Canaries in the Field: Admission Professionals, Racial Crisis, and Systemic Inequity in a Color-Evasive Organization

Guided by a racism-conscious theoretical framework for understanding organizational behavior, this study illustrates how systemic inequity is reproduced in elite-college admissions. Using critical-qualitative case study methods, including interviews with 18 admission personnel, I examine four mechanisms of color-evasive racism: special-interest groups; clientele relationships; institutional priorities; and racial bias. I also examine how personnel framed mechanisms through the lenses of abstract liberalism and minimization of racism. This article affirms the utility of racism-conscious theory for understanding college-access issues and makes distinct methodological contributions, illustrating: (a) the applicability of elicitory methods in critical-qualitative research; and (b) the value of leveraging macro-level events, such as the current racial crisis, to understand modern social phenomena via case study. By centering the understandings of personnel at the front line of college access, the findings unveil the black box of elite admissions, offering new insights into how an admission process works. Implications are discussed with emphasis on the current color-evasive policy context.