The Lack of Black and Hispanic Professors: A Reflection

For many years I have worked in higher education, this article leads me to a lot of interesting thoughts as well as lots of retrospection, over the years I have set through lots of cabinet meetings with presidents and chancellors and other senior administrators. As I looked around the room not only was I the only minority there I seem to be the only first-generation (a person whose parents did not graduate college or high school) individual in the room. There have been lots of discussions about the need for diversity in colleges and universities about how to increase the diversity of administration, staff, faculty and students. That conversation always seems to in with a yes we are looking for diversity BUT the person needs to fit into our culture. Let's talk about a true oxymoron if a person fits into a culture are you truly looking for diversity or are you just looking for people who think exactly like you who have the same life experience and just a different skin tone, gender or religion.

A long time ago I used to work for a wonderful lady named Peggy Manning; she used to have a theory called a D.W.E. (Dynamic Work Environment), basically you hire the best person for the job, and the workplace environment should be able to adjust. So for example when we were hiring a system administrator, we would create a written test with the skill sets we were looking for in regardless of race, age, gender or religion we always would hire the person with the highest score. No other factors should matter. If a person and the organization could not adjust to personality or culture difficulties than the person with the difficulty would need to leave the organization.

Let's compare this to the standard statement in education today " we must hire a person with the necessary political skills and the ability to fit in our culture" . Now let's take a look at the average university or college culture 98% Caucasian majority of males. So with this description who is the person that will fit into the average university or college culture today? This does not lead to a true search for diversity. As academics and educators you would think we would be a lot farther in the true search for diversity.

This blog post will probably offend a lot of people in the majority of academia today. But if it leads to anyone out there in administration truly reviewing their policy and thoughts on diversity, it will be well worth any criticism or ridicule that I will receive for writing this one.

PS I used to be associated with a college and a primary statement that they would use against change was "If you were from around here you would understand' . To be from around the there I would have to be a Caucasian male of Dutch dissent. The minority population throughout the whole town was less than 1% a point to think about. The minority population at the college was less than .1% that included all students, staff, faculty and administrators.