The Impact of Diversity Initiatives on Students of Color—What Do the Students Say?

This chapter explores the attitudes of minority students of color who attend Protestant campuses. A significant percentage of such students have racial attitudes like those of majority group students. However, minority students who have not adopted such attitudes struggle with the racial atmosphere on Protestant campuses. I term the first group “assimilated” and the second group “racialized” racial minorities. Both assimilated and racialized students of color lack faith in the general diversity programs but for different reasons. Assimilated students of color find such programs ineffective because they may offend majority group students; racialized students of color perceive the unwillingness of majority group students to acknowledge continuing racial problems as the reason such programs fail. Like majority group students, students of color are also more likely to perceive professors of color and diversity courses to be more helpful than general diversity programs; however; they did not tie this perception to personally liking a particular professor. Students of color also valued student-led multicultural organizations but only if they perceived these organizations as uniting, instead of dividing, students of different races.