In studying climate issues on college campuses, Dr. Nolan L. Cabrera has made it a point to capture the narrative of White males.
“What is the role of higher education in relationship to systemic racism?” asks Cabrera, who is an associate professor in the Center for the Study of Higher Education at the University of Arizona in Tucson. “And, in particular, how does Whiteness play into this?”
Diversity, Cabrera contends, almost always focuses exclusively on minority students.
“If there is a racial controversy on campus, it always means that something happened to minoritized students on campus,” he says, “and if you don’t look at the other side of that coin, which is Whiteness, you have an effect with no cause.”
Cabrera’s research has culminated in his newly released book White Guys on Campus: Racism, White Immunity, and the Myth of “Post-Racial” Higher Education. Dr. Shaun R. Harper of the University of Southern California praised the book, adding that Cabrera “masterfully complicates Whiteness, illuminates White supremacy, and proposes ways to help White college men become less racist.”
From his days as an undergraduate at Stanford University when he worked at Center for a New Generation — a Boys and Girls Club in East Palo Alto — Cabrera was certain that he had found his calling in higher education.
Working with minority and low-income students, Cabrera says he was amazed by youngsters who were constantly working to improve themselves, with parental support, despite the incredible odds stacked against them.
