Book Culture, where you can easily spend hundreds on required reading for class. Photo Credit: Book Culture LinkedIn
At Columbia, it quickly becomes clear that “underrepresented” doesn’t always mean “poor.” While addressing the issue of “underrepresentation” is often framed as a moral imperative for diversity programs aimed at recruiting the next generation of scholars of color, those who use the term frequently overlook the specific challenges faced by first-generation and/or low-income (FLI) students. Moreover, the reasons behind these “underrepresentations” are often left unexamined without further inquiry or attention to class. Even the term “FLI” can be a misnomer: at Columbia, students can be first-generation, but some are certainly not low-income.
As a senior at Columbia, I have witnessed firsthand how these terms mislead students and faculty alike. Some students and faculty, while sensitive to the challenges faced by underrepresented students of color, fail to take meaningful action to address the complex needs of their underrepresented FLI students. From experience, a one-size-fits-all approach to helping the underrepresented does not work: the needs of one individual student are different from another, even if they share the same identity or experience.
Kimberlé Crenshaw’s legal framework of “intersectionality” is a good starting point for understanding this problem. Surely, race and class will ‘intersect’ to compound discrimination against FLI students of color. However, when writing about the shortcomings of an “underrepresentation” framework, I am also reminded of the work of historian Barbara Fields and cultural theorist Stuart Hall.
Professor Fields, who Columbia College students read in their second semester of Contemporary Civilizations, writes on the ideology of race and its historical character. In “Slavery, Race, and Ideology in the United States of America,” Professor Fields argues (among other things) that race is not a “physical fact,” but rather a sort of historic “hand-me-down vocabulary” used to understand the world around us day in and day out. There may be physical characteristics that signify race to us, but these phenotypic characteristics do not constitute race itself. Rather, race refers to the ritually reproduced categories of white, black, Hispanic/Latinx, Asian, and so on. Moreover, these categories are not biologically real. Beyond a “social construction” argument, Professor Fields welcomes us to think historically about race and, for the purposes of this blog post, to move beyond race as an essential part of our personhood. This understanding of race leads us to make clear the role of class in the “underrepresentation” equation: a student of color’s way of thinking—one informed by their livelihood and class background—is not necessarily always “underrepresented” in the academy. Class crosses the color line to produce similar world views through similar life experiences, and though these views may be distinct from that of our white peers’, it can sometimes be hard to measure the difference. Ultimately, a more critical analysis of the lives of “scholars of color” and “white scholars” is necessary. Who are they? Where did they grow up? What informs their belief systems? Do they recognize class as a part of their lives? How so?
Coming from North Carolina, it was easy for me to hold onto the old underrepresentation-as-lack-of-racial-diversity equation until coming to Columbia. But here, I have learned that even the most underrepresented voices in the academy have an underrepresented population of their own: that of FLI students of color. I am reminded of what Stuart Hall said in Policing the Crisis: Mugging, the State, and the Law of Order: “…race is the modality in which class is lived.” In my own racial ideology or ‘hand-me-down vocabulary,’ I thought of my and other people of color’s oppression as a solely racial one, and not one underpinned by the amount of money my parents and I made. However, upon coming to Columbia, I realized that people of color’s experiences are largely shaped by their class status. In a major and unmistakable way, rich people of color have experienced life differently than I have, and thus, experience oppression and exploitation differently. These differences are not readily catered to in the academy’s “underrepresentation” framework.
In conclusion, if you are FLI at Columbia and beginning to conduct research in the humanities or social sciences, keep in mind that programs or people championing you for your “underrepresentation” do not always understand your unique situation. Whether it’s having trouble speaking up in a seminar (see my last blog post for tips and tricks), finding the money to buy a paper copy of the latest reading, or finding enough time to complete your assignments while also securing a job and immediate source of income, your struggle is unique and worth communicating to others.
College forces everyone to become proficient in articulating their exact wants and needs. Articulating wants and needs can be harder for FLI students, however, if we assume our wants and needs will be the same as our non-FLI counterparts. My advice? Do not let larger categories of race deny you the specificity of your situation, even with your “underrepresented” peers. Put yourself in situations where your FLI background is celebrated and rendered visible. Or make it so.
Xavier Amaro CC’25
For more on race and class:
- Barbara J. Fields and Karen E. Fields, Racecraft: The Soul of Inequality in American Life
- Adolf Reed, The South: Jim Crow and its Afterlives
- Robin Kelley, Hammer & Hoe: Alabama Communists During the Great Depression