Question, process, challenge, and think deeply about how this week’s readings relate back to you. This is a place to share your thoughts and feelings: let them be raw and vulnerable. In 500 words minimum (2-3 pages), write a personal reaction about how the core arguments or stories of the readings relate to your understanding of identities, privilege and systems of oppression. Choose and include 1 quote from each of the assigned readings/sources and write 2 dialogic questions. Be sure to talk about each of the assigned readings/podcasts in your contemplations.  This assignment can also be submitted as a video, but we will be looking for the same amount of depth in what you say as we are in a written reflection.

Use these questions as a guide:

• What feelings came up for you as you read the readings/sources?  What stories and personal experiences may be connected to those feelings? 
• How did the readings/sources raise your level of consciousness around your identities, privilege and larger systems of oppression and your role in them?
• What questions do you still have or want to continue thinking/talking about with others?

easy to understandinggood grammar

Poetry Is Not a Luxury (

1

985)
Audre Lorde

The quality of light by which we scrutinize our lives has direct bearing upon the product
which we live, and upon the changes which we hope to bring about through those lives. It is
within this light that we form those ideas by which we pursue our magic and make it realized.
This is poetry as illumination, for it is through poetry that we give name to those ideas which
are, until the poem, nameless and formless-about to be birthed, but already felt. That
distillation of experience from which true poetry springs births thought as dream births
concept, as feeling births idea, as knowledge births (precedes) understanding.

As we learn to bear the intimacy of scrutiny, and to flourish within it, as we learn to use the
products of that scrutiny for power within our living, those fears which rule our lives and form
our silences begin to lose their control over us.

For each of us as women, there is a dark place within where hidden and growing our true spirit
rises, “Beautiful and tough as chestnut/stanchions against our nightmare of weakness” and of
impotence.

These places of possibility within ourselves are dark because they are ancient and hidden; they
have survived and grown strong through darkness. Within these deep places, each one of us
holds an incredible reserve of creativity and power, of unexamined and unrecorded emotion
and feeling. The woman’s place of power within each of us is neither white nor surface; it is
dark, it is ancient, and it is deep.

When we view living, in the european mode, only as a problem to be solved, we then rely
solely upon our ideas to make us free, for these were what the white fathers told us were
precious.

But as we become more in touch with our own ancient, black, non-european view of living as
a situation to be experienced and interacted with, we learn more and more to cherish our
feelings, and to respect those hidden sources of our power from where true knowledge and
therefore lasting action comes.

At this point in time, I believe that women carry within ourselves the possibility for fusion of
these two approaches as keystone for survival, and we come closest to this combination in our
poetry. I speak here of poetry as the revelation or distillation of experience, not the sterile
word play that, too often, the white fathers distorted the word poetry to mean — in order to
cover their desperate wish for imagination without insight.

For women, then, poetry is not a luxury. It is a vital necessity of our existence. It forms the
quality of the light within which we predicate our hopes and dreams toward survival and
change, first made into language, then into idea, then into more tangible action.

Poetry is the way we help give name to the nameless so it can be thought. The farthest external
horizons of our hopes and fears are cobbled by our poems, carved from the rock experiences
of our daily lives.

As they become known and accepted to ourselves, our feelings, and the honest exploration of
them, become sanctuaries and fortresses and spawning grounds for the most radical and daring
of ideas, the house of difference so necessary to change and the conceptualization of any
meaningful action. Right now, I could name at least ten ideas I would have once found
intolerable or incomprehensible and frightening, except as they came after dreams and poems.
This is not idle fantasy, but the true meaning of “it feels right to me.” We can train ourselves to
respect our feelings, and to discipline (transpose) them into a language that matches those
feelings so they can be shared. And where that language does not yet exist, it is our poetry
which helps to fashion it. Poetry is not only dream or vision, it is the skeleton architecture of
our lives.

Possibility is neither forever nor instant. It is also not easy to sustain belief in its efficacy. We
can sometimes work long and hard to establish one beachhead of real resistance to the deaths
we are expected to live, only to have that beachhead assaulted or threatened by canards we
have been socialized to fear, or by the withdrawal of those approvals that we have been
warned to seek for safety. We see ourselves diminished or softened by the falsely benign
accusations of childishness, of non-universality, of self-centeredness, of sensuality. And who
asks the question: am I altering your aura, your ideas, your dreams, or am I merely moving
you to temporary and reactive action? (Even the latter is no mean task, but one that must be
rather seen within the context of a true alteration of the texture of our lives.)

The white fathers told us, I think therefore I am; and the black mothers in each of us-the poet-
whispers in our dreams, I feel therefore I can be free. Poetry coins the language to express and
charter this revolutionary awareness and demand, the implementation of that freedom.
However, experience has taught us that the action in the now is also always necessary. Our
children cannot dream unless they live, they cannot live unless they are nourished, and who
else will feed them the real food without which their dreams will be no different from ours?

Sometimes we drug ourselves with dreams of new ideas. The head will save us. The brain
alone will set us free. But there are no new ideas still waiting in the wings to save us as
women, as human. There are only old and forgotten ones, new combinations, extrapolations
and recognitions from within ourselves, along with the renewed courage to try them out. And
we must constantly encourage ourselves and each other to attempt the heretical actions our
dreams imply and some of our old ideas disparage. In the forefront of our move toward
change, there is only our poetry to hint at possibility made real. Our poems formulate the
implications of ourselves, what we feel within and dare make real (or bring action into
accordance with), our fears, our hopes, our most cherished terrors.

For within structures defined by profit, by linear power, by institutional dehumanization, our
feelings were not meant to survive. Kept around as unavoidable adjuncts or pleasant pastimes,
feelings were meant to kneel to thought as we were meant to kneel to men. But women have
survived. As poets. And there are no new pains. We have felt them all already. We have hidden
that fact in the same place where we have hidden our power. They lie in our dreams, and it is
our dreams that point the way to freedom. They are made realizable through our poems that
give us the strength and courage to see, to feel, to speak, and to dare.

If what we need to dream, to move our spirits most deeply and directly toward and through
promise, is a luxury, then we have given up the core-the fountain-of our power, our

1

womanness; we have give up the future of our worlds.

For there are no new ideas. There are only new ways of making them felt, of examining what
our ideas really mean (feel like) on Sunday morning at 7 AM, after brunch, during wild love,
making war, giving birth; while we suffer the old longings, battle the old warnings and fears of
being silent and impotent and alone, while tasting our new possibilities and strengths.

