"Universities today are eager to broadcast their commitment to diversity. They publish glossy brochures filled with smiling students from various backgrounds, release statements on inclusion, and point to their demographic numbers as proof of progress. But for many students of color walking through these predominantly white institutions (PWIs), there is a jarring disconnect between the institution's words and the world they see around them."
"Environmental Microaggressions in Everyday Spaces This disconnect is the focus of our new paper, Examining environmental racial microaggressions on a university campus. We wanted to move beyond the overt incidents of racism that make headlines to explore something more subtle but equally corrosive: the messages of exclusion embedded in the very physical environment of a campus. To investigate this phenomenon, I encouraged graduate students in my cultural psychology course to become visual detectives on campus."
University physical environments convey messages about who belongs, who is valued, and who is an afterthought. Environmental racial microaggressions appear in portraits, promotional posters, and website images that silently signal exclusion. Graduate students photographed and reflected on campus imagery that conveyed inclusion or exclusion. Observations revealed tokenism, stereotyping, invisibility, and white savior imagery that reinforce harmful power dynamics. Meaningful inclusion requires more than diverse marketing images and must extend to diverse faculty, deans, and trustees to transform representation and institutional authority.
Read at Psychology Today
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