Coming to Terms With the “R” Word
Colleges may boast diversity, but what does that really mean for campus climate?

By Natalie Y. Moore

When classes resume in August, first-year students at the University of Missouri-Kansas City will read a book intended to open their minds on social justice. They can expect many campuswide conversations about the complications of immigration as related in Enrique’s Journey, by journalist Sonia Nazario.

“We hope [students] come away with critical-thinking skills … that this is one of the first things that starts them on that journey,” says Dr. Karen Dace, UMKC’s deputy chancellor for diversity, access and equity.

Broadening perceptions among the student body through required reading dovetails with a broader diversity mission that UMKC officials are putting in place.

UMKC has drawn internal and external ire for the campus’s historically chilly environment for Black students. The NAACP Kansas City chapter and the university signed a memorandum of understanding, mediated by the U.S. Department of Justice, last month that pledges to beef up the underfunded and understaffed Black studies program. The university also promised to recruit and retain Black faculty and students and to provide diversity training that extends beyond the Black population.

“I’m not about food, festival and fun,” says Dace of the oft-used diversity touch points. Her diversity czar position is a result of new inclusion initiatives. “For a lot of people, if that’s all diversity is, that’s OK. Everybody loves to eat and watch folks dance.

For us to do anything that’s going to have an impact and work at social justice … we might have to have some difficult conversations.”

Blacks comprise 12 percent of the student population at the urban university, which abuts Black neighborhoods. Yet there are only three Black full professors, compared with 111 White full professors, and there are eight Black associate professors but 150 White ones.