Color-evasive Racism in the Final Stage of Faculty Searches: Examining Search Committee Hiring Practices that Jeopardize Racial Equity Policy

Abstract

This case study examined how color-evasive racism operated through search committee members' practices in ways that undermined university policy created to centralize racial equity in faculty hiring. Findings show that abstract liberalism, racialized decoupling, and racialized agency impeded the realization of an equitable search process. Faculty engaged in these color-evasive practices through selectively applying hiring criteria, undermining racial equity work, compartmentalizing racial equity work, and discrediting committee members trained in equity-mindedness. The findings illustrate how power imbalances on search committees may lead to decoupling policies, processes, and outcomes that reproduce racial inequity in faculty hiring, particularly in the final stage.