Running Head: DIVERSITY

Diversity:

What are the Barriers to “Fostering” Diverse Communities?

Piper Pugh

Graduate School of Education, University of Pennsylvania

Dr. Alesha Gayle

EDUC 606: Literacy Theory, Research, and Practice

April 10, 2022

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What is Involved in “Fostering Diversity?”

“Diversity” is a discursive buzzword, especially in educational settings. Schools, just like

many other institutions or corporations, have made the move to adapt their bylaws and mission

statements to incorporate “diversity” as an institutional pillar–as something to honor and strive

towards. Our own institution, Penn GSE, has too announced their “commitment” to “foster a

diverse community.” But what are the barriers to this work? What is “diversity,” and what

complicates our ability to make space for it–to “foster” it within our institutions and classrooms?

Diversity, despite often being conflated with “race,” extends beyond racial difference,

beyond socioeconomic status, gender identity, sexuality, ability, immigration status, linguistic,

religious, national, and ethnic difference, to include diversity of ideas, knowledge, ways of

knowing and being, or means of expression. Thomas (2020) argues that diversity, especially as

it’s situated and understood within the classrooms, is seen as synonymous with the inclusion and

support of “underserved populations,” primarily Black, Latinx, and Indigenous populations, but

this view has a narrow scope. Gibson (1976) outlines several key ways that the education

system in the United States has attempted to awaken itself to issues of “diversity,” many of

which similarly utilize a narrow scope on diversity’s meaning and place in the classroom. The

majority of these widely used approaches–which include defining groups through sets of fixed,

immovable traits and customs–catalyze pigeonholing, emphasize group categorization, and,

albeit unintentionally, make a Monolith of cultural groups (1976). Ladson-Billings and Tate

(1995) similarly assert that these programs superficially address “diversity,” and “often reduce it

to trivial examples and artifacts of cultures such as eating ethnic or cultural foods, singing songs

or dancing.” However, there is no actual space made for “diversity” when the dominant,

White culture and school system attempts to enclose and confine diversity to serve
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their/our own ends. While it is tempting to believe that “more diversity” or more inclusion of

“diverse perspectives” inherently and exclusively corrects historically corrupt or racist

institutions, or has the ability to catalyze large, systemic changes, school and interpersonal power

dynamics, namely White Privilege and Supremacy, continue to preclude the cultivation of

classroom spaces where students can exist more fully as their diverse, multiliterate, multicultural,

multilingual, transnational, and unique selves.

What are We Up Against?: Racism & White Privilege as Situated in the System & the Body

Ladson-Billings and Tate (1995) aptly argue that race is not a biologically fixed reality,

but a socially and “ideologically” manufactured means of categorization, mobilized in order to

subjugate groups of people. ​Critical race theory argues that in the United States, racism is not

accidental or unintended; it is deeply embedded within and purposely reproduced by our

government and legal system, which were founded with the intention of supporting systems of

power that privilege some identities, while legally subjugating and discriminating against others.

This extends to our schools, where racism is institutionally embedded, because “if [it] were

merely isolated, unrelated, individual acts, we would expect to see at least a few examples of

educational excellence and equity together in the nation’s public schools. Instead, those places

where African Americans do experience educational success tend to be outside of public

schools.” Our schools are founded to support the success of White students and structured

to support the “failure” of students of color, so it is crucial for us, as scholars and educators,

to adopt a critical lens in order to question, identify, and disrupt these inequalities perpetuated by

us and our school system (1995). “Fostering diversity” requires systemic and structural

reconciliation and change.

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In order to honor the breadth of our student body, and to invite their unique funds of

knowledge into our classroom, we as educators–especially White educators–have to address the

way that racism and White Supremacy operates on a larger systemic level, baked into our

systems, schools, curriculum, and policy, but also how it operates on a personal level–how our

own practices, assumptions, and worldviews reproduce White Supremacy in our classrooms and

with(in) our students (Moll et al., 1992). Saad (2020) emphasizes the necessity of addressing the

“me” complicit in White Supremacy, underscoring the danger of ignoring personal responsibility

by exclusively situating White Supremacy in distant “institutions,” “white people,” “structures,”

or “America.” Brandt & Clinton (2009) shed additional light on the necessity to blur lines

between personal/institutional and local/global: “everything is local. No larger forces or larger

social structures sit out somewhere in space bearing down on us: All is made of local

interactions.” Structures are still made up of individuals. By situating White Privilege and

Supremacy within my body, I am forced to address my role in the White centric curriculum,

practices, and institutional values that contribute to school cultures that fail to “foster diverse

communities.” This criticality and reflexivity is central to creating spaces that actually

accept, promote, and honor “diversity,” whether it be linguistic or ethnic diversity, ability

differences, or diversity in ways of knowing and conceptualizing the world. If we are not

critical of our own practice and institutions, we will reproduce White Supremacist values that

deny our students space to exist as their whole selves.

