The Journey to Inclusion

Abstract

This article examines the effectiveness of a standing committee on diversity in addressing issues of diversity in a predominately white school of social work in the Midwest. The work of this committee is viewed through the lens of a transformational model of diversity. A transformational model of diversity refers to moving organizations from an ethnocentric paradigm to the infusion of diversity at every level of the organization. This moves beyond an affirmative action approach, in which success is measured by representation alone, to one of full incorporation, in which the roots of the organization are grounded in liberatory worldviews. This is the second study in a series on “The Illusion of Inclusion”(Roberts & Smith, 2002). This qualitative study is based, in part, on a survey of faculty and staff perceptions of the mission, vision, and actions of the committee on diversity over its 30-year history. It was discovered that while diversity committee did have a role to play in the journey toward inclusion, its work and to some extent, its leadership were marginalized. Participation in the committee was alternately a source of fulfillment and great stress for its members. Themes associated with membership and leadership, ownership, operationalizing the mission, and the demise of the committee are highlighted. The authors offer suggestions for moving academic organizations beyond illusion toward infusion and full incorporation from African-centered, alternative, and liberatory paradigms.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 19 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.