ABSTRACT
This chapter analyzes the sensemaking of Grace Academy’s (GA) administrators as they sought to implement that goal. It focuses on administrators’ sensemaking specifically because they were the people primarily responsible for figuring out how to achieve GA’s diversity goals. The experience of GA’s first black teacher, Mrs. Griffin, demonstrates the contextual factors that shaped the administration’s sensemaking about faculty recruitment. Her case brings home the fundamental tension between seeking diversity while prioritizing a particular concept of Christian colorblindness. G. Anderson’s concept of “legitimizing myths” is useful in analyzing the administration’s explanations of Mrs. Griffin’s dismissal. Legitimizing myths are part of sensemaking in that they help people resolve “ideological contradictions”. Mrs. Griffin’s dismissal was something she brought upon herself through her poor choices, choices to not acquiesce to GA’s racialized norms of politics, femininity, and colorblind teaching. One overarching goal of GA’s diversity initiative was the recruitment of a racially, ethnically, and socioeconomically diverse faculty, staff, and student body.
