UCLA

The United States is undergoing such rapid shifts in the racial demographics of its population, that it is projected to become a majority-minority country in less than four decades. Will its citizenry be ready to participate socially and politically within the new racial/ethnic context? Higher education is positioned to play a role in the cultivation of a socially engaged democratic citizenship through its influence on students’ social agency, the extent to which a student values political and social involvement as a personal goal, which empirical research indicates is positively affected through students’ engagement with racially diverse peers. Selective institutions, particularly, serve as pathways to official positions of leadership for students who will govern an increasingly diverse democracy. In order to provide the opportunity of diversity benefits to all students, selective institutions may use affirmative action policies and practices to admit students of color historically denied admission. This study proposed the campus racial climates of institutions, in addition to the admission of a diverse student body and cross-racial engagement amongst peers, may play an important role in the development of social agency. This study, therefore, examined the interrelationship of compositional diversity, cross-racial interaction, and campus racial climate on social agency across White, Asian/Asian American, African American/Black, and Latina/o racial/ethnic groups.

Grounded in a set of theoretical frameworks on the benefits of diversity, intergroup relations, and campus racial climate, this study employed multiple group, multi-level structural equal modeling (MSEM) using national and longitudinal undergraduate student survey data. The author tested three different measures of campus racial climate, one per each of the three models, in order to investigate if results were sensitive to how it was operationalized. The study’s key findings include: the impact of campus racial climate in connection to the diversity rationale, outcomes of equity and affirmative action policy should be understood through the unique dimension the variable employed measures; particular dimensions of the campus racial climate impact the levels of cross-racial interaction for all students but does not impact outcomes of social agency for students of color; and greater engagement with diverse peers is associated with greater levels of social agency values at the end of college.