Rajasekar, Neeraj2021-10-132021-10-132021-07https://hdl.handle.net/11299/225034University of Minnesota Ph.D. dissertation. July 2021. Major: Sociology. Advisor: Douglas Hartmann. 1 computer file (PDF); ix, 300 pages.My dissertation uses critical race theory, poststructuralist theory, and mixed-methods empirical analysis to study diversity discourse(s) in the USA. The keyword “diversity” has many meanings and can refer to a wide variety of personal and social differences, yet diversity discourse has a salient relationship with racial difference and racial contestation the USA. In the project, I historicize and describe mainstream diversity discourse, which has been the focus of a substantial body of ongoing sociological and critical inquiry. Such scholarship has highlighted how mainstream diversity discourse, while celebratory and positive, often falls short of pursuing true racial justice. But, while diversity discourse is hegemonic, it is far from monolithic and one dimensional. My project discusses “rearticulations” of diversity discourse that are similar yet distinct from the mainstream; some have the potential to foster attention to inequality and the pursuit of equity, but others work to uphold racial hierarchy and patriarchy. The introductory chapter considers the significance and implications of diversity discourse for racial contestation, political ideology, and the general culture wars in the USA. This chapter describes how critical race theory and poststructuralism inform this project; it also describes my project’s theory and conceptual vocabulary, based on Omi and Winant’s “racial formation theory” and Laclau and Mouffe’s “discourse theory.” The chapter also provides an overview of the logic and research design of the three substantive chapters: a genealogical analysis, a survey analysis, and a textual analysis. Informed by Foucaultian genealogy and Omi and Winant’s historical analysis of racial formation, the first chapter develops a new historical analysis of the origins and evolutions of diversity discourse in the USA. It begins by discussing how the rise of “diversity” was shaped by racial contestation and political-ideological clashes in the decades from the Civil Rights era to the current moment. The chapter then presents a review of sociological and other scholarly research about diversity discourse. Finally, this chapter discusses rearticulations of diversity discourse that have spawned and grown during the current time. These rearticulations are built upon familiar tenets and meanings associated with “diversity,” but they apply and frame this keyword in ways that are substantively, normatively, and ideologically distinct from mainstream diversity discourse. The second substantive chapter analyses nationally-representative survey data about everyday Americans’ attitudes towards diversity. My analysis explores how such attitudes are related to demographics, political ideology, and beliefs about other race-related concepts such as affirmative action and immigration. Findings show that Americans have generally positive diversity attitudes. Additionally, Americans’ diversity attitudes prove relatively distinct from other race-related attitudes such as prejudice and colorblind racism; diversity attitudes are not just a proxy or indicator of other beliefs, but a unique, distinct, and coherent set of beliefs. Despite this distinctiveness, further exploration shows that diversity attitudes are significant predictors of other race-related topics, indicative of how diversity discourse is implicated in racial contestation in the USA. The third substantive chapter analyzes a cultural snapshot of diversity discourse in news media. I analyze 8,000+ unique texts from six high-profile American news; the sources range across the political spectrum. Texts were purposively-sampled for their usage of the keyword “diversity,” “multiculturalism,” or related terms. First, descriptive statistics indicate that multiculturalism and similar language is present in only a small proportion of texts in the data (~4.1%), indicative of how thoroughly diversity discourse has supplanted multiculturalism in the American lexicon. Then, to highlight the social conversations where “diversity” language is pertinent today, I present unstructured topic models. I find several similarities in the topics, themes, and settings discussed in the texts from the various news organizations. Specifically, immigration, politicians, the tech industry, and colleges are commonly discussed in texts from all six media sources, although several topics such as tourism are relatively unique to one or two corpuses. This shows that several consistencies exist in the uses of the keyword “diversity” across these news media texts; of these topics, many have historically been battlegrounds of racial contestation. Finally, based on sub-sampling and qualitative close-reading, the third substantive chapter also explores two nascent but important trends in the rearticulation of diversity discourse. These are Diversity of Thought and similar phrases versus Diversity and Equity and similar phrases. Of these new directions, the former is more prominent in conservative media and is often employed in ways that serve conservative political goals. The latter is a more liberal-leaning rearticulation which draws some attention to inequality and exclusion, but my close-reading suggests that this phrase is somewhat symbolic and watered-down, often referenced in passing rather than frequently being a strong and normative point of focus for racial justice. Studying these rearticulations in action highlights how their ideological and normative dimensions are implicated in political contestation and the culture wars in the USA. Overall, the project illustrates how diversity discourse’s past, present, and future are reflective of and constitutive of ongoing social struggle between the pursuit of racial justice and the entrenchment of racial hierarchy. Mainstream diversity discourse has been shaped by the interplay between racial democracy and racial despotism in the USA, both historically and today. Furthermore, this project provides an original analysis of newer articulations of diversity discourse that will be relevant to the future of racial contestation, political-ideological battles, and the culture wars in the USA. Additionally, based on my application of Omi and Winant’s “racial formation theory” and Laclau and Mouffe’s “discourse theory,” this project is a first step in developing my original theory of “racialized keywords,” an analytical perspective for studying how changing meanings, keywords, and discourses shape racial contestation, political ideology, and the culture wars in the USA.enThesis or Dissertation