White faculty members' responses to racial diversity at predominantly white institutions.

Abstract

By investigating the individual and institutional factors that affect white faculty members' ideological and interpersonal responses to African-American students, this study addresses an area that has rarely been empirically investigated in the higher education literature--how white faculty members at predominantly white institutions contribute to the environment African-American students experience. This study's conceptual framework, informed by the social-psychological literature on racial attitudes and behaviors, draws particularly on recent theories that work to understand well-intentioned whites' racial attitudes and responses. In particular, the theories developed by Gaertner and Dovidio and Katz, Wackenhut, and Hass suggest that, as a result of socialization in American culture and human cognitive processing tendencies, whites have neither univalently positive or negative attitudes towards African-Americans--their feelings are both supportive and antipathetic. Working under this assumption of whites' ambivalence towards African-Americans, this study pursues the effect that institutional context has on activating either the positive or negative aspects of white faculty members' attitudes towards African-Americans. The central, hypothesis is that particular aspects of the institutional context will have a moderating effect on the direct relationship between faculty members' attitudinal tendencies (as reflected by indicators of culturally inherited beliefs and cognitive processing tendencies) and their ideological and interpersonal responses, amplifying either their positive or negative affect. Using hierarchical multiple regression with product terms, data from a mail survey questionnaire of 941 white faculty members at six diverse four year institutions were analyzed. Of the individual characteristics, gender, rank, academic discipline, and social-psychological accessibility had a strong effect on faculty members' ideological responses, but no effect on interpersonal responses. Contact with African-American students in classes had an effect on interpersonal responses but not on ideological responses. The three attitudinal arousal context effects (Perceptions of threat to faculty status-quo, Perceived difference between African-American and white students on campus, Perceived activism by African-American students on their own behalf) had small direct effects and strong interaction effects. The interaction effects support the study's moderating hypothesis. Particular institutional contexts shape whites' responses, often moving individuals to become more supportive or, in some cases less responsive, by tapping various aspects of whites' ambivalent feelings towards African-Americans.