Abstract
The opportunity to attend a racially and economically diverse school is far from guaranteed in the United States. Nonetheless, many colleges and universities recognize the benefits and are still committed to cultivating such an environment. In The Impact of College Diversity: Struggles and Successes at Age 30, Elizabeth Aries describes how 30-year-old Amherst College alumni reflect on experiencing diversity at an elite campus. The book is an extension of previous research that the author describes as exploratory given the method of semi-structured, in-depth interviews. Substantive chapters are consistently concluded by discussing how insights from the data align with previous scholarship.
Chapter One orients the reader to the study within the context of previous waves of data collection. This helps because the insights of the book are inherently longitudinal. Participants’ impressions of Amherst as freshmen and then as recent graduates are incorporated (particularly in the early chapters) in order to describe the evolution of their identities, perspectives on racism, and perspectives on class inequality. A notable feature of this cohort is how their biographies from the time of graduation to age 30 intersect with a contentious time in American history in regard to identity, race, and politics. The period could be named, “From Obama to Trump,” as the cohort graduated Amherst in the initial months of Barack Obama's first term and completed their age-30 interviews the year Donald Trump took the Oath of Office.
Chapter One concludes with a discussion of the study's limitations, such as the inability to include students of Asian, Hispanic, and other backgrounds due to the limited number of such students at the school and the heterogeneity within some racial groups. Readers may desire to skip ahead to the methodological appendixes at this point. There, the author provides details concerning re-establishment of contact with participants and recruitment, interview procedures, and data analysis. Full lists of survey questions and interview questions are available as well.
Chapter Two explores the development of white participants’ racial identities and what they learned about racism through the lens of their undergraduate experiences. Responses are categorized in an ordinal fashion, beginning with participants who appear unaware of the significance of whiteness and racism. The next theme involves colorblind racism, where some participants voice perceptions of reverse racism.
An important finding in the book comes next regarding whites’ understanding of how stereotypes and discrimination harm people of color. Longitudinal results indicate this understanding increased for participants overall, and that a majority of white participants would desire to teach the same awareness to their children. The highest degree of learning described in this chapter is one's ability to recognize their white privilege. The organization of the chapter pays off as readers learn gradations of what perceptions follow after exposure to diverse college classmates but then also see the variation within thematic categories. For example, while a large majority of white respondents expressed some understanding of white privilege, in some cases the responses fluctuate between that understanding and colorblind language. As is to be expected, there are gray areas. Participants’ desire for society to address structural racial inequalities, according to interview results, is less common. Therefore, the author advocates for colleges to bolster education on the depth and breadth of systemic racism in American society.
Chapter Three deepens the discussion on exposure to a racially diverse community while adding an additional layer of insights from the study's Black participants. For many, the college campus was the first place participants encountered racial diversity. Results indicate this was painful for Black participants, as many experienced racism and microaggressions. Reflecting on these times at age 30, Black students explained how most benefits of their diversity experiences boiled down to learning resiliency in the face of minoritization. Exposure to whiteness and direct observation of how white privilege operates are framed in the book as forms of capital that participants used later in life to navigate historically white spaces. For white students, the experience was more positive. They learned to check their own biases and privilege; moments that deepened their empathy became lasting memories. The in-depth interviews captured how cross-race friendships were genuinely valued. Related to friendship, one theme spanning the book is that students learned the most about difference from their peers; learning from academic material or Amherst professors was less commonly reported.
Participants are described by their race and social class in The Impact of College Diversity. While class is dichotomized, it still provides added context for understanding students’ experiences of diversity and inequality on campus. Chapter Four documents lessons learned from interacting with classmates from different economic backgrounds. These parallel similar themes in the previous chapters. Privileged students gained appreciation for the advantages their families’ wealth provided, and students from more modest backgrounds gained experience in settings they were previously restricted from. Still, it was far more burdensome for lower-income students to acculturate to an elite space. As reported later, most of the participants who came to Amherst on scholarships nonetheless agreed that access to the school enabled their social mobility.
While the opening chapters emphasize the value of diversity, Chapter Five turns to the benefits of attending an elite college. It describes results concerning participants’ engagement in their communities and in citizenship at age 30. Chapter Six describes how participants benefitted from Amherst social and cultural capital to achieve social mobility. Standardized survey results provide descriptive statistics on participants’ educational and occupational attainment to complement the personalized narratives. Chapter Seven will be of further interest to those studying identity. Here, in-depth interview questions explored the consequences of economic, professional, or educational mobility on one's identity. Reflecting on a young-adulthood path guided by experiences at an elite institution, many participants found themselves quite different from the families and communities where they were raised. This included managing political rifts between friends or loved ones where differences in the willingness to critically assess complex social issues (a skill attributed to their education) appeared to be widening the rift.
Nearing the conclusion, Chapter Eight of The Impact of College Diversity returns to race and diversity. Here, readers learn how participants navigate work settings in light of past experiences. It is a familiar story of persistence through marginalization and microaggressions for Black participants. Some of the lessons for navigating this experience come from Amherst and some come from family socialization. For white participants, readers learn more about those who chose to work in diverse settings while addressing social inequalities. While not a particularly large group, their motivations to do so are rooted in experiences with diverse friends and classmates in college. Similarly, survey findings elsewhere in the text show that many white participants maintained cross-race relationships and participated in racially diverse settings in young adulthood. The evidence is not overwhelming, but exposure to diversity in college certainly mattered according to these participants.
In the concluding chapter, the author provides suggestions for improving diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts on campuses. While student affairs professionals and administrators should be interested in The Impact of College Diversity in general, there are numerous suggestions for improving campus climate here. At the same time, many of the suggestions are based on particular initiatives at Amherst. Non-elite campuses with lesser endowments and greater needs may experience more implementation challenges.