Taking on Diversity

January 12, 2015
Nacoste (Making Gumbo in the University), a professor of psychology at North Carolina State University, aims to give his students an “understanding of neo-diversity matters writ large.” In this book, he tries to replicate the feeling of taking his class, with mixed success. Nacoste provides intriguing insights into his classroom methods and theories about race and racism, which include a powerful takedown of the idea that tolerance is the end goal of diversity efforts. He relies too heavily, however, on excerpts of his students’ writing, with nearly half the book consisting of their reflections about bias, prejudice, and racism, which, although moving at times, are all too clearly the work of young, inexperienced writers and could have benefited from some serious editing. Nacoste makes his experience of growing up in the Jim Crow South a motif, but while he shows how his background serves as a badge of pride and survival, readers may be left wishing he could have probed more deeply into such personal material. This general lack of rigor pulls the book down, despite the presence of some worthwhile thinking.