Debunking the Grit Narrative in Higher Education

Debunking the Grit Narrative in Higher Education provides readers with authentic experiences, authentic struggles, authentic strategies, and authentic asset-based conceptualizations of success. These scholars rigorously debunk the deficit discourse around African American, Asian American, Pacific Islander, Latinx and Native American students’ college access and persistence. The edited volume shows that closing the so-called "achievement gap" for minoritized students does not solely depend on their individual sense of "grit," "merit," and "ganas" but on examining the effects of structural exclusion, oppression, and racism. In this groundbreaking volume, the authors provide powerful and rigorous cases that demonstrate how Students of Color navigate these opportunity structures to access equitable and just educational outcomes. This is a must-read book for anyone interested in finding pragmatic solutions to address the deeply rooted inequalities that exist in America's educational systems.

--Gil Conchas, The Wayne K. & Anita Woolfolk Hoy Endowed Chair of Education, College of Education, The Pennsylvania State University

Nearly two decades since "grit" entered the popular vernacular, the concept maintains a strong grip both within academic and popular culture. Despite its longevity, the concept remains volatile and complicated. However as the authors in this volume explain, grit is just the latest iteration in a long-line of racist, classist, and deficit frameworks that uncritically blames the victim for their own lack of success. The stories contained herein are essential reading to help historicize, problematize, and interrogate grit’s troubled roots while also giving agency to those historically silenced or ignored in conversations about opportunity in higher education.

--María C. Ledesma, Ph.D., Professor & Chair, Department of Educational Leadership, Inaugural Coordinator, Higher Education Leadership Master’s Program, Lurie College of Education, San José State University

This important asset-based volume unveils how grit narratives that claim to promote minoritized student success cover-up the actual structural causes of ongoing racialized educational inequities. In a post-affirmative action era marked by anti "CRT" legislation and "race neutral" policies designed to pretend that racialized inequality and violence are "fake news," the truths uncovered in each chapter should be essential reading for higher education practitioners, scholars, and leaders alike.

--Uma Mazyck Jayakumar, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Higher Education Administration and Policy, University of California, Riverside

Locks, Mendoza, and Carter put together an essential resource for scholars, practitioners, and everyday people who are ready to remove blame from the students and communities most impacted by structural inequities. Through a thoughtful collection from diverse contributors, they help shift our focus away from individual characteristics that supposedly motivate students to persist and back to the larger conditions that enforce persistence on people already disenfranchised. In doing so, we’re able to see these communities in their collective resistance and joy.

--Dr. Tracy Lachica Buenavista, Ph.D., Professor of Asian American Studies, co-principal investigator for the CSUN DREAM Center, Asian American Studies Pathways Project, and Ethnic Studies Education Pathways Project, California State University Northridge

This is one of the most comprehensive attempts at interrogating grit and is a must read for educational leaders, researchers, and student affairs scholar-practitioners. While grit has gained prominence in education as a tool for explaining perseverance for underserved community groups, this book calls on us to understand that there is far more to this concept than has previously been explored. The authors challenge us to consider the historical context of institutional racism and exclusion in understanding grit. Included in this work are many critical aspects in the exploration of grit, such as psychological implications, structural inequalities, critical race theory, asset- based concepts and indigenous ways of knowing. The use of secondary datasets illuminates the critical findings of this work to support thoughtful reflection and new ways of building engaged inclusive educational communities of learning for diverse learners across academic disciplines.

--Dawn R. Person, Professor Emeritus, Educational Leadership, Director, Center for Research on Educational Access and Leadership (C-REAL), CSU Fullerton

Inspired by Gloria Ladson-Billings, in their edited book, "Debunking the grit narrative," Angela M. Locks, Rocío Mendoza, and Deborah Faye Carter have gathered contributions that problematize a concept (grit) that fails to problematize the White Supremacy that underlies its project of counseling individual perseverance. In the spirit of Toni Morrison’s 1975 speech at Portland State University, the authors and contributors refuse to be distracted from the work of understanding students of color’s praxis in navigating, with their strengths, the structures that perpetuate racist oppression. In the process, they interrogate these structures to dismantle them.

--Gary Rhoades, Professor, Center for the Study of Higher Education, Departmentt of Educational Policy Studies & Practice, University of Arizona

As a scholar and leader that thinks carefully about how the interactions between people in organizations shape positive or negative experiences, I read this project with great anticipation. Debunking the Grit Narrative in Higher Education did not disappoint and is a welcomed addition to the literature-base that informs how we understand institutions of higher education as organizations. The chapters deepen our knowledge and challenge readers to strongly consider shifting our emphasis from students to the root cause of the problems at hand – the organizations themselves.

--Jerlando F L Jackson, PhD, Dean and MSU Foundation Professor of Education, College of Education, Director and Chief Research Scientist, Organizational Disparities Laboratory, Michigan State University

“In general, this book makes a significant contribution to discussions regarding the content of race and ethnicity in the context of higher education. …The book’s author seeks how to transform higher education institutions into entities that meet students’ academic needs and success. It is not an exaggeration that this book will have the opportunity for broader popularity on an international scale in the future.”

–From the review in Journal of Latinos and Education by Latif, A., Fitriya, Y., Kenedi, A. K., & Thamrin, A. H.