A study examined policies addressing minority student retention in higher education at the national, state, and institutional level in order to clarify how the discourse surrounding minority student retention in higher education is related to social and political purposes and existing power arrangements. The study proceeded by critically examining two documents issued by national groups, reports issued by state level educational bodies in Arizona and Texas, as well as reports prepared by the University of Texas at Austin and by the University of Arizona. For each set of documents representing either the national, state, or institutional level the study looked at the following questions: (1) Who is authorized to speak on minority student retention? (2) Who listens? (3) What can be said? (4) What remains unspoken? (5) Which metaphors, modes of argumentation, explanation, and description are valued? and (6) Which ideas are advanced as foundational to the discourse? This content analysis of retention policies found that the policies leave intact a fundamental ideology of cultural deficit and disadvantage and support existing power arrangements. The analysis also found that policy reports address the same topics, use similar metaphors, advance the same ideas as foundational to the discourse, and fail to acknowledge racism. Included are 30 references. (JB)