Making a Difference: University Students of Color Speak Out

In this volume students of colour relate their first-hand experiences with educational systems and campus living conditions. Their narratives provide an insider perspective that should be useful to those working on diversity issues who are trying to improve institutional culture and policy. The first section focuses on the voices of students of colour and draws on the power of personal narratives to reveal alternate perspectives that illuminate and contest the dominant culture’s often hidden beliefs about race, culture, institutional goals and power. Following the narratives, contextualizing essays and a lengthy appendix provide further resources and tools, such as Web sites, lists of associations, bibliography and videography of autobiographical videos by people of colour. The contextualizing essays are written by academics and student affairs professionals who draw links between issues of institutional access, recruitment and retention of students and faculty of colour, curriculum changes, teaching strategies especially for teaching whiteness and racial identity formation, campus climate, and the relation between an individual institution’s history of dealing with race to developments in public policy.