Reflection on Park (2013)

When Diversity Drops: Race, Religion, and Affirmative Action in Higher Education / Julie J. Park (2013)

Park (2013) well conducted the qualitative research with her experiential knowledge, existing theory and research, and her pilot research and thought experiments in this book.  Park studied race and campus evangelicals, who are members of a Christian student organization known as InterVarsity Christian Fellowship (IVCF) at California University (CU), in order to understand: 1) “how underlying values, norms, and priorities shape a student community, which in turn can facilitate or hinder engagement with racial diversity;” 2) “how student subcultures are shaped by the structural diversity;” and 3) “how changing demographic conditions (that is, an institution’s loss of structural diversity) can affect a student subculture over time” (p. 8).

Park, as an expert of dealing with ethnographic methods, examined IVCF for almost two years.  She conducted her research in the natural setting including the formal and informal lives of the IVCF members and cultures.  During the first year, she attended several sites and events to do participant observation with permission from the CU IVCF.  Through the participant observation, She realized that she had more insights from informal interactions with students, so she supplemented participant observation with “individual in-depth interviews” with sixty IVCF associates, including thirty-four current students through snowball sampling.  Park used semi-structured interview (a list of possible topics and questions to ask the participant but is flexible enough to allow the interview in other directions (Merriam 1998)). 

After finishing collecting data, she began preliminary data analysis from three sources, “participant observation, in-depth interviews, and document collection” (Lincoln & Guba 1985), to strengthen “validity and trustworthiness” (p. 158).  As a semi-insider doing ethnography, she recognized herself as the instrument of research including observation, data collection, and interpreting data.  She became a professional stranger with both emic and ethic perspectives, and it helped her to be aware of the relationship between those observed and the researcher (herself) for data collection and analysis.  Interestingly she mentioned that her “identity, personality, and disposition undoubtedly shaped her fieldwork experience” with better and worse perspectives for the quality of the study or the trustworthiness of results (p. 161).  

Personally, “when a minority is the majority” chapter was insightful to me as an Asian when Park explained that Asian students became a new dominant group (instead of White) to set the norm of IVCF group culture and their cultural traits as a majority group was unintentionally exclusive to other students of color.  So, I understand why the author emphasized the difficulty of racial/ethnic reconciliation in campus.  Among Asian students, Park specifically focused on the religious behaviors of Korean American students.  For example, she described that despite religious convictions about the importance of diversity, Korean American students experienced tensions to decide between joining in a racially diverse campus fellowship versus their (ethnically) homogeneous group.  I agree with the author’s idea; however this tension should not be interpreted with negative meanings or values for the Korean American students.  In contrast, I think that this tension should be positively discussed as the process of how Korean American students make sense of cross-racial interaction and expand their perspective to the campus climate for diversity. 

Lastly, to overcome “inadvertently discouraged racial diversity, cross-racial interaction, and interracial friendship” among students’ groups (p. 27), as Park highlighted, “intentionality and displacement” to listen to each other’s stories can be a “critical to constructing an organizational culture that attracts and sustains diversity” in campus (p. 134 & 147).  Through this kind of practice, students may have positive (better understanding, healing, and forgiveness) or negative (misunderstanding, tokenization, and deep hurt) experiences.  I am sure that these practices for racial reconciliation and multiethnicity should be a core priority of student subcultures that exist between macrolevel structural diversity and micro level (personal) cross-racial interaction.  Thus, Park underlined that “intentionality in crossing racial lines” and priority in multiethnic organizational cultures are important to “sustain racially diverse communities that foster engagement with diverse students” (p. 3 & p. 108).  It is imperative that universities have articulates that a racially diverse student body is linked to important educational and civic goals for students both during college and as citizens in a diverse democracy.