2

Racialized Equity Labor, University
Appropriation and Student Resistance

Veronica Lerma1, Laura T. Hamilton1, Kelly Nielsen2

1University of California-Merced, 2Cornell University

A B S T R A C T

We coin the term “racialized equity labor” to describe the often uncompensated
efforts of people of color to address systematic racism and racial marginalization within
organizations. Using a year-long ethnographic and interview study of a majority-
minority public university, we focus specifically on the racialized equity labor of college
students who, like many faculty and staff of color, often labor to make their campuses
comfortable and functional for historically underrepresented populations. We identify a
cycle of racialized labor appropriation whereby: 1) people of color identify problems in
the racial environment of their organizations and work to solve them; 2) leadership
responds by blocking efforts and/or denying issues; 3) external and/or internal pres-
sures force introspection and push leaders to resolve an organizational threat (e.g., to
the university’s public image of diversity); and finally, 4) leadership appropriates racial-
ized equity labor, and in doing so converts it into a diluted diversity initiative. Those
engaged in racialized equity labor may resist appropriation, but the cycle takes a toll on
activists. The ways in which organizations respond to racialized equity labor offers in-
sight into the reproduction of racial inequities, despite the hard work of people of color
to create meaningful racial change.

K E Y W O R D S : racialized equity labor; racialized organizations; diversity work; student ac-
tivism; institutional Whiteness.

“This school is run on student labor.” -Gabriel

In recent years, students of color from around the United States have demanded that their colleges
and universities address systemic and structural racism.1 Their demands also reveal the extensive la-
bor that students from historically underrepresented groups often undertake to make universities
comfortable for those who do not identify as White. For example, a 2015 statement by Black students
at the University of Missouri reads:

Direct correspondence to Veronica Lerma, School of Social Sciences, Humanities and Arts, 5200 North Lake Road, University of
California-Merced, Merced, CA 95343 (vlerma@ucmerced.edu). We wish to thank Jovita Angel, Ashley Bennett, Maria Duenas,
Darkari Finister, Rosa Hernandez, Reginald Nelson, Ana Padilla, Patrick Pascual, and Mayra Ramirez for their research support and
insights. This research was supported by a William T. Grant Scholars grant awarded to Laura Hamilton and a William T. Grant
Scholars Mentoring grant awarded to Veronica Lerma and Laura Hamilton. Opinions reflect those of the authors and do not neces-
sarily reflect those of the granting agency.
1 See http://www.thedemands.org for demands from 80 campuses and groups.

VC The Author(s) 2019. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for the Study of Social Problems.
All rights reserved. For permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com.

� 1

Social Problems, 2019, 0, 1–18
doi: 10.1093/socpro/spz011
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http://www.thedemands.org for demands from 80 campuses and groups

https://academic.oup.com/

https://academic.oup.com/

It is important to note that, as students, it is not our job to ensure that the policies and practi-
ces of the University of Missouri work to maintain a safe, secure and unbiased campus climate
for all of its students. We do understand, however, that change does not happen without a cata-
lyst. [We have] invested time, money, intellectual capital and excessive energy to bring to the
forefront these issues and to get administration on board so that we, as students, may turn our
primary focus back to what we are on campus to do: obtain our degrees.

Although scholarship acknowledges the labor of faculty and staff of color to improve the racial envi-
ronment in universities (see Ahmed 2012; Hirshfield and Joseph 2011; Matthew 2016; Moore
2017), the efforts of racially minoritized students are often overlooked.2

We offer the term “racialized equity labor” to describe the struggle of organizational actors, from a
variety of positions, to address race-based marginalization and inequality. People of color typically en-
gage in this labor, although some White allies may join them. In many organizations, like universities,
racialized equity labor goes undercompensated, uncompensated, or even punished. Leadership often
attempts to appropriate it as a solution for organizational challenges, such as achieving a positive rep-
utation or meeting external standards. In the process, racialized equity labor may be converted into
something less transformative.

In this study we ask: What does the racialized equity labor of college students look like? What is
the process by which universities utilize this labor? And how do student activists experience and re-
spond to university appropriation? Our data are drawn from a year-long ethnographic study of a pub-
lic majority-minority institution; we highlight interviews with student activists, most of whom are
Black or Latinx and devote time, energy, and resources to racialized equity labor—triangulating their
accounts with reports by other actors. We describe a cycle of racialized labor appropriation: 1) people
of color identify problems in the racial environment of their organizations and work to solve them;
2) leadership responds by blocking efforts and/or denying issues; 3) external and/or internal pres-
sures force introspection and push leaders to resolve an organizational threat (e.g., to the university’s
public image of diversity); and finally, 4) leadership appropriates racialized equity labor, and in doing
so converts it into a diluted diversity initiative. We argue that activists may respond by resisting ap-
propriation, but participating in the cycle comes at a price.

U N I V E R S I T I E S A S R A C I A L I Z E D O R G A N I Z A T I O N S
Ray (2019), building on the work of Bonilla-Silva (1997) and Omi and Winant (2014), articulates ra-
cialized organizations theory, which recognizes organizations as a meso-level setting in which both in-
dividual- and macro-level racial inequality are reproduced through racialized practices and policies; as
such, organizations are both embedded in and supportive of larger racialized structures. Universities
are no exception. However, the nature of universities as racialized organizations has changed over
time, as Whites have employed different strategies to hoard educational opportunities through higher
education (Berrey 2015; Warikoo 2016; Wooten 2015).

Higher education in the United States was restricted to Whites until after the Civil War, when
Black colleges and universities developed. It was not until the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964,
that desegregation of predominately White institutions (PWIs) occurred (Haynes 2006). Initially, af-
firmative action policies boosted the enrollment of students of color. For Latinx students, demo-
graphic growth and increases in high school graduation also supported college attendance (Fry
2011). Legal challenges, however, have dismantled affirmative action, limiting the presence of stu-
dents of color in top universities (Ashkenas, Park, and Pearce 2017; Berrey 2015; Moore 2018).
Currently, around 13 percent of undergraduates identify as Black and 18 percent as Latinx

2 We use “minoritized” instead of “minority” to accentuate the ongoing, socially constructed process of marginalization that occurs
even when groups subject to racial and/or ethnic discrimination represent a numerical majority in specific institutional contexts
(see Benitez 2010).

2 � Lerma, Hamilton, and Nielsen

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(NCES 2017), but they are mostly concentrated in open-access and for-profit colleges (Carnevale
2016; Cottom 2017).

PWIs face widespread pressure to serve a more racially heterogeneous population (Karabel 2005;
Warikoo 2016). However, public perception of diversity is often more consequential than numeric di-
versity. Most schools include a small percentage of affluent or high-achieving students of color
who are expected to slide into existing infrastructure, without drawing attention to racial inequities in
school policies and practices (see Ahmed 2012; Berrey 2015). Not surprisingly, PWIs can be
uncomfortable, even hostile, for students of color (Feagin, Vera, and Imani 1996; Lee and LaDousa
2015; Wilkins 2014; Strayhorn 2013). These students may experience racial microaggressions,
receive messages that they do not belong, and encounter infrastructure that best serves White stu-
dents (see Nenga, Alvarado, and Blyth 2015; Ray and Best 2015; Watkins, LaBarrie, and Appio
2010).

