Engaging the "Race Question" : Accountability and Equity in U.S. Higher Education

This book is for anyone who is challenged or troubled by the substantial disparities in college participation, persistence, and completion among racial and ethnic groups in the United States. As co-directors of the Center for Urban Education (CUE) at the University of Southern California, co-authors Alicia Dowd and Estela Bensimon draw on their experience conducting CUE’s Equity Scorecard, a comprehensive action research process which has been implemented at over 40 colleges and universities in the United States. They demonstrate what educators need to know and do to take an active role in racial equity work on their own campuses.

Through case studies of college faculty, administrators, and student affairs professionals engaged in inquiry using the Equity Scorecard, the book clarifies the “muddled conversation” colleges and universities are having about equity. Synthesizing equity standards based on three theories of justice - justice as fairness, justice as care, and justice as transformation - the authors provide strategies for enacting equity in practice on college campuses. Engaging the “Race Question” illustrates how practitioner inquiry can be used to address the “race question” with wisdom and calls on college leaders and educators to change the policies and practices that perpetuate institutional and structural racism - and provides a blueprint for doing so.