Racial Battle Fatigue in Higher Education
Exposing the Myth of Post-Racial America
Foreword by William A. Smith Edited by Kenneth J. Fasching-Varner, Katrice A. Albert, Roland W. Mitchell, Chaunda Allen
Not available to order
Publication date:
23 December 2014Length of book:
270 pagesPublisher
Rowman & Littlefield PublishersISBN-13: 9781442229822
Racial Battle Fatigue is described as the physical and psychological toll taken due to constant and unceasing discrimination, microagressions, and stereotype threat. The literature notes that individuals who work in environments with chronic exposure to discrimination and microaggressions are more likely to suffer from forms of generalized anxiety manifested by both physical and emotional syptoms. This edited volume looks at RBF from the perspectives of graduate students, middle level academics, and chief diversity officers at major institutions of learning.
RBF takes up William A. Smith’s idea and extends it as a means of understanding how the “academy” or higher education operates. Through microagressions, stereotype threat, underfunding and defunding of initiatives/offices, expansive commitments to diversity related strategic plans with restrictive power and action, and departmental climates of exclusivity and inequity; diversity workers (faculty, staff, and administration of color along with white allies in like positions) find themselves in a badlands where identity difference is used to promote institutional values while at the same time creating unimaginable work spaces for these workers.
RBF takes up William A. Smith’s idea and extends it as a means of understanding how the “academy” or higher education operates. Through microagressions, stereotype threat, underfunding and defunding of initiatives/offices, expansive commitments to diversity related strategic plans with restrictive power and action, and departmental climates of exclusivity and inequity; diversity workers (faculty, staff, and administration of color along with white allies in like positions) find themselves in a badlands where identity difference is used to promote institutional values while at the same time creating unimaginable work spaces for these workers.
The myth that race no longer matters in our society or affects one's daily lived experiences is carefully and brilliantly tackled in Racial Battle Fatigue in Higher Education: Exposing the Myth of Post-Racial America. Through touching personal narratives, theory-building essays, and expositions of empirical research, this hefty volume assembles an eclectic gathering of voices – from graduate students and faculty, to diversity officers – to examine the effects of systemic racism in Higher Education.