“Institutional Whiteness,” however, is not only about student body composition (Ahmed 2012;
Brayboy 2003; Ray 2019; Urciuoli 2018). For example, as Vargas and Villa-Palomino’s (2018) study
of Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSIs) indicates, Latinx students are rarely centered in HSI’s Title V
programmatic efforts. Instead, colorblind logics benefitting White students dominate, even though it
is Latinx students that qualify HSIs to compete for these funds. Majority-minority schools are often
in effect White spaces because staff, faculty, and administrators are White, and practices and
policies are modeled after PWIs (Vidal-Ortiz 2017). Indeed, most majority-minority institutions
started as PWIs. Inequities in university leadership representation, in particular, may create a chal-
lenging environment for students from underrepresented backgrounds, as well as for faculty of color
(Ahmed 2012; Matthew 2016; Moore 2017). Representational inequities among students can also
mean that even on majority-minority campuses some minoritized groups remain numerically
marginalized.

Racialized Equity Labor
Most campuses include some paid employees whose official job is “diversity work” that makes visible
a stated (if not substantial) commitment to multiculturalism (Ahmed 2012). Faculty and staff of
color who are not hired for this purpose are also often expected to engage in labor that creates the
perception of diversity (Matthew 2016). Many are also motivated to push for substantial change, due
to a deep commitment to “lift as we climb” (Moore 2017). As a consequence, women of color, in par-
ticular, experience “identity taxation,” as their marginalized social identities may lead to high levels of
service commitments not experienced by their White peers (Hirshfield and Joseph 2011).

Students also play a key role in shaping the racial environment in universities, as evidenced in so-
cial movement scholarship on student protest. Campus “hotbeds of activism” during the 1960s were
central to both the Civil Rights and Peace Movements (Rogers 2012; Van Dyke 1998). Student pro-
test again came to a head in the 1990s, due to fears about losing gains established in the 1960s, such
as classes in Chicano and African American studies (Armbruster-Sandoval 2017; Rhoads 1998). We
are now entering a new period of activity as pockets of college students—particularly students of
color—have been invigorated around issues of racial discrimination, student debt, and immigration
policy. In fact, national data show the highest percentage of students, especially students of color,
who indicate there is a “very good chance” they would participate in a protest since the beginning of
data collection in 1967 (Eagan et al. 2016).

Thinking comprehensively about the labor of students, staff, and faculty of color is useful, as these
groups typically support each other. Their efforts to address systematic racism and racial marginaliza-
tion can be understood as racialized equity labor. The labor is racialized in terms of who does it (the
burden is not shared across racial groups) and the driving need; institutional Whiteness ensures that,
even at majority-minority institutions, people of color often feel like outsiders. Because efforts to im-
prove conditions are often uncompensated, it is more accurately called “labor” than “work,” which

Racialized Equity Labor � 3

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implies payment.3 This is especially problematic because, given the racialization of wealth, racialized
equity laborers often come from low-income backgrounds and/or were the first in their families to at-
tend college. As a result, they often face additional struggles, such as limited economic resources and
knowledge of how universities operate (see Armstrong and Hamilton 2013).

Racialized equity labor runs up against what Thomas (2018:141) refers to as a diversity regime—
or “a set of meanings and practices that institutionalizes a benign commitment to diversity, and in do-
ing so obscures, entrenches, and even intensifies existing racial inequality by failing to make funda-
mental changes in how power, resources, and opportunities are distributed.” Diversity regimes reflect
a shift away from affirmative action, which was oriented toward redistributive social justice (Berrey
2015). Multiple forms of “difference” are placed on equal footing, thus deprioritizing efforts to ad-
dress racial inequities (Moore 2018). Surface-level modifications, rather than organizational transfor-
mation, often result (Bell and Hartmann 2008). Thus, while racialized equity labor can encompass
some aspects of institutional diversity work, the goals are rarely fully aligned, and are often in direct
opposition.

Even when there is a stated commitment to “diversity,” organizational leadership may block efforts
to promote structural change with a “brick wall” of resistance (Ahmed 2012). Tensions may come to
a head in moments of forced inward organizational reflection. This may occur when external actors,
such as accreditors, point out racial disparities (e.g., in graduation rates) or state legislatures apply
pressure to serve historically underrepresented students within the state. Internal actors, such as stu-
dent activists, can also prompt action. If visible enough, activists threaten a university’s image of
diversity.

When seeking to quell unrest, save face, protect reputation, or address accountability issues, lead-
ership may draw on racialized equity labor as a valuable resource and take credit for the labor of peo-
ple of color. As Ahmed (2012:135) articulates, “The commitment of champions can be how the
university itself appears to be committed. . . . The university might even appropriate their commit-
ment ‘as its own.’” Appropriation, however, rarely leaves the original intent and extent of the project
intact, as leadership tends to favor diversity initiatives that maintain the status quo.

Appropriation encourages resistance. Yet the ability to resist the racialized appropriation cycle
depends on the positionality of those doing racialized equity labor. Students may be uniquely situated
to vocally fight against their universities, as evidenced by engagement in forms of “spectacular speech”
(e.g., hunger strikes, see Armbruster-Sandoval 2017) that faculty and staff may support, but rarely
join, given financial reliance on employment by the university. At the same time, racialized equity la-
bor can feel particularly risky for students, whose life trajectories may depend on college completion
and success. The “taxation” (see Hirshfield and Joseph 2011) of those doing racialized equity labor
often extends across the university and to other organizational settings, most notably workplaces, as
discussed in the conclusion.

D A T A A N D M E T H O D S
Data come from a case study of a majority-minority university conducted from July 2016 to August
2017. The study draws on interviews with students, staff, faculty, and administrators, as well as ethno-
graphic observations, and university documents. Western U is a public research university comprised
mostly of Latinx students, followed by Asian students, and finally Black students, who represent less
than eight percent of the student body.4 A majority of students at Western U are first-generation and
from low-income households. Less than one percent of the student body is from out-of-state. Like
many public universities, the school operates on a limited budget.

3 Racialized equity labor falls under the broader umbrella of “racial tasks” as theorized by Wingfield and Alston (2013). Racial tasks
include all forms of ideological, interactional, and physical labor that minoritized individuals must perform in White spaces (e.g.,
self-presentation efforts, emotional work, and efforts to smooth interactions with White peers).

4 The names of the university, student organizations, and individuals have been changed to pseudonyms.

4 � Lerma, Hamilton, and Nielsen

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The larger project from which these data were derived examined how organizational features of
majority-minority research universities shape the experiences and outcomes of low-income Black and
Latinx students.5 We did not set out to study students’ racialized equity labor; however, this issue
emerged almost immediately in the 55 student interviews that we conducted. Our work relies heavily
on a purposeful sample of 22 students who were identified as activists and leaders at Western U by a
team of eight undergraduate researchers involved in the project. Table 1 displays the racial and gen-
der breakdown of our student and employee samples. Note that activists are almost entirely students
of color, and only around a third identify as men. Although not displayed in the table, several identi-
fied as queer and a few were undocumented. The multiply marginalized status of many activists may
have made them more attuned to racial inequities on campus and more likely to take action.

