Qualitative Inquiry, Ahead of Print.
This inquiry unearths the stratified nature of racial harm in higher education by applying counterstorytelling to fashion an equity case study on racial harm. Racial harm consists of four conditions (hyper-cognition, hyper-isolation, hyper-distress, and hyper-reactivity) brought on by persistent exposure to racial discrimination embedded subtlety within academic departments as a series of racialized conflicts (diversity & curriculum clashes, and relational & power dynamics). To advance the use of qualitative research to end racism in higher education, we offer a true-telling framework, a guide for talking back, a research typology to unearth the pandemic of racism infecting faculty relations.