Remembering a 1985 report on the experiences of people of color at Southwestern
This entry on Professor Diaz y Miranda’s 1985 report titled “White Alright, Brown Stick Around, and Black Get Back” is part of a series of Placing Memory entries tracing the forgotten history of Southwestern’s diversity and inclusion initiatives from the 1980s to the present.
Dr. Mariano Diaz y Miranda was a visiting instructor for the History department during the 1984-1985 academic year. He was hired in a temporary sabbatical replacement position to cover the courses usually taught by Dr. Jan C. Dawson in fall 1984 and Dr. Martha Mitten Allen in spring 1985. As the year progressed and students saw the dedication he put into his teaching and research, Diaz y Miranda became an especially respected professor amongst the student body, and many were sad to see him leave when his contract was up. We have located the pin in Mood-Bridwell, the site of Dr. Diaz y Miranda's office.
In addition to his teaching duties, Dr. Diaz y Miranda was early on tasked with researching the experiences of people of color on campus by the chair of the History department, Dr. Weldon S. Crowley. Approved by Dean G. Benjamin Oliver, the goal of the study was to develop strategies for recruiting and retaining racial minorities at SU. This entry explores the findings of that research in conjunction with Diaz y Miranda ’s influence on the student body himself to examine what Southwestern’s position towards minority retention suggested about campus culture for people of color in the mid-1980s.
Dr. Diaz y Miranda’s study was first announced to the public through a Megaphone article published on September 28th, 1984, only a month into Diaz y Miranda ’s time on campus. The article introduced the committee of students, staff, and faculty working with him, and the aims of collecting and compiling the research.
This research was meant to evaluate strategies for minority student recruitment and retention at Southwestern by both identifying and assessing the procedures in place at the time and proposing future solutions to attract more students, and staff and faculty of color to SU.
Over the course of the year, not much information was publicly released about the research, but a report written by Diaz y Miranda was completed on April 8, 1985. The title of the report signaled the report’s overall message: “‘White Alright, Brown Stick Around, and Black Get Back’: Institutionally Generated Obstacles to the Recruitment, Admission, and Retention of Ethnic Minorities at Southwestern University.”
The report was organized by the different phases in the college experience of minority students, starting with Recruitment, then Admissions, Financial Aid, Classroom Experience, Student Affairs, and ending with Graduate School and Job Placement. The structure was an important reflection of the report’s thesis, which was expressed directly in the introduction: “The purpose of this report is to call attention to existing conditions at Southwestern that might prevent the university from recruiting and retaining minority members of our society.”
While there had been other efforts at Southwestern to analyze and discuss similar issues before, the approach Diaz y Miranda took was distinctive because he focused on doing extensive interviews with students. He further centered the student experience by concentrating “on the stumbling blocks affecting minority students,” which reflects the unique differences between existing as a minority on campus as a student, staff, or faculty member.
The report made it clear that any problems recruiting and retaining students of color were not the fault of students or even due to the shortcomings of individual faculty, staff, or administrators, but the way institutional racism at Southwestern mirrored the systemic racism of American society as a whole. Diaz y Miranda identified “an all-embracing philosophical outlook that most members of the University hold when it comes to their expectations of minority students,” which lead to both overt racism and what Diaz y Miranda calls the “milder” instances of racism that influence the success of people of color in higher education.
The Classroom Experience section mentions a conversation between Diaz y Miranda and a White colleague, who was voicing his discomfort towards discussing issues faced by marginalized communities with his students. Diaz y Miranda initially disregarded his concern until he came to the realization that he had approached some of his lessons with a similar lack of consideration for the background of his students when describing certain events in American history. This section highlighted the hierarchical difference between student and faculty, as even as a person of color himself Diaz y Miranda did not realize exactly how his lessons were being perceived by his students until he asked them directly.
The impact of this anecdote is heightened by a portion of the previous section that conveys how a large portion of students of color faced this conflict where they felt the needed to conform with the standards set by their White peers, yet they were ostracized from their own identity groups for the act of conforming.
Seeing this conflict addressed here helped provide new, valuable context for my research for Placing Memory on some of the affinity groups and the diversity and inclusion initiatives introduced in the 1980s and 1990s. The Students Affairs section of Diaz y Miranda’s report addresses the social conditions of SU at the time that led students of color to either reject or assimilate into the status quo to effectively “succeed” in their higher education experience. Diaz y Miranda argues that it is the institution's responsibility to help students in marginalized communities define their identity and their role in society, yet the emphasis placed on creating a “comfortable school environment” has inherently promoted this process of conformity.
Some of my other Placing Memory entries acknowledge how different student organizations for marginalized communities often struggled to find a place on campus, both figuratively and literally. I suggest this circumstance reflects whether these organizations decided to accept or reject this process of assimilation.
The report concludes by acknowledging some of the institutional changes undertaken during the writing process, then emphasizes the importance of creating and sustaining diversity work at Southwestern by establishing a permanent position at SU with “the authority and responsibility to keep minority issues alive within the institutional walls of Southwestern.”
Despite multiple Letters to the Editor in the Megaphone lamenting his departure, Diaz y Miranda left SU after his contract ended in May, 1985. Some of his suggestions were eventually put into practice, mainly through the creation of the Director of Multicultural Affairs position and the Office of Multicultural Affairs in 1989, but I was unable to find any mention of Diaz y Miranda’s research as a direct inspiration for the Director of Multicultural Affairs position and other DIBE initiatives started after 1985. The only reason the Placing Memory team knew about it was that we found a copy of Diaz y Miranda’s report in the University Archives as part of the papers of his colleague, history professor Dr. Martha Mitten Allen.
Reading Diaz y Miranda’s report today as a student of color gives me a strong sense of deja vu. My entry on the first person to fill the Director of Multicultural Affairs position, Dr. Gregory Washington, focuses on the unseen labor that faculty members in marginalized communities take to lead diversity education initiatives at predominantly-white institutions (PWIs). For years, people of color like Diaz y Miranda and Washington have been asked to help Southwestern achieve institutional goals for diversity and inclusion. They have evaluated existing programs and proposed new solutions, but often the work they do gets reported up the chain and then it is forgotten.
This entry re-engages Diaz y Miranda’s research to help people at Southwestern today recognize the work of our forebears to solve some of the same issues faculty, students, and staff of color continue to face today and to identify some of the unrecognized steps towards SU including more diversity education initiatives on a social and an institutional level.
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