The study also includes 33 interviews with a random sample of first and fourth year Black and
Latinx students on campus, generated with the assistance of Western U registrar staff. Random stu-
dent interviews offered a way to gauge student support of activist efforts and to obtain other reports
on university infrastructure. Ten students included in the random sample, most of whom identified
as Black, also happened to be self-identified activists. Because the Black student population on cam-
pus is so small, a high proportion are recruited into racialized equity labor. These interviews provided
crucial data on one of the cases illustrated below. Women were overrepresented in the random sam-
ple due to the gender composition of students of color on campus, and to their greater likelihood of
responding to our inquiries. Students in both the purposeful and random samples received a $25 gift
card as compensation.

Interview guides for both sets of respondents included questions about family background, aca-
demic experiences, finances, social life, friendships, racial relations on campus, and experiences with
university personnel and infrastructure. Student activists were also asked to cover the history of the
organizations and efforts in which they were involved, goals associated with their labor, and university
responses. The first author conducted almost all of these interviews; the second author and a gradu-
ate student who was part of the research group conducted five of the 55 student interviews.

Gaining the trust of our student respondents, particularly activists, proved to be a challenge.
Recruiting participants required having others vouch for us. As researchers, we occupy an outsider
position to the students in our study, many of whom are distrustful of university representatives. The
first author, who identifies as Latina, fielded a number of questions from suspicious student activists
at the start of the interviews, such as: How is this study going to benefit students and not exploit them?

Table 1. Characteristics of Student and Employee Samples

Purposeful Student
Sample (N¼22)

Random Student
Sample (N¼33)

University Employee
Sample (N¼20)

Race
Black 6 14 6
Latinx 13 19 9
White 3 0 2
Asian or Pacific Islander 0 0 3

Gender
Woman 12 23 9
Man 8 10 11
Trans or Non-Binary 2 0 0

5 Latinx, while often treated as an ethnic category, is also a racial category; that is, it is externally imposed, and places those who
share different ancestry and phenotype into hierarchical categories associated with distinct moral and cultural attributes (see
Golash-Boza 2016).

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And Why are White people involved? Several respondents expressed their relief upon seeing that the in-
terviewer was a person of color. Interviewers were careful to reassure respondents of our interest in
students’ voices. Despite difficulties along the way, we believe that we were able to establish a level of
trust that enabled students to engage in in-depth, frank discussions.

This article is told from the perspective of students; however, we use 20 interviews with university
employees to support students’ reports. Employees include 18 faculty and staff who had regular con-
tact with student activists and two high-level administrators. Many were people of color who were
also undertaking racialized equity labor. The second author conducted these interviews, and they cov-
ered job duties, interactions with students, race relations at Western U, and assessments of university
support infrastructure for students of color. University personnel were not compensated for their par-
ticipation as this was against university policy.

Interviews ranged from 35 minutes to 2.5 hours, with the average interview lasting about an hour.
They were audio-recorded and transcribed with respondents’ permission. The first and second
authors, the team of undergraduate students, and two graduate students conducted ethnographic
observations of campus events, such as university-wide panel discussions, student organization meet-
ings, cultural events, and student-led protests. University-related documents, including reports, post-
ers, and online material were also collected and analyzed.

A total of 75 interview transcriptions and around 500 pages of fieldnotes were analyzed using the
qualitative software program Dedoose. The first author coded student interviews, the second and
third authors coded interviews with university employees, and the first and second authors coded eth-
nographic fieldnotes. Data analysis occurred in stages. We started with open coding. During this
stage, authors coded for explicit mention or discussion of student labor and university appropriation,
while also attending to new themes as they emerged from the data. Next, we applied focused codes
to pinpoint university actions and processes, attitudes towards student activists, and the toll of stu-
dent labor. We wrote and shared theoretical memos to explore themes and patterns, develop and test
hypotheses, and refine theories, which we expanded into the core sections of the article.

F I N D I N G S : S T U D E N T L A B O R A N D U N I V E R S I T Y A P P R O P R I A T I O N
At Western U, students did a considerable amount of labor to make campus spaces welcoming, com-
fortable, and functional for historically underrepresented populations. They often engaged in recruit-
ment work, effectively staffed and ran cultural spaces and groups at the university, advocated for the
needs of marginalized students with the administration, and helped to build new infrastructure and
programming. With few exceptions, students of color—especially women and queer students of
color—did this work.

Despite its majority-minority status, Western U is a White space that many of our interviewees ex-
perienced as unsafe. Student respondents from both purposeful and random samples routinely men-
tioned the lack of representation among faculty, staff, and administrators. We received numerous
reports of racial discrimination, concentrated among Black students. Latinx students were frequently
the targets of anti-immigrant sentiments and online attacks. The presence of armed campus police
was perceived as threatening, particularly by activists. Activists argued there was no accountability af-
ter campus police shot and killed a Brown student (armed only with a knife) one year before the
study began. The election of Donald Trump also affected students’ sense of physical safety and emo-
tional wellbeing. In the wake of the election, many on campus needed support but could not find it.
Intersecting and multiply marginalized identities related to race, class, gender, sexuality, and legal sta-
tus compounded students’ vulnerabilities. Thus, activists’ engagement with racialized equity labor was
a direct response to seemingly constant threats to their safety.

We observed a pattern characteristic of student-led racialized equity initiatives: students identified
a need on campus, found a solution, and engaged in grassroots efforts, but encountered inaction or
resistance from administration. They persisted, eventually succeeding in drawing the attention of

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leadership. In response, university leadership appropriated student labor in ways that helped to solve
pressing institutional problems, often transforming students’ intended projects along the way. Below
we illustrate this full cycle with two cases—the Multicultural Center and AfroDiaspora Hall.

The Multicultural Center
Western U provides very little cultural programming for its students. As a result, many different
groups of students have spent years fighting for safe spaces to learn and celebrate their cultural histo-
ries, engage in their intersecting identities, recognize and confront inequities in university policies
and infrastructure, and receive culturally-informed support services. The Multicultural Center (here-
after, the Center), a student-led and student-run initiative, may be situated in this longer legacy of
student struggle for space in which to comfortably exist.

Days after the shooting of a student of color on Western U’s campus, a group of students—still
reeling from the traumatic events—attended a multi-university conference for students of color.
When advised by students on other campuses to turn to their multicultural center for support,
Western U students were both bewildered and angered that their campus did not offer one. As
Fernando describes:

We’re like, “What is a multicultural center?” . . . . Towards the end of the conference, we were
able to congregate and talk for real. [We asked,] “What are we going to do, having come to this
conference, with the [violent] incident. . . on our minds?” [As] we spoke, we [realized that we]
need a space for students to exist as who they are. Why don’t we have these resources? We’re
first generation students of color, marginalized, and [in] this super conservative community. . . .
How can [the university] not have this support?

This moment launched a movement for a multicultural space.
Almost immediately, activists were confronted with administrative impediments. For example,

they were told to reduce their group to 15 students, as leadership would not meet or correspond
with more than that. This smaller group of students was then asked to put together an official pro-
posal for the space. Respondents involved in the multicultural center movement recalled being over-
whelmed by such a request, which seemed more appropriate for staff or faculty—not low-income,
first-generation students who had to juggle paid labor and classwork, and had limited familiarity with
how universities work. Administrators also took issue with students’ desires to create a “safe space”
solely for students of color, and articulated that it needed to be open to many different groups on
campus. Angered by this, Vesta explained, “This university is a safe space for White folks. . . . It’s only
when marginalized folks [try to organize, it’s] like, ‘Oh look at them, they want to be alone.’ And, it’s
like no.”

