ABSTRACT
This chapter unpacks diversity performativity in higher education writ large, but specifically at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, a federally designated Hispanic Serving Institution. Using the concept of epistemicide—systemically racist knowledge destruction—the chapter focuses on the particular impacts of diversity performativity on Latinx communities through three lenses. First the chapter examines the limitations of land acknowledgments as manifestations of settler colonial projects that are ongoing in the academy. Second, the chapter investigates the hypervisibility of institutional racism and contrasts the invisibility of people of Color in library archives. Third, the chapter analyzes the superficial and otherwise condescending celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month on campus to divert attention from the positioning of Latinx students as institutional assets from whom the university aggressively extracts benefits, but in whom it does not seek to make reciprocal and humanizing investment. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the importance of teaching truth about local communities to ensure understanding of how past racial injustices inform the present. Through this work, the conclusion calls on those doing justice work to build and sustain systems of accountability around institutional commitments toward authentically serving community interests.
