Brick Walls

This chapter returns to the example of the brick wall introduced in chapter 4 and asks what it means to think of diversity work as a “banging your head against a brick wall job.” It suggests that the wall is more than a metaphor and refers to the processes whereby histories become concrete, how patterns set before they harden. Walls, however, only come up for those who are trying to transform institutions or who do not quite inhabit the norms of institutions. The chapter explores how what is hardest for some is not revealed to others. It concludes with a discussion of how walls operate within universities, often through habits of citation.