Students also received inconsistent reports from administrators who claimed the large-scale cam-
pus development project included space for a multicultural center. The space, however, was not la-
beled in the plans. According to one high-level administrator, “So, it’s dedicated but it’s not. . . It
doesn’t say in the plans ‘Cultural Center’ because. . . . We’ve dedicated a space for a cultural center,
but I can’t tell you where it is yet because I don’t know, right.” Although there was no official desig-
nated space for a multicultural center, the plans did include designated space for a pool. As one staff
member who oversees numerous programs for first-generation, undocumented, and foster care
system-involved students commented, this reflected university priorities: “Somewhere in the prior-
ity, you know, a multicultural center or a student center is not on that list. It’s not on the immediate
list. . . . There are discussions about having a natatorium [pool], but there’s no discussion about a
multicultural center.”

Administration did not act until students involved in the movement for the Center became more
vocal. Activists attended a system-wide meeting where, as Cynthia describes, “We spoke up in public

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comment, asking about multicultural centers and really highlighting the fact that we don’t have any,
and we’re advertised as [a] diverse [campus] . . . that [is] first generation and low income. And then
the system board was asking questions about that, and that’s when things started moving.”

This public airing of student concerns, along with other events (see the next section), led the uni-
versity to hire an external consultant to evaluate the school’s strengths and challenges in relation to
diversity and inclusion. Students were direct with the consultant, who produced a report calling for
university action. As the report stated, “Western U students are excellent and primarily responsible
for leading efforts to hold WU accountable and push the university to enhance its diversity efforts.
While some faculty and staff have been supportive (particularly in light of recent campus protests),
the students are leading in ways that might be expected or required of professional staff on some
campuses.” The report advised that not just one, but multiple, well-staffed cultural spaces would be
needed.

These events forced an institutional response. Leadership offered students a small conference
room seating roughly eleven people, for a campus of around 7,000 undergraduates. When officials an-
nounced the plans for opening the Center in an email sent to the campus community, they not only
changed the name of the space, they also made no mention of the student labor that went into it. As
Vesta reported, “We’re like, ‘Wait, they took the name, they took everything, but don’t even acknowl-
edge that it was students,’ you know? This was announcing it as if it [were a Vice Chancellor’s] initia-
tive or something. . . . Way to invisiblize all the years of student work.”

Students might have accepted invisibility if leadership had fully implemented their plans for the
Center. Yet, the room provided by the university lacked funding, adequate space for gathering, a pro-
jector for speaker presentations, administrative support, and staff. As student organizers explained in
a public statement posted online:

The Center at Western U would like to clarify that the space is currently not a department able
to provide support and services for communities of color in stress. . . . Unfortunately the
Center does not have professional staff with quality experience and knowledge specifically hired
to serve the needs of the students of color on campus, and we hope students continue to ask
our administration to provide the campus with a bigger space, funding, and resources that
reflects the needs of students of color on campus and those with intersecting identities. So
what is the Center currently? Great question! [It] is currently student run and student led.
This means that everything done in the space is done by WU students of color, predominantly
queer and trans students of color.

Racialized equity labor had been turned into diversity work: the school had interest in providing this
space, especially on the heels of the negative cultural inclusion report. However, the Center remained
under-resourced, limiting its impact.

AfroDiaspora Hall
Several years ago, Tasha and Tiffany, two enterprising Black women, founded AfroDiaspora Hall, a
living/learning community whose mission is to increase retention and four-year graduation rates
among Black students. The idea for AfroDiaspora Hall came about during their first year in college
when the two women attended a conference for African and Black students that drew from several
universities. In comparing Western U to other campuses with supportive programs for Black stu-
dents, the two women saw that something needed to be done.

Their efforts to move AfroDiaspora Hall from idea to actualization entailed substantial racialized
equity labor. As university officials confirmed, Tasha and Tiffany’s work included routine meetings
with top leadership and staff (as a housing representative explained, “I met with them weekly”), re-
cruitment at orientation and other events, and acting as liaisons between Residence Life staff,

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students, and their parents. They wrote grant proposals, hosted study sessions, and conducted work-
shops and other events (usually paying the expenses themselves, despite the fact that both women
were from low-income households). They created a book loan program, which they operated out of
their residence, formed a community partnership with the local Boys & Girls Club, and even orga-
nized Western U’s first annual Black Family Day. They were not compensated for this labor and, at
least initially, encountered university resistance.

For instance, Tasha and Tiffany had to contend with the accusation that they were being exclu-
sionary in promoting a space for Black students “[There were] a lot of questions of like. . . ‘Why are
you trying to seclude all the Black people?’. . . [And responses like,] ‘We’re fine. We’re the most di-
verse campus, and we don’t need something like this. You’re gonna make the campus climate worse’
type of thing.” They also faced administrative barriers, including initial placement in an expensive
apartment-style dorm that was antithetical to community building, and being assigned a White RA
with no interest in AfroDiaspora Hall’s mission (despite having a qualified resident apply for the posi-
tion). A miscommunication between Housing and Admissions resulted in AfroDiaspora Hall being
cut by more than half of its residents; Tasha and Tiffany fielded angry calls from students and parents
affected by this incident.

Paralleling actions across the country, in 2015 Western U’s Black Student Union issued a list of
demands, which included a Black Resource Center. Black students on campus also protested what
they considered a “hostile, anti-Black campus climate.” After these events, the external consultant was
brought to campus. University officials began to take notice of AfroDiaspora Hall—even promoting
the program to the consultant. Administrators, however, failed to mention that AfroDiaspora Hall is
an entirely student-led effort. Tasha and Tiffany recalled the consultant’s shock upon hearing this:

People actually assumed this was a paid [position] or program on campus. But it was still being
student ran. . . So that’s one of the things [the consultant] commented on. She was like, “Oh, I
thought this was a university program because [I was] asking what [university] support [is
available], [so] why is this student org coming up?”. . . And we’re like, “Maybe we should re-
introduce ourselves. (Laughter). We are AfroDiaspora Hall. It’s us.” At that point, we started
realizing like, okay. . . people are seeing us.

Shortly after the consultant submitted her report, the university started to publicly promote
AfroDiaspora Hall as a housing and cultural option for Black students.

The administration, however, stopped short of recognizing the labor of Tasha, Tiffany, and other
students involved in the initiative. As AfroDiaspora Hall’s faculty advisor recalled, Tasha and Tiffany
were upset after a university official involved in campus climate used AfroDiaspora Hall as an example
of university-provided support for Black students:

[The university official] said, “What is the university doing for you guys, to help? And Tasha
and Tiffany were basically like, “Nothing, the university is not doing anything.” And then the
campus [climate] person was like, “Well I’ve heard about this housing that they have for
[Black] students.” And [the two women] were like, “No, we do that for ourselves. [Recently]
the university has supported us, but this is our mission, our idea. It’s not the university giving
to us.” They were really upset by that.

