BiblioVault - Books about Equity

The Aesthetics of Equity

Notes on Race, Space, Architecture, and Music

Craig L. Wilkins

University of Minnesota Press, 2007

Architecture is often thought to be a diary of a society, filled with symbolic representations of specific cultural moments. However, as Craig L. Wilkins observes, that diary includes far too few narratives of the diverse cultures in U.S. society. Wilkins states that the discipline of architecture has a resistance to African Americans at every level, from the startlingly small number of architecture students to the paltry number of registered architects in the United States today.

Working to understand how ideologies are formed, transmitted, and embedded in the built environment, Wilkins deconstructs how the marginalization of African Americans is authorized within the field of architecture. He then outlines how activist forms of expression shape and sustain communities, fashioning an architectural theory around the site of environmental conflict constructed by hip-hop culture.

Wilkins places his concerns in a historical context, and also offers practical solutions to address them. In doing so, he reveals new possibilities for an architecture that acknowledges its current shortcomings and replies to the needs of multicultural constituencies.

Craig L. Wilkins, a registered architect, teaches architecture and urban planning at the University of Michigan.

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The Changing Roles of Debt and Equity in Financing U.S. Capital Formation

Edited by Benjamin M. Friedman

University of Chicago Press, 1982

This volume, consisting of papers presented at a conference held at Williamsburg, Va., 2-3 April 1981, is a progress report on the National Bureau of Economic Research project, The Changing Roles of Debt and Equity in Financing U.S. Capital Formation. The National Bureau has undertaken this project—including the conference, the research described in this volume, and the publication of the volume itself—with the support of the American Council of Life Insurance.

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Collection Management for Youth

Equity, Inclusion, and Learning

Sandra Hughes-Hassell

American Library Association, 2020

With a renewed emphasis on facilitating learning, supporting multiple literacies, and advancing equity and inclusion, the thoroughly updated and revised second edition of this trusted text provides models and tools that will enable library staff who serve youth to create and maintain collections that provide equitable access to all youth. And as Hughes-Hassell demonstrates, the only way to do this is for collection managers to be learner-centered, confidently acting as information guides, change agents, and leaders. Based on the latest educational theory and research, this book

presents the argument for why collection management decisions and practices should focus on equity, exploring systemic inequities, educational paradigm shifts, developments in the information environment, and other key factors;
lays out the theoretical foundation for developing and managing a library collection that facilitates learning, supports the development of multiple literacies, and provides equitable access to an increasingly diverse group of young learners;
touches upon current competencies and standards by AASL, YALSA, and ALSC;
uses a learner-centered and equity perspective to cover core issues and criteria such as selection and removal of materials, budgeting, and cooperation among libraries;
shows how a business viewpoint can assist the learner-centered collector in articulating the central significance of the collection to learning;
discusses how library staff can work collaboratively to create policy and negotiate budgets; and
includes customizable tools and templates, including a Stakeholder Contact/SWOT Analysis, Decision-Making Model for Selecting Resources and Access Points that Support Learning and Advance Equity, and Collection Development Analysis Worksheet.

This resource will be as useful to current school librarians and supervisors, youth librarians in public libraries, and educators as it will to LIS students.

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Copyhold, Equity, and the Common Law

Charles Montgomery Gray

Harvard University Press

This book has a threefold purpose: to date and explain the beginning of legal protection of copyholders in courts of law and equity; to reconstruct and explain the first stage in the creation of a body of law relating to copyholds; and to provide a case study in sixteenth-century jurisprudence of a sort that may tend to illuminate larger questions about the judicial process in that period. Mr. Gray has based his book largely on manuscript law reports never before used.

Copyhold, and its ancestor, villein tenure, were originally not protected by the central law courts in England, with the result that the tenant was at the mercy of his lord. There has been considerable uncertainty and dispute as to when this state of affairs was changed. This book argues that the Chancery possibly did not extend protection to tenants until the end of the fifteenth century, and that the common law did not provide protection until the middle of the sixteenth century. Mr. Gray explains why and how the change was effected. Since the extension of common-law protection brought many collateral issues before the courts, the judges had to write a new chapter in the law of property. The authordescribes the perplexities they faced and the changing techniques used to meet them.

This history of a new field of law developed in the Elizabethan period has implications for general questions on the judicial process, such as the use made of precedents, the methods of interpreting statutes, and the character of legal analysis. An introduction provides the Medieval background and explains the technical language and fundamental concepts necessary for understanding the specific studies.

