The Diversity Bargain: And Other Dilemmas of Race, Admissions, and Meritocracy at Elite Universities

304 Pages·2016·1.283 MB·English

by  Natasha K. Warikoo

The DiversiTy Bargain

T H E D I V E R S I T Y
B A R G A I N
anD OTher Dilemmas Of race,
aDmissiOns, anD meriTOcracy aT
eliTe UniversiTies
N A T A S H A K . W A R I K O O
The University of Chicago Press Chicago and London
naTasha K. WariKOO is associate professor of education at
the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She is the author
of Balancing Acts: Youth Culture in the Global City.
The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637
The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London
© 2016 by The University of Chicago
All rights reserved. Published 2016.
Printed in the United States of America
25 24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16  1 2 3 4 5
isBn- 13: 978- 0- 226- 40014- 3 (cloth)
isBn- 13: 978- 0- 226- 40028- 0 (e- book)
DOi: 10.7208/chicago/9780226400280.001.0001
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Warikoo, Natasha Kumar, 1973– author.
Title: The diversity bargain : and other dilemmas of race, admissions,
and meritocracy at elite universities / Natasha K. Warikoo.
Description: Chicago ; London : The University of Chicago Press, 2016. |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: lccn 2016007483 | isBn 9780226400143 (cloth : alk. paper) |
isBn 9780226400280 (e-book)
Subjects: lcsh: College students—United States—Attitudes. |
Elite (Social sciences)—United States—Attitudes. | College
students—England—Attitudes. | Elite (Social sciences)—
England—Attitudes. | Race—Public opinion. | Minorities—
Public opinion. | Merit (Ethics)—Public opinion. | Cultural
pluralism—Public opinion. | Education, Higher—Social aspects.
Classification: lcc la229 .W37 2016 | DDc 378.73—dc23
lc record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2016007483
♾ This paper meets the requirements of ansi/nisO Z39.48- 1992
(Permanence of Paper).
C O N T E N T S
Acknowledgments vii
inTrODUcTiOn 1
1 Beliefs aBOUT meriTOcracy anD race 11
American Students
2 maKing sense Of race 43
3 The UniversiTy inflUence 63
4 meriT anD The DiversiTy Bargain 87
5 The mOral imperaTives Of DiversiTy 113
British Students
6 race frames anD meriT aT OxfOrD 139
7 race, racism, anD “playing The
race carD” aT OxfOrD 163
cOnclUsiOn 181
Appendix A: Respondent Characteristics and Race Frames 203
Appendix B: A Note on Methods 211
Appendix C: Interview Questions (US version) 217
Notes 219
References 247
Index 277