The university now advertises AfroDiaspora Hall on its website. But, as the two women reported, “It
was almost like we had to prove ourselves in order to receive [university] support.” The housing unit
continues to lack resources—making it impossible for it to be provisioned at a level consistent with
the vision of its founders. Most recently, the university combined AfroDiaspora Hall and non-
member students on the same floor, with some even in the same rooms.

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The Multicultural Center and AfroDiaspora Hall are only two examples of student-led initiatives.
We selected these cases as we interviewed the students at the center of the efforts, conducted parallel
interviews with administrators and university employees, and thus had the most detailed information.
However, five additional instantiations of the racialized labor appropriation cycle were reported to us;
these involved the Black Student Union; an undocumented student ally group; Lambda (an LGBTQ
organization that was, at the time, comprised of students of color); MEChA (an organization to pro-
mote Chicanx unity and power); and a parallel Multicultural Center effort at the graduate level.
These groups had varying levels of success in drawing organizational attention to the problems that
they faced (step #3 in the cycle), and also experienced varying degrees of explicit appropriation. It is
worth noting, however, that even when leadership ignores the struggles of people of color on campus,
universities continue to benefit from racialized equity labor.

R E S I S T A N C E T O U N I V E R S I T Y A P P R O P R I A T I O N
Activists rejected appropriation of their labor as “diversity work” primarily benefitting the university
(Ahmed 2012). Most adopted a more explicit social justice orientation, and were frustrated when
their labor was utilized to save money or achieve a public image of university commitment to diver-
sity. They developed four techniques to resist appropriation of their labor: reject diversity discourse,
go underground, reclaim university events, and protest.

Reject Diversity Discourse
Many activists developed sophisticated critiques of diversity discourse as utilized by university leader-
ship. For example, when asked, “Do you think this university celebrates diversity?” Ricardo
responded, “Western U promotes its diversity a lot. That’s the first statistic you see when you look. . .
on the website. . . . It’s being promoted, but you know, D�ıa de los Muertos is a big Latino event and
we organize that. The Pride Week—that was Lamda. Black History month. . . that was Black Student
Union.” What Ricardo is hinting at is the existence of a diversity regime, whereby a shallow organiza-
tional commitment to diversity obscures the racial equity labor that goes into producing racial
inclusion.

When students refused to accept the dominant racial discourse on campus, they challenged the
dominant cultural framework through which the administration made use of racialized labor. Alex
explained, “We’re trying to advertise ourselves as this campus of inclusion, of diversity when we’re
not. I know a lot of. . . the student leaders on our campus [are] coming to hate the word diversity
‘cause it’s so coined by these individuals with power to exploit. . . . Throwing [it] around like we’re a
diverse campus—it’s disgusting.” Similarly, at one cultural event, an activist stated that she was “so
tired of hearing diversity and the way administration uses this rhetoric to further its agenda.” She
closed by yelling, “Fuck diversity!” and was met with thunderous cheers.

Go Underground
Some groups, at least initially, formed in secret and met off campus, in order to avoid further appro-
priation. According to Gabriel, “There’s that environment currently where if students organize some-
thing and it’s successful, they make sure that administration. . . does not get their hands on it.
Because [we] know that over time they would take over it. . . . We’ve seen a lot of things that are stu-
dent led, that are student initiated, being. . . retitled like, oh Western U has done this.” Activists not
only feared the university would claim their labor as its own; they also feared that upon doing so,
administrators would change, if not erase, the original intent. Indeed, when universities appropriate
racialized equity labor, they often absorb the efforts of laborers, but not their goals. Going under-
ground was an attempt to circumvent that process.

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Reclaim University Events
Activists also found ways to reclaim university events that involved appropriation of their labor. For
example, two high-level administrators were originally slated to speak at the grand opening ceremony
of the Multicultural Center. Activists were upset by what they perceived as yet another university at-
tempt to dilute and erase years of student labor. They successfully mobilized to have the officials
taken off the ceremony’s agenda. As a professor and advocate described, “One of my favorite
moments of the year was the opening of the [Center]. . . . [Students] had given all these. . . radical
speeches. And then [I was] looking and seeing a high level official at the very back, literally all by
himself. [I was] watching the look on his face as speaker after speaker is getting up there and not
thanking him.”

In another case, undocumented students were asked to regularly serve on panels at UndocuAlly
trainings for personnel and students at the school. However, many began to feel like the trainings
were exploitative of undocumented student experiences and labor. One student used her time on the
panel to assert that undocumented students are tokenized and minoritized by WU. She went on to
claim that the university uses its undocumented student population in order to appear deeply com-
mitted to serving marginalized students; the school benefits from the free advertisement it receives
when media outlets come to campus to interview and profile undocumented students. The student
went on to criticize the undocumented student “trend” in recent scholarship and challenged attend-
ees to hold their colleagues accountable for unethical research.

Protest
Finally, students utilized protest techniques. For example, during a groundbreaking ceremony for a
campus development project, members of a recently formed activist group staged a protest in which
they chanted, “We demand dignity and respect!” while holding signs that read, “We are done being
your profit!” They also issued demands, including the call for a fully functioning and professionally-
staffed multicultural center. This list of demands was later ceremonially delivered to top-level leader-
ship in a loud and visible protest through an administrative office area. In another case, the
Multicultural Center group led a number of digital protests online, organized around provocative and
effective hashtags, such as #ExploitedStudentLabor.

T H E T O L L O F S T U D E N T L A B O R
Students engaged in racialized equity labor because they saw it as necessary to exist in spaces that
many experienced as hostile. They communicated a deep-rooted commitment to serving their cam-
pus communities. Yet, this labor came at a personal cost.

Student activists were usually of color and often poor. With limited personal resources, many who
engaged in racialized equity labor reported experiencing exhaustion, mental health concerns, hunger,
and housing insecurity. As Gabriel explained:

I know some folks who have two jobs, and they [are] worried about paying rent, paying for
food. It’s a lot of student labor, and you have very weary students. . . very tired student leaders
that. . .feel tied to those communities because they realize. . . they’re the only ones that really
have pushed for anything more, have kept fighting for things.

In what follows, we highlight the emotional costs of racialized equity labor, as well as the impact that
it has on the academic and career progress of students of color.

The Emotional Toll
As Hochschild ([1983] 2012) explains, emotional labor is demanding and often falls to those who
are already marginalized. The same dynamics were at play on campus. Student leaders reported three

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primary drains on their emotional wellbeing: coping with administrators, dealing with unsupportive
peers, and supporting communities in need.

Relations with administration were difficult. As Victor explained, “It can be bad between activist
student leaders and administration because there is always that [administrative] sense of, ‘Oh they’re
out to get me.’ When in reality, no, we are out to change the problems that exist within our university
and [administrators] have the power to change them.” As Cynthia indicated, the combativeness was
unwarranted—especially because power dynamics worked in the favor of administration:
“[Administrators] are really taking. . . advantage of the fact that we are first generation and we are
low income and that we are POC [people of color]. . . We are not gonna question somebody who’s
older than us. . . . There are these weird power dynamics.” Students reported that administrators en-
gaged in actions that highlighted power discrepancies, such as sending a copy of the receipt for
Center furniture to involved students. Activists’ interpretation of this event was inflected by social
class: Being from predominantly low-income households, they perceived that sending the receipt was
an attempt to highlight how much students were costing the university. As one student put it, admin-
istrators wanted to “make sure we knew how much we were taking from student fees.”

