Making a Difference: University Students of Color Speak Out

Students of color relate their first-hand experiences with educational systems and campus living conditions. Their narratives provide an insider perspective useful to anyone working on diversity issues who is trying to improve institutional culture and policy. The book is a user-friendly guide. The first section focuses on the voices of students of color and draws on the power of personal narratives to reveal alternate perspectives that illuminate and contest the dominant cultures often hidden beliefs about race, culture, institutional goals and power. Following the narratives, contextualizing essays and a lengthy appendix provide further valuable resources and concrete tools, such as websites, lists of associations, a bibliography, and videography of autobiographical videos by people of color. This book should be read by faculty members and students (both white and non-white), parents of college students, college administrators, and executives and administrators of other institutions and businesses. The contextualizing essays following the student narratives are written by academics and student affairs professionals who draw links between issues of institutional access, recruitment and retention of students and faculty of color, curriculum changes, teaching strategies--especially for teaching whiteness and racial identity formation, campus climate, and the relation between an individual institution's history of dealing with race to developments in public policy.

About the Author :
Julia Lesage is associate professor for the English department at the University of Oregon. Abby L. Ferber is associate professor of sociology at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs. Debbie Storrs is assistant professor of sociology at the University of Idaho. Donna Wong is the coordinator of academic support services for the Office of Mulitcultural Programs at Emory University.

Review :
The Lesage et al book offers perspective on how higher education is, and is not, countering effectively the obstacles to a truly antiracist educational setting and system.--Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Bigotry and Human Rights "Miltidiversity: Myers Book Commentary" [This book] is an easy, good and necessary read for undergraduates, graduates, staff, and faculty and will serve as a valuable desktop reference to be used to model and build future research. It is one of the few books that effectively combines white privilege with the ideas and life experiences of people of color.-- "Journal of Higher Education" Especially at a time of increased racial profiling and a massive government assault on hard-won civil liberties, Making A Difference raises important issues for the future of democratic social life, including the question of whether or not we are to have one at all. Making A Difference is a profoundly moving collection of personal narratives that intersect with numerous social justice agendas, creating a vital nexus of collective social activism--a praxis--so important today in the midst of capital's grinding attack on the public sphere. Provocatively unpacking the ideological nature of the dominant culture's 'commonsense' language about race and racial differentiation, Making a Difference offers a powerful critique of educational institutions and workplaces throughout the United States. These first-hand accounts of the lived experiences of students of color provide crucial lessons for white readers who have been culpably inactive in anti-racist struggles but who are willing to enter the dialogical spaces of this book. Everyone who reads this book will benefit in important ways, if only to share this critical pedagogical tool with others.--Peter McLaren, Emeritus Professor, the University of California, Los Angeles Race remains an American obsession. Despite our continuing discomfort with it, and our ongoing pronouncements of its timely demise, it remains the American dilemma. Fortunately Julia Lesage, Abby L. Ferber, Debbie Storrs, and Donna Wong have produced a volume which confronts the consequences of race by presenting the voices of students of color. This book challenges theories, complicates assumptions, and ends silences as it gives voice to a remarkable group of students who poignantly describe their experiences on one university campus. Making a Difference is a must-read for all of those who, regardless of color or culture, are dedicated to creating a campus environment that truly respects diversity.--Prof. Quintard Taylor, University of Washington, Scott and Dorothy Bullitt Professor of American History What does it feel like to be a minority student in a predominantly white university in a predominantly white state? This question is eloquently answered by the students of colour whose testimonies are at the heart of this book. Making a Difference is an important contribution to literature in this area.-- "Race Relations Abstracts"