Most workspaces are engaged in more conversations about equity across races, genders, and sexualities. Offices that support underserved populations in higher education institutions across the United States are no exception. UGA IHE doctoral student Chad Mandala co-authored an article with Dr. Stephanie Oritz that focuses on the emotional toll endured by workers in campus diversity offices and how social norms restrain their effectiveness. Their research explains how externally-imposed “feeling rules,” based on sexuality, are implemented organizationally across racial divides in LGTBQ centers. Feeling rules are normalized expectations for emotions and their display in a given work setting. The authors build on the work of several sources and find that the burdens of these expectations are unfairly distributed across racial lines within organizations, even those that champion diversity. They argue that LGBTQ diversity centers reinforce racial inequality by cementing “race- and sexual orientation-based tropes around emotionality.” When white feeling rules based on positivity and cheerfulness are the standard, non-white colleagues are judged more harshly when they do not conform. In addition, they bear the emotional burden of facing the parent institution’s racism without organizational support. According to the authors, employees of color saw claims of intersectionality and diversity hires as a façade for a diversity regime that ignores racial bias by performing positivity. In addition, promotions, opportunities, and wage increases were preferred for white over non-white colleagues, and the atmosphere discouraged race-based discussions. The article concludes that organizations’ expectations make “people of color alienated from their most intimate feelings.” With a thorough, academic exploration feeling rules, this paper marks an important foray into intersectional diversity research in higher education. Ortiz and Mandala's work, "There Is Queer Inequity, but I Pick to Be Happy: Racialized Feeling Rules and Diversity Regimes in University LGBTQ Resource Centers," appears in the April issue of the Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race. Read the article here: https://doi.org/10.1017/S1742058X21000096 Type of News/Audience: General News