When facing administration, student leaders were afraid of personal and community repercussions;
they went in anticipating resistance and were prepared to be painted as “ungrateful.” As Carmen
indicated:

It’s really annoying to see how the university takes advantage [of students] in every way that it
can, but when we question it or when we stand up against it, they’re all ready to like whip us. . . .
And me being undocumented, coming into the spaces and questioning admin. . . I’m scared, you
know? I’m scared because I’m putting not only [myself] on the line, but also my communities. . . .
They are basically saying, “We’re doing so much for you. How dare you question [us]? How dare
you ask for more?” But I think we’re entitled to it, you know.

A high-level administrator confirmed this tense, and often difficult-to-navigate, relationship:
“Sometimes a student protests [and] the [parent] in me wants to, while respecting the right, wants to
say well why didn’t you just come and talk to me? Why did it happen this way? What happened to
trying to work things out in a way that I value? . . . So sometimes things do hurt a little and bother
me a little, but you can’t do your job unless you can let that go.” Thus while encounters were experi-
enced as highly charged and personal on both ends, only students reported feeling unsafe.

Student leaders also consistently encountered racially charged backlash in response to protests
and cultural events from other students on campus. Black student organizations, in particular, were
often the targets of racism, with their events referred to as “ghetto” and, in one case, “nigger voodoo
shit” by non-Black students. Immediately following Western U’s first Black Family Day, Black student
organizers were met with an online barrage of racial slurs and messages, such as “What are all these
ghetto Black people doing on campus?” Students were hurt by the comments of their peers and had
to manage the responses of their upset parents who were now concerned about the school their
youth attended.

Likewise, when the Black Student Union issued their demands, disapproving students took to
Facebook to voice their opposition. As Nikki described, “The comments were basically saying. . . You
don’t need resources on campus to excel [and] if you do [then] you’re dumb. If you’re not smart
enough to excel on your own then you shouldn’t be here. . . . You don’t need resources just for your
own race. . . . It was mostly White [students].” Latinx and undocumented students also found them-
selves on the receiving end of hate-filled comments online, usually overlaid with anti-immigrant senti-
ments. Alejandra, for example, recalls the backlash against students mobilizing for Chicano Studies:
“We were also told some pretty nasty things, on Facebook especially. . . . They were [said] by other
students, and I think a couple faculty. [Comments] like go back to your country if you want

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[Chicano] studies.” The constant online presence of unsupportive students was so overwhelming
that some activists chose to deactivate their social media profiles.

Even when peers did support the efforts of student activists, support usually did not entail involve-
ment. In talking about the Center, Gabriel noted, “I think some students are supportive [but] they
don’t want to deal with it because they know it’s very tedious work. So they’re like, ‘That’s great, I
hope that works out for you, and I hope that when you have it we can use it.’” Similarly, Vesta
explained:

More students. . . would come up to me and be like. . . “What are you doing to get the
[Center]?” And I’m like. . . “I’m sorry, but what are you doing? I’m tired, I’m working with
high schoolers, I’m doing research, I’m taking classes. . . . [and] I need to get paid. What are
you doing? You can organize without me, you know? You don’t need me. . . Y’all are capable of
organizing too, so organize.”

Vesta’s comments accentuate the frustration of dealing with unsupportive students. However, acti-
vists rarely blamed peers for the lack of help; rather they attributed responsibility to administrators
specifically, and the education system generally, for expecting minoritized students to “keep their
heads down” and “get through this with the least cost possible.”

Student leaders also described being exhausted and overwhelmed by the amount of emotional
support they provided for other marginalized students. As Alejandra stated, “I think mental health is
a big issue in our [Latinx] community. Especially when you’re constantly giving and giving and giving
so much because you care about the organization, to the point where it starts to affect you because
it’s so tiring and it’s so draining.” The situation was exacerbated by inadequate mental health services
at Western U, whereby long waits (several weeks to a month) and a lack of practitioners of color
made it challenging for students to seek professional help. Organizers thus had to incorporate a great
deal of care work into their campus efforts, while they went without the same support.

Emotional labor became even more crucial after the election of Donald Trump. Activists disseminated
information to frightened undocumented students, led protests, held open-mic nights, provided LGBTQ
safe spaces, and organized healing circles. With this added labor, many student organizers were nearing
their breaking point. According to one undocumented activist, “We were struggling ourselves. We didn’t
know what to do. We were also worried. We didn’t know [how] to inform [undocumented students]. . ..
[And we were] also looking for that support to bring to them as well. So [it’s] hard, you know.” Fearful
of government policies that would target them, their families, and their communities, students needed
support more than ever. Gabriel explained, “[Students] are afraid. . . . They really need the help [and]
they’re not receiving it. . . . Communities are [sequestering] themselves [and] really tightening up to-
gether; they’re healing. . . And again. . .there’s no admin helping out, it’s a lot of student labor. I know stu-
dent leaders that had a lot of folks cry on their shoulders and that’s very tiring for them.”

The Academic and Career Toll
The high degree of emotional labor, combined with time and resource demands, strained activists’
abilities to engage in their student role. As Nikki reported, “I’m pleased with the work that we did.
But there’s costs. . . [especially to] academics, trying to balance both. That took a toll on me. . . . I
didn’t know how to handle it right.”

Many activists reported either being placed on academic probation or knowing a student activist
who had been academically dismissed. According to Alex:

The student leaders in our queer and trans community are exhausted. I would share a decent
number of them [have been] academically dismissed. And I would argue that it was not be-
cause the academics were challenging, it was because they were balancing academics along with

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everything else [and] they weren’t being supported as who they were. So they were trying to
do that themselves on top of staying on top of their academics, which is not fair. . . The campus
advertis[es] itself as like this hub of diversity, hub of intersectional identity. And we do have
that demographic, but then again that demographic is not being supported.

As Alex makes clear, the academic toll of student labor is not the result of academic inadequacy, but
instead occurs when students must take on and navigate enormous responsibility.

Students were not the only ones to report the negative academic consequences of engaging in stu-
dent labor. The limited professional support staff members on campus were also concerned. WU’s so-
cial justice coordinator made the following observation:

It really is amazing how much stuff that they do. I’m also baffled and somewhat conflicted on
how much they do. I get student involvement; however, I also want you to do what you need
to do in the classroom. . . I mean they are. . .event planners and managers, right. And where are
they finding [the] support [they need]? Yes they’re finding it through individual folks, but how
great would that be if there was a center where they can come. I pose that question.

Without a fully functioning multicultural center, activists had to take on functions that centers tradi-
tionally provide, and many of them experienced harsh academic consequences.

