White Faculty Members and Racial Diversity: A Theory and Its Implications

This paper introduces a theoretical framework for understanding white faculty members’ relative lack of involvement in institutional responses to racial diversity. By conceptualizing faculty members’ racial attitudes as ambivalent (encompassing both positive and negative affect), the framework suggests that behavioral responses following from these attitudes will be unstable, dependent upon institutional context factors that either arouse or regulate the positive or negative components of these ambivalent attitudes. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications of this framework for institutional interventions.