A C K N O W L E D G M E N T S
This book has been in development for many years, and I have had so
much help along the way. I feel lucky that so many colleagues, near
and far, have indulged my thoughts about race, meritocracy, and in-
equality to help me fill its pages. I spent an amazing year at the Russell
Sage Foundation in 2013–14. I am grateful to Sheldon Danzinger and
his staff for providing an intellectual space for that year—not to men-
tion a wonderful place to live and delicious food. I especially thank
Aixa Cintrón- Vélez and Jim Wilson for many fruitful conversations
about this project. My fellow scholars at RSF provided good cheer and
conversation along the way as well. I am especially grateful for feed-
back on this project from Andy Cherlin, Dalton Conley, Miles Corak,
Cybelle Fox, Lee Ann Fujii, Shigeo Hirano, Doug McAdam, Belinda
Robnett, Stacey Sinclair, Jane Waldfogel, and Caitlin Zaloom. Cy-
belle in particular talked with me about probably every word I wrote
that year and provided feedback once I got those ideas on paper. The
British Academy provided generous support for my research in Brit-
ain, as did Harvard’s Milton Fund for the United States leg of the re-
search. Harvard’s Weatherhead Center for International Affairs con-
tributed additional support in the final stages of this book.
Luckily for me, when I returned to Harvard Graduate School of
Education (HGSE), I came back to a wonderful community of schol-
ars and to a dean, Jim Ryan, whose ongoing support of my ideas and
development made this book possible. I am so grateful for Jim’s sup-
port. Other colleagues at HGSE, past and present, have supported
this project, including John Diamond, Howard Gardner, Roberto
viii acKnOWleDgmenTs
Gonzales, Paul Harris, Monica Higgins, Nancy Hill, Dan Koretz, Meira
Levinson, Dick Light, Jal Mehta, Julie Reuben, Rick Weissbourd, and
Hiro Yoshikawa.
Beyond HGSE, Harvard faculty in sociology continue to nurture
my development, especially Larry Bobo, Michele Lamont, Mary
Waters, and Bill Wilson. Michele and Mary—and Prudence Carter at
Berkeley—in particular always seem to have time for me, guiding my
professional development way beyond their duties as my advisers so
long ago. Also at HGSE, numerous students have worked on this proj-
ect at every stage. I thank Sherry Deckman, Jay Huguley, and Jenny
Jacobs for the skillful interviews they conducted, with gentle probing
and care for the students they interviewed. At Oxford, Christina Fuhr
did the same. Other students helped with coding and other research
tasks, including Utaukwa Allen, Irteza Binte- Farid, Janine de Novais,
Raygine DiAquoi, Sebastian Gomez, and Abena MacKall. Christina,
Janine, and Sherry also worked with me on papers that were start-
ing points for some of the ideas in this book. Thank you also to Teresa
Bergen, Thomas Higinbotham, and Matt Ogborn for transcribing the
interviews, and to Kidus Mezgebu, Matt Tallon, and Kevin Walsh for
completing administrative tasks.
Outside Harvard, numerous colleagues around the country sup-
ported me in this work. My wonderful writing group—Bart Bonikow-
ski, Helen Marrow, and Cinzia Solari—helped me refine my ideas in
many ways big and small. Other colleagues—Maia Cucchiara, Brent
Harger, David Karen, Annette Lareau, Lisa Smulyan, and Karolyn
Tyson—gave feedback on an early draft, for which I am grateful. I
especially thank Annette, who bought me dinner and helped me
understand the task in front of me as I developed this book. The next
day, David bought me breakfast and helped me more clearly articu-
late my understanding of the relation between meritocracy and race.
I also owe much gratitude to four colleagues who came to Cam-
bridge for a terrifying but incredibly fruitful day with me in which they
tore apart and then reconstructed a draft of this manuscript. Thank you
to Amy Binder, Steve Brint, Camille Charles, and Ruben Gaztambide-
Fernandez for your insights on that cold December day. Ruben de-
serves special thanks for reading and giving feedback on not one but
two versions of the manuscript. In addition to Ruben, an anonymous
reviewer for the University of Chicago Press provided helpful feed-
back. Across the Atlantic, I am particularly grateful for conversations
acKnOWleDgmenTs ix
with Anna Zimdars about elite higher education in Britain, and with
Nasar Meer and Susanne Wessendorf about British multiculturalism.
I have talked about this research in front of numerous audiences, in-
cluding at the American Sociological Association, the Graduate Cen-
ter at CUNY, Columbia University, the Council for European Studies,
the Eastern Sociological Society, Ontario Institute for Studies in Edu-
cation, Russell Sage Foundation, Sarah Lawrence College, University
of Pennsylvania, and multiple forums at Harvard. I thank colleagues
at these forums for comments that developed this work. In particular,
I thank Ellen Berrey, Anthony Chen, Randall Collins, Nancy Foner,
Shamus Khan, Joseph Soares, Ajantha Subramanian, Van Tran, Lois
Weis, and Richard Zweigenhaft for fruitful exchanges at those and
other forums. As should be obvious by now, with all this help the
manuscript ought to be flawless. Whatever flaws remain are probably
the result of my stubborn neglect of some important insight shared by
one of these generous colleagues.
Elizabeth Branch Dyson is simply an extraordinary editor. She sup-
ported this project long before a single page was written, and she has
patiently guided me as I muddled through my ideas and came to tell
the story in these pages, brainstorming with me at every step of the
way. Everyone deserves a cheerleader like Elizabeth. Everyone also
deserves a critic like David Lobenstine, who helped me see where this
manuscript was unclear and pushed me to find my voice throughout it.
I also thank Alice Bennett for copyediting and Rachel Kelly and Ruth
Goring for shepherding the book through the publishing process.
This project would never have been possible without the partici-
pation of students on the Harvard, Brown, and Oxford campuses. I
thank each of them for their thoughtful engagement in interviews. I
also want to thank administrators at the three universities for helping
me recruit students at their particular houses and dorms (unnamable,
to protect student identities). Other administrators facilitated this
project and generously shared their time to help me understand the
Harvard, Brown, and Oxford campuses, including Mary Grace Alman-
drez, Lisa Coleman, Tom Dingham, William Fitzsimmons, Shane
Lloyd, Mike Nicholson, and Leyla Okhai.
Finally, none of this would have been possible without my family.
My parents, Shiban and Nanna Warikoo, have provided me with so
much throughout my life, and they continue to meet my every re-
quest—usually for help looking after my children—with a smile. My