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Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Action

Planning, Leadership, and Programming

Christine Bombaro

American Library Association, 2020

All too often, in a hurried attempt to “catch up,” diversity training can create division among staff or place undue burdens on a handful of employees. Instead, academic libraries need approaches to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) that position these priorities as ongoing institutional and professional goals. This book’s model programs will help academic libraries do exactly that, sharing a variety of initiatives that possess clear goals, demonstrable outcomes, and reproducible strategies. Librarians, administrators, and directors will all benefit from the programs detailed inside, which include such topics as

a university library’s community of practice for interactions and learning around DEI;
cultural competency training to create more welcoming instruction spaces;
student workshops on literature searches that mitigate bias;
overcoming the historic tendency to marginalize LGBTQ+ representation in archives;
a curriculum and design workshop that moved from discussing social values to embedding them in actions;
the founding of a library-led LGBT club for students at a rural community college;
a liberal arts college’s retention-boosting program for first-generation students;
tailoring a collection and library services to the unique needs of student veterans; and
a framework for moving from diversity to equity and inclusion, toward a goal of social justice.

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Equal Justice

Fair Legal Systems in an Unfair World

Frederick Wilmot-Smith

Harvard University Press, 2019

A philosophical and legal argument for equal access to good lawyers and other legal resources.

Should your risk of wrongful conviction depend on your wealth? We wouldn’t dream of passing a law to that effect, but our legal system, which permits the rich to buy the best lawyers, enables wealth to affect legal outcomes. Clearly justice depends not only on the substance of laws but also on the system that administers them.

In Equal Justice, Frederick Wilmot-Smith offers an account of a topic neglected in theory and undermined in practice: justice in legal institutions. He argues that the benefits and burdens of legal systems should be shared equally and that divergences from equality must issue from a fair procedure. He also considers how the ideal of equal justice might be made a reality. Least controversially, legal resources must sometimes be granted to those who cannot afford them. More radically, we may need to rethink the centrality of the market to legal systems. Markets in legal resources entrench pre-existing inequalities, allocate injustice to those without means, and enable the rich to escape the law’s demands. None of this can be justified. Many people think that markets in health care are unjust; it may be time to think of legal services in the same way.

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Equity and Inclusion in Higher Education

Strategies for Teaching

Edited by Rita Kumar and Brenda Refaei

University of Cincinnati Press, 2020

Americans’ perception of college students does not correlate with the reality of the rich diversity seen on university campuses. Over 60% of Americans believe the average age of a college student is 20 years old but, in fact, it’s 26.4 years old. Demographics in the classroom are shifting and instructors bear a responsibility to adjust their teaching style and curriculum to be inclusive for all students.

Equity and Inclusion for Higher Education Strategies for Teaching, edited by Rita Kumar and Brenda Refaei, details the necessity for an inclusive curriculum with examples of discipline-specific activities and modules. The intersectionality of race, age, socioeconomic status, and ability all embody the diversity college instructors encounter in their classrooms. Through the chapters in this book, the contributors make apparent the "hidden curriculum," which is taught implicitly instead of explicitly. The editors focus on learner-centered environments and accessibility of classroom materials for traditionally marginalized students; a critical part of the labor needed to create an inclusive curriculum.

This text provides instructors with resources to create equity-based learning environments. It challenges instructors to see beyond Eurocentric curriculums and expand their pedagogy to include intercultural competence. The contributors challenge the student/instructor dichotomy and embrace collaboration between the two to construct a curriculum that fits all students' needs. The resources and examples in this book demonstrate the importance of inclusion and equity in the classroom. A companion community page provides examples and tools from the editors and contributing authors, which allows for readers to add materials from their own classrooms. This book and collaborative toolkit allow instructors to begin intentional practice of an inclusive curriculum and implement changes to promote respect for diversity.

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Equity and the Constitution

The Supreme Court, Equitable Relief, and Public Policy

Gary L. McDowell

University of Chicago Press, 1982

Since the landmark desegregation decisions in the Brown vs. Board of Education cases, the proper role of the federal judiciary has been hotly debated. Has the federal judiciary, in its attempt to legislate social policy, overstepped its constitutional boundaries?

In this volume, Gary McDowell considers the equity power created by Article III of the Constitution, on which the most controversial decisions of the Supreme Court have rested. He points out the equity was originally understood as an extraordinary means of offering relief to individuals in cases of fraud, accident, mistake, or trust and as a means of "confining the operation of unjust and partial laws." It has now been stretched to offer relief to broadly defined social classes. This "sociological" understanding, in McDowell's view, has undermined equity as a substantive body of law. He urges a return to the former definition as a means of restraining the reach of federal jurisdiction.

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Implementing Excellence in Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

A Handbook for Academic Libraries

Corliss Lee

American Library Association, 2022

“[T]he diversity of perspectives presented within this publication will build on the reader’s existing knowledge to bring nuances and alternative approaches to these enduring, seemingly intractable challenges within the LIS profession and within society.”
—from the Foreword by Mark A. Puente

Academic library workers often make use of systemic, bureaucratic, political, collegial, and symbolic dimensions of organizational behavior to achieve their diversity, equity, and inclusion goals, but many are also doing the crucial work of pushing back at the structures surrounding them in ways small and large.

