Diversity Regimes: Why Talk Is Not Enough to Fix Racial Inequality at Universities

As a major, public flagship university in the American South, so-called “Diversity University” has struggled to define its commitments to diversity and inclusion, and to put those commitments into practice. InDiversity Regimes, sociologist James M. Thomas draws on more than two years of ethnographic fieldwork at DU to illustrate the conflicts and contingencies between a core set of actors at DU over what diversity is and how it should be accomplished. Thomas’s analysis of this dynamic process uncovers what he calls “diversity regimes”: a complex combination of meanings, practices, and actions that work to institutionalize commitments to diversity, but in doing so obscure, entrench, and even magnify existing racial inequalities. Thomas’s concept of diversity regimes, and his focus on how they are organized and unfold in real time, provides new insights into the social organization of multicultural principles and practices.