For more than a generation now, the promotional literature for American universities has painted a picture of diversity that rarely corresponds to actual diversity on campus. Pick up any brochure for any U.S. university, and its glossy photos will show a vivacious mix of white, black, Hispanic and Asian students smiling arm-in-arm on the quad. It has kind of become a cultural in-joke.
This “diversity brochure” trope is not a recent development. Way back in 1990, when I was a freshman toiling away at my work-study job at the Friends University Student Union in Wichita, a photographer accosted me in a panic and asked if I could don a graduation gown and pose for pictures. When I told him I wouldn’t graduate for three more years, he told me it didn’t matter, because he was on a deadline and he needed me in the picture.
Turns out the student life office was so fixated with representing diversity that they forgot to send him any white people to pose for their brochure.
So it was that the 1990 campus “President’s Report” featured a photo of me (see above; note my “mullet” haircut) pretending to be celebrating my “graduation” from Friends University.
Interestingly enough, in 1998 I heard from a friend who said that the exact same 1990 photo had appeared in their 100 Years of Friends University book outlining the history of the school. So apparently that moment of performed diversity had quite a shelf life!
Share This
