Invisible Toll : Race, Power, and the Institutional Cost of Belonging in Higher Education

The American academy has historically been a white male dominated institution. This book reveals how micro-aggressions and other forms of institutional oppression affect subaltern professors, students, and administrators in the academy, despite substantial diversity rhetoric.

Orelus analyses ethnographic research carried out over a six year period including testimonios which document personal narratives of subaltern identities in academia. Orelus explores micro-aggressions across the structures of race, class, gender, sexual orientation, religion, immigration status and also carries out a socio-linguistic analysis of the testimonios, looking at discrimination due to language, dialects and accents. While some of the participants are US born, others are from Colombia, Germany, Ghana, India, Jamaica, Jordan, Mexico, the Philippines, Puerto Rico and Spain. Drawing on ideas from critical race theory and decolonial theory, Orelus unpacks various forms of inequities and micro-aggressions, including racial profiling, denial of promotion and tenure, and invisibility, that subaltern professors, students, and administrators have faced in American higher education. The book includes a foreword by Kevin Kumashiro and an afterword by Wayne Au.