Although racialized equity labor is a major asset to organizations like universities, it is often unpaid and
difficult to put on a resume. Reflecting on her college experience, Tiffany noted, “My family [is] like, ‘You
didn’t do any research; you didn’t do any internships.’ And I’m like, ‘I had AfroDiaspora Hall [and] that
[took up all] my time.’” Tiffany developed many skills in college—but employers or graduate programs
may not recognize them. If research on the college admissions penalty for students of color who are con-
cerned with racism is any indication (see Thornhill 2018), applicants may even be penalized if they
choose to disclose their involvement in racialized equity labor during college.

Many activists, who had been going full force in providing racialized equity labor, were suddenly
adrift as they neared the end of school. For Stacey, this resulted in the painful decision to step down
from her activist role:

I just recently left [my organization]. I was their Communications Director and our Historian.
I left because I needed to figure certain things out personally. . . and they kind of got in the
way. . . . I can’t do both. . . . Either it’s my career, because I’m about to graduate, or y’all. I’m
still here for y’all, I’m still talking highly of y’all, and I’m still willing to help and support, but
this I need to focus [on]. I’m cleaning certain stuff up for my career and then I’ll be back. So,
yes, I had to leave. . . . It was hard.

As Stacey continued to articulate, advancing her career was important primarily for her ability to give
back in even more significant ways. She explained, “Let me go, take opportun[ities], and make bigger
ones and then come back and see how I can apply it here.”

Support staff also pointed out the ways in which student labor threatened future success. Recalling
a meeting with a recently graduated student, one staff member explained:

I was at a meeting [with a] student who identified as being undocumented and as being. . . part
of other marginalized communities. . . She graduated this May. And she was very pessimistic
about her education here. She was very disappointed and felt like, “I did a lot of work on diver-
sity. I did so much work that focused on educating others, but yet, I don’t know what I’m
gonna do after I graduate.” For a student to leave so disappointed and to share this with other
administrators, I thought was very sad and it also made me feel angry at the fact that our insti-
tution just bled her out.

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This student was not alone, as many of our interviewees reported leaving Western U personally
drained. As Fernando worried, “I can only do so much, you know. I have [had] to sacrifice a lot. . . I
feel like my college experience has been trying to make something better and that something is ac-
tively working against it. Is this what my college is supposed to be like? Like all this work all the
time?”

D I S C U S S I O N
As we demonstrated above, student activists often undertake significant unpaid labor to make the
campus environment safe and habitable for themselves and their minoritized peers. We referred to
their efforts as racialized equity labor because it is largely done by and for people of color, many of
whom are also multiply marginalized, as they cope with the “institutional Whiteness” that is often
present, even at a majority-minority institution (Ahmed 2012). Students’ racialized equity labor, al-
though often overlooked by scholarship, typically occurs alongside, and frequently in collaboration
with, that of faculty and staff of color (Ahmed 2012; Hirshfield and Joseph 2011; Matthew 2016;
Moore 2017).

Although we focused on racialized equity labor on a specific campus, the voices of people of color at
universities around the country suggest that patterns described in this article are not confined to
Western U. If anything, we might expect a greater need and a more hostile climate for racialized equity
labor at many of the nation’s most prestigious, and predominately White, schools—as many have insidi-
ous histories of racial exploitation (Byrd 2017). In contrast, schools with supportive infrastructure and
staff, particularly multiple cultural centers that are semi-autonomous from the university, may signifi-
cantly reduce the burden of racialized equity labor. Who is likely to do this labor, and the degree of
pressure placed on members of particular groups, may vary with the racial composition of both students
and employees at the university. Our data also suggest that intersecting statuses, such as gender, sexual
identity, citizenship status, and social class matter for engagement with racialized equity labor.

How universities respond to racialized equity labor offers insight into the existence of “diversity
regimes” that reproduce the status quo (see Thomas 2018)—despite the hard work of people of
color to create meaningful racial change within organizations. We identify a cycle of racialized labor
appropriation occurring in universities, but also potentially in other organizations where leadership is
predominately White—for example corporations, as well as non-profit, professional, and charitable
organizations. In these spaces, people of color name inequalities built into infrastructure, policy, or
practices and work to address these issues. Initial responses from leadership are often dismissive or
characterized by resistance, but external and internal actors can force action, often by posing reputa-
tional or accountability concerns for the organization. Problematically, however, leadership typically
proceeds to appropriate racialized equity labor in service of organizational goals. In doing so, they of-
ten erase or downplay the labor of people of color and convert it into benign diversity work.

The racialized labor appropriation cycle can also be seen in the evolution of racialized affinity groups
or employee resource groups (ERGs) in corporations. In most cases, employees of color fought for
these forums in their workplaces, in what has been described as a “bottom-up phenomenon” impacting
most Fortune 500 and mid-sized companies (Welbourne, Rolf, and Schlachter 2017; also see Berrey
2015). ERG volunteers typically spend additional, unpaid time to improve their workplaces for those
sharing similar identities (Douglas 2008). Recently, ERGs have also been engaged in diversity work
that primarily benefits corporations. This includes targeted image improvement and market research
projects. For instance, Adelante, PepsiCo’s Latinx ERG, was involved in the development of Flamin’
Hot Cheetos and Tapat�ıo-flavored Doritos and Ruffles for Frito-Lay—a division of PepsiCo.6 This la-
bor proved profitable for PepsiCo, as the corporation gained product sales and positive press.

6 See PepsiCo’s internal report of Adelante’s receipt of the 2011 ERG of the Year Award at the LATINA Style 50 Awards at:
http://origin-www.pepsico.com/live/story/pepsicos-adelante-named-2011-employee-resource-group-of-the-year-at-latina-
style03072012397.

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http://origin-www.pepsico.com/live/story/pepsicos-adelante-named-2011-employee-resource-group-of-the-year-at-latina-style03072012397

As this example suggests, appropriated racialized equity labor can be a boon for organizations. It
reduces the cost of climate initiatives, as equity labor is often free and lessens the likelihood of nega-
tive attention from events such as protests or boycotts. Leadership often appropriates this labor as a
means of bolstering claims to providing a positive, diverse, and multicultural environment. Doing so
may allow the organization to meet racial representation goals and to market products to people of
color. This is a form of commodification. For example, when Western U uses AfroDiaspora Hall to
secure more students of color, the labor of students of color is transformed into a good to exchange
for profit and public attention. The university benefits without incurring the costs of providing infra-
structure to fully support historically marginalized groups.

Racialized equity labor is, in contrast, a form of identity taxation for many people of color within
organizations, as they are drained of energy, time, and resources that could be devoted to other pur-
suits (see Hirshfield and Joseph 2011). For university faculty, such pursuits include obtaining tenure
and job security. For college students, the need to engage in racialized equity labor may make it diffi-
cult to achieve academically, graduate on time, and prepare for the workforce. The need or desire to
resist appropriation of that labor, and its transformation into diluted diversity initiatives, adds an addi-
tional layer of stress, frustration, and work for already taxed populations. The racialized labor appro-
priation cycle, therefore, reproduces racial inequalities within organizations—all while masking their
existence.

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