Implementing Excellence in Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion captures emerging practices that academic libraries and librarians can use to create more equitable and representative institutions. 19 chapters are divided into 6 sections:

Recruitment, Retention and Promotion
Professional Development
Leveraging Collegial Networks
Reinforcing the Message
Organizational Change
Assessment

Chapters cover topics including active diversity recruitment strategies; inclusive hiring; gendered ageism; librarians with disabilities; diversity and inclusion with student workers; residencies and retention; creating and implementing a diversity strategic plan; cultural competency training; libraries’ responses to Canadian Truth and Reconciliation Commission Calls to Action; and accountability and assessment. Authors provide practical guiding principles, effective practices, and sample programs and training.

Implementing Excellence in Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion explores how academic libraries have leveraged and deployed their institutions’ resources to effect DEI improvements while working toward implementing systemic solutions. It provides means and inspiration for continuing to try to hire, retain, and promote the change we want to see in the world regardless of existing structures and systems, and ways to improve those structures and systems for the future.

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The Inclusion Marathon

On Diversity and Equity in the Workplace

Zoë Papaikonomou

Amsterdam University Press, 2023

In recent years, more and more organisations have realised that diversity and inclusion in the workplace is both crucial and enormously beneficial. But how do you stop this realisation from remaining empty words and flashy statements, and turn awareness into action? In "The Inclusion Marathon", Kauthar Bouchallikht and Zoë Papaikonomou interview 41 practitioners and researchers about their knowledge and experience within the field of diversity, equity and inclusion in the Netherlands. These experts discuss different approaches and the bumps and barriers they come across. The Inclusion Marathon is a revealing book exploring the persistent lack of diversity and equity within many organisations. At the same time, it is a constructive, concrete guide to how organisations may become more diverse, equitable and inclusive. "The Inclusion Marathon" is an extensive English summary of the Dutch book "De inclusiemarathon".

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Just Below the Line

Disability, Housing, and Equity in the South

Korydon H. Smith

University of Arkansas Press, 2010

With America on the brink of the largest number of older adults and persons with disabilities in the country’s history, the deceleration in housing production during the first decade of the twenty-first century, and a continued reliance on conventional housing policies and practices, a perfect storm has emerged in the housing industry. The lack of fit between the existing housing stock and the needs of the U.S. population is growing pronounced. Just as housing needed to be retooled at the end of WWII, the American housing industry is in dire need of change today. The South—with its high rates of poverty, older residents, residents with disabilities, extensive rural areas, and out-of-date housing policies and practices—serves as a “canary in the coal mine” for the impending, nationwide housing crisis. Just Below the Line discusses how reworking the policies and practices of the housing industry in the South can serve as a model for the rest of the nation in meeting the physical and social needs of persons with disabilities and aging boomers. Policy makers, designers, builders, realtors, advocates, and housing consumers will be able to use this book to promote the production of equitable housing nationwide.

Published in collaboration with the Fay Jones School of Architecture.

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The Money Myth

School Resources, Outcomes, and Equity

W. Norton Grubb

Russell Sage Foundation, 2009

Can money buy high-quality education? Studies find only a weak relationship between public school funding and educational outcomes. In The Money Myth, W. Norton Grubb proposes a powerful paradigm shift in the way we think about why some schools thrive and others fail. The greatest inequalities in America's schools lie in factors other than fiscal support. Fundamental differences in resources other than money—for example, in leadership, instruction, and tracking policies—explain the deepening divide in the success of our nation's schoolchildren. The Money Myth establishes several principles for a bold new approach to education reform. Drawing on a national longitudinal dataset collected over twelve years, Grubb makes a crucial distinction between "simple" resources and those "compound," "complex," and "abstract" resources that cannot be readily bought. Money can buy simple resources—such as higher teacher salaries and smaller class sizes—but these resources are actually some of the weakest predictors of educational outcomes. On the other hand, complex resources pertaining to school practices are astonishingly strong predictors of success. Grubb finds that tracking policies have the most profound and consistent impact on student outcomes over time. Schools often relegate low-performing students—particularly minorities—to vocational, remedial, and special education tracks. So even in well-funded schools, resources may never reach the students who need them most. Grubb also finds that innovation in the classroom has a critical impact on student success. Here, too, America's schools are stratified. Teachers in underperforming schools tend to devote significant amounts of time to administration and discipline, while instructors in highly ranked schools dedicate the bulk of their time to "engaged learning," using varied pedagogical approaches. Effective schools distribute leadership among many instructors and administrators, and they foster a sense of both trust and accountability. These schools have a clear mission and coherent agenda for reaching goals. Underperforming schools, by contrast, implement a variety of fragmented reforms and practices without developing a unified plan. This phenomenon is perhaps most powerfully visible in the negative repercussions of No Child Left Behind. In a frantic attempt to meet federal standards and raise test scores quickly, more and more schools are turning to scripted "off the shelf" curricula. These practices discourage student engagement, suppress teacher creativity, and hold little promise of improving learning beyond the most basic skills. Grubb shows that infusions of money alone won't eradicate inequality in America's schools. We need to address the vast differences in the way school communities operate. By looking beyond school finance, The Money Myth gets to the core reasons why education in America is so unequal and provides clear recommendations for addressing this chronic national problem.

