“It absolutely impacts every day”: Diversity allies connect racial history and current climate at a southern professional school.

Abstract

Although many postsecondary institutions have recently begun grappling with racist histories, there is little research connecting an institution's history of exclusion to its current racial climate, particularly among faculty and staff. Using the campus racial climate framework (Hurtado, Milem, Clayton-Pedersen, & Allen, 1998, 1999, this qualitative case study investigates how faculty and senior administrator diversity allies at a professional school in the south believe their school's history of segregation impacts current racial climate and what they recommend to reckon with that history. The findings support the interconnected nature of the racial climate dimensions and suggest that an unaddressed history of exclusion continues to indirectly affect campus racial climate in various ways.