martin Luther King, want people to be judged by the content of their
character and not by the color of their skin.’”
While in the abstract, the concept sounds wonderful and ideal, in reality they are keeping inequities in place, which brings us back to the discussion about
diversity programs failing at HWCUs. While most of the traditional trappings of a university appear to be benign, they are actually symbols of another time. “We
first have to understand that Wisconsin, Michigan and others are historically White colleges and universities,” Bonilla-Silva said. “They have demography, a
climate, a set of traditions, a culture, a curriculum and a set of symbols that sort of signify Whiteness. Until we address that, that history, which unfortunately is the
reality of these colleges, these diversity programs are bound to ultimately fail.”
In essence, Bonilla-Silva is saying that students of color come onto a campus filled with the traditions and symbolism that were developed when the
institution was almost solidly Euro-American and still today are part of an environment that is more conducive to Euro-American students to succeed.
“Remember that Wisconsin is trying to attract minority faculty like me to go there,” Bonilla-Silva said as an example. “So I go and it is ‘Okay, congratulations, you
are THE minority faculty in a certain department at Wisconsin.’ So you go ‘Okay.’ And you have no community, but they say ‘We love you. We are all for
diversity.’ So it is really hard.’
“And then when you are walking the streets — obviously I don’t walk around with a sign that says ‘I am a special person of color, please don’t discriminate
against me’ — on these college campuses, we do experience discrimination,” he continued. “For example, if I forget something and I need to come to the
campus at night, I can guarantee you that the campus police will come with some nonsense. And they come with some nonsense at a HWCU because we are
still viewed as we don’t belong. A Black person or a Latino person walking the university at 11 p.m. — actually almost walking any time of the day — we are sort
of oddities and therefore the police are always thinking ‘Why is this dark person doing around here?’ In my case, it actually happened with students. I remember
at Michigan going back to my office in the early evening around 7 p.m. carrying books from the library and a graduate student looks at me entering the building
and asked me ‘May I help you?’ And I said ‘Yes, help me get these books to my office.’ And then he realized ‘Oh, you are a professor.’ I said ‘Yes and I need your
assistance. By the way, who are you? Are you a student?’”
So in Bonilla-Silva’s view, diversity programs on a campus like UW-Madison are bound to fail if people look at it just as an individual problem of students of
color and don’t analyze and address the institutional aspects of a university that keep things the way they are.
Next issue: Thwarted diversity efforts, Obama and social movement politics.
By Jonathan Gramling
Part 1 of 2
Dr. Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, the keynote speaker for the 2008 UW Diversity Forum, is a jovial, yet very intense intellectual. In
talking to him over the phone, I could picture Bonilla-Silva spending hours at the now-defunct 602 Club on University Avenue when
he was attaining his Ph.D. in sociology from UW-Madison in the 1980s drinking beer and discussing politics into the wee hours of the
morning.
Bonilla-Silva is now a professor of sociology at Duke University. He bluntly talks about race in his books and classroom teaching
and serves as a lightning rod of discussion about race if the comments of conservative bloggers are any indication. Bonilla-Silva,
one gets the impression, enjoys the engagement.
The title of Bonilla-Silva’s talk is ‘Racism, Discrimination, Colorblindness and the Diversity Puzzle at HWCUs.’ That’s not a
misprint. Bonilla-Silva is talking about ‘Historically White Colleges and Universities,’ universities like UW-Madison. In his talk, Bonilla-
Silva will shy away from discussing the individual manifestations of racism and hone in on institutional manifestations of it.
“Most of us would not say that the racial problem of slavery or Jim Crow was prejudiced people,” Bonilla-Silva said during a
phone interview with The Capital City Hues. “We would say no, it was a social system that affected everyone inside. I’m suggesting
Part 1 of 2
Dr. Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, the keynote speaker for the 2008 UW Diversity Forum, is a jovial, yet very intense intellectual. In
talking to him over the phone, I could picture Bonilla-Silva spending hours at the now-defunct 602 Club on University Avenue when
he was attaining his Ph.D. in sociology from UW-Madison in the 1980s drinking beer and discussing politics into the wee hours of the
morning.
Bonilla-Silva is now a professor of sociology at Duke University. He bluntly talks about race in his books and classroom teaching
and serves as a lightning rod of discussion about race if the comments of conservative bloggers are any indication. Bonilla-Silva,
one gets the impression, enjoys the engagement.
The title of Bonilla-Silva’s talk is ‘Racism, Discrimination, Colorblindness and the Diversity Puzzle at HWCUs.’ That’s not a
misprint. Bonilla-Silva is talking about ‘Historically White Colleges and Universities,’ universities like UW-Madison. In his talk, Bonilla-
Silva will shy away from discussing the individual manifestations of racism and hone in on institutional manifestations of it.
“Most of us would not say that the racial problem of slavery or Jim Crow was prejudiced people,” Bonilla-Silva said during a
phone interview with The Capital City Hues. “We would say no, it was a social system that affected everyone inside. I’m suggesting
| Dr. Eduardo Bonilla-Silva |