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School Choice Tradeoffs

Liberty, Equity, and Diversity

By R. Kenneth Godwin and Frank R. Kemerer

University of Texas Press, 2002

Educational policy in a democracy goes beyond teaching literacy and numeracy. It also supports teaching moral reasoning, political tolerance, respect for diversity, and citizenship. Education policy should encourage liberty and equality of opportunity, hold educational institutions accountable, and be efficient. School Choice Tradeoffs examines the tradeoffs among these goals when government affords parents the means to select the schools their children attend.

Godwin and Kemerer compare current policy that uses family residence to assign students to schools with alternative policies that range from expanding public choice options to school vouchers. They identify the benefits and costs of each policy approach through a review of past empirical literature, the presentation of new empirical work, and legal and philosophic analysis.

The authors offer a balanced perspective that goes beyond rhetoric and ideology to offer policymakers and the public insight into the complex tradeoffs that are inherent in the design and implementation of school choice policies. While all policies create winners and losers, the key questions concern who these individuals are and how much they gain or lose. By placing school choice within a broader context, this book will stimulate reflective thought in all readers.

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When Middle-Class Parents Choose Urban Schools

Class, Race, and the Challenge of Equity in Public Education

Linn Posey-Maddox

University of Chicago Press, 2014

In recent decades a growing number of middle-class parents have considered sending their children to—and often end up becoming active in—urban public schools. Their presence can bring long-needed material resources to such schools, but, as Linn Posey-Maddox shows in this study, it can also introduce new class and race tensions, and even exacerbate inequalities. Sensitively navigating the pros and cons of middle-class transformation, When Middle-Class Parents Choose Urban Schools asks whether it is possible for our urban public schools to have both financial security and equitable diversity.

Drawing on in-depth research at an urban elementary school, Posey-Maddox examines parents’ efforts to support the school through their outreach, marketing, and volunteerism. She shows that when middle-class parents engage in urban school communities, they can bring a host of positive benefits, including new educational opportunities and greater diversity. But their involvement can also unintentionally marginalize less-affluent parents and diminish low-income students’ access to the improving schools. In response, Posey-Maddox argues that school reform efforts, which usually equate improvement with rising test scores and increased enrollment, need to have more equity-focused policies in place to ensure that low-income families also benefit from—and participate in—school change.

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Who Is the City For?

Architecture, Equity, and the Public Realm in Chicago

Blair Kamin

University of Chicago Press, 2022

A vividly illustrated collaboration between two of Chicago’s most celebrated architecture critics casts a wise and unsparing eye on inequities in the built environment and attempts to rectify them.

From his high-profile battles with Donald Trump to his insightful celebrations of Frank Lloyd Wright and front-page takedowns of Chicago mega-projects like Lincoln Yards, Pulitzer Prize–winning architecture critic Blair Kamin has long informed and delighted readers with his illuminating commentary. Kamin’s newest collection, Who Is the City For?, does more than gather fifty-five of his most notable Chicago Tribune columns from the past decade: it pairs his words with striking new images by photographer and architecture critic Lee Bey, Kamin’s former rival at the Chicago Sun-Times. Together, they paint a revealing portrait of Chicago that reaches beyond its glamorous downtown and dramatic buildings by renowned architects like Jeanne Gang to its culturally diverse neighborhoods, including modest structures associated with storied figures from the city’s Black history, such as Emmett Till.

At the book’s heart is its expansive approach to a central concept in contemporary political and architectural discourse: equity. Kamin argues for a broad understanding of the term, one that prioritizes both the shared spaces of the public realm and the urgent need to rebuild Black and brown neighborhoods devastated by decades of discrimination and disinvestment. “At best,” he writes in the book’s introduction, “the public realm can serve as an equalizing force, a democratizing force. It can spread life’s pleasures and confer dignity, irrespective of a person’s race, income, creed, or gender. In doing so, the public realm can promote the social contract — the notion that we are more than our individual selves, that our common humanity is made manifest in common ground.” Yet the reality in Chicago, as Who Is the City For? powerfully demonstrates, often falls painfully short of that ideal.

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