I find it imperative to acknowledge that however crucial this critical perspective is, our

school system is founded to promote the opposite. Our “banking system of education,” which

stipulates that students “uncritically accept and thereby reproduce their assigned place in the

social hierarchy,” de-centers student knowledge and attempts to write over their own reality with
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a type of “‘ready-made’ knowledge’” that perpetuates White Supremacy and discredits student

experience (Freire, 1970; Collins & Bilge, 2016). This system positions students as failures if

they are unwilling to indiscriminately absorb these “facts” (Collins & Bilge, 2016). Students who

are, in fact, brave enough to question textbook facts are positioned to do poorly in school and on

formal measures of knowledge, such as essays or tests. A 16-year-old, Black male student of

mine recently grappled with a similar problem, after being asked to argue the economic

advantages of slavery, using a textbook which stated, “eighteeenth-century America seemed like

a shining land of equality and opportunity–with the notorious exception of slavery.” The student,

struggling with the disgust he experienced over the content, chose to continue writing his essay,

with the hopes of appeasing his teacher and receiving an A.

“Diverse” Barriers and Further Implications

Even within schools that champion the “diversity” of their student body, institutions

perpetuate discrimination and segregation according to students’ diverse identities. Blanchett

(2010) implicates both institutional and individual White privilege and racism in the

disproportionate placement of Black students in special education programs, which she calls a

“discursive tool for exercising White privilege and racism.” Diagnoses are often made by

untrained school personnel and educators, who wield subjective and inconsistent eligibility

criteria, and prompt students’ removal from mainstream school and containment in less rigorous,

segregated classroom spaces. This is exceptionally dangerous because educators often see

“Whiteness as the norm,” so “the academic skills, behavior, and social skills of African

American and other students of color” are ascribed with “deviance” and deficiency (2010).

Students are judged for their ability to conform sufficiently to dominant, White perceptions of
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success, politeness, order, and knowledge. Similarly, zero-tolerance policies (and the rising rates

of suspensions and expulsions) in schools primarily impact students of color and students with

disabilities (Fuentes, 2011). Catch-all categories like “disorderly conduct” and “willful defiance”

are used to target youth of color for expressing themselves, thinking critically, questioning

structure or authority, or demanding respect (Fuentes, 2011; Morris, 2016). When school

policies and codes of conduct are based on White standards of being, it is a certain and

intended reality than non-white students will be penalized for their existence and

occupation of the space alone.

It is not enough to proclaim a need for a diverse student body or staff. As educators, it is

vital to possess an understanding of school realities and foundations that create barriers for our

students so that we may meaningfully imagine and construct spaces that truly “foster diverse

communities.”
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References

Blanchett, W. J. (2010). Disproportionate Representation of African American Students in

Special Education: Acknowledging the Role of White Privilege and Racism. Educational

Researcher, Vol. 35, No. 6, pp. 24–28.

Brandt, D., & Clinton, K. (2002). Limits of the local: Expanding perspectives on literacy as a

social practice. Journal of Literacy Research, 34(3), 337–356.

Collins, P. H., & Bilge, S. (2016). Intersectionality. Cambridge, UK: Polity.

Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Continuum Publishers.

Fuentes, A. (2011) Arresting Development: Zero Tolerance and the Criminalization of Children.

Rethinking Schools. Winter 2011/2012, PP 18-23.

Gibson, M. A. (1984). Approaches to multicultural education in the United States: Some

concepts and assumptions. Anthropology & Education Quarterly, 15(1), 94-119.

González, N., Moll, L. C., and Amanti, C. (2006). Funds of knowledge: Theorizing practices in

households, communities, and classrooms. Routledge.

Ladson-Billings, G. & Tate, W. (1995). Toward a Critical Race Theory in education. Teachers

College Record, 97(1), 47-68.

Moll, L. C., Amanti, C., Neff, D., & Gonzalez, N. (1992). Funds of knowledge for teaching:

Using a qualitative approach to connect homes and classrooms. Theory into Practice, 31,

132-141.

Morris, M.W. (2016) Pushout: The Criminalization of Black Girls in Schools. New York: The

New Press. Introduction and Chapter 2.

Saad, L. F. (2020), Me and White Supremacy: Combat Racism, Change the World, and Become

a Good Ancestor, Welcome to the Work and The Basics).