Active Members of Diverse Communities: Race and the Doing of Diversity

Author: Meghan A. Burke

Dissertation School: Loyola University Chicago

Pages: 231

Publication Date: August 2009

Availability:
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Access Number: 10874

Abstract:

While the nation's diversity is undoubtedly growing, local-level diversity is still rarely sustained. Much less is known about communities whose integration has been steady than about communities that remain segregated. Examining these communities and their active residents has the potential to address questions about the sustainability of diversity in these communities. Further, examining how active residents in these communities talk and think about race has the potential to expand what is known about color-blind and diversity discourses and how they are concretely applied in local settings. In this project, I examine 3 of the nation's 14 stably diverse communities, seen through the lens of their most active residents. I conducted 41 qualitative interviews with residents of the adjoining Rogers Park, Edgewater, and Uptown on Chicago's Northeast Side, asking open-ended questions about their housing history, history of neighborhood involvement, and any relevant community issues that emerged as important to them along the way.

After canvassing the communities, I begin by examining trends that impact community involvement among residents, and explore the four major types of community involvement that residents in this study have engaged. Building on that base of social action, I explore the particular ways that color-blind ideologies are articulated in these communities, as their diversity and liberal character invoke an as-yet unexamined manifestation of color-blind ideologies that have a strong relationship to community involvement and ultimately the sustained diversity of these neighborhoods.

I then examine the discourses of diversity themselves, comparing the discourses here to national trends and considering the relationship between those discourses and social action. I also devote a chapter to White racial identity, as the particular ways that Whites in these communities construct their racial identity pushes the boundaries of race scholarship to date. Finally, I conclude with some practical recommendations for community members and social policy in these communities, should they seek to actively sustain the community's diversity.

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