The Culture of Testing (Part 1) March 12, 2008
Posted by twilightandreason in ACT, African American Students, Black Students, Higher Education, race, SAT, SAT II.1 comment so far
If the following report from the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education does not disturb you, then you haven’t taken a standardized “aptitude” test lately:
Black-White Divide in Cultural Pursuits
A survey published by the National Endowment for the Arts compares the rates of attendance and participation in various cultural activities for blacks compared to whites. In almost all cases, whites were more likely than blacks to attend or participate in these types of events. And in many cases, the differences were large.
For example, whites were three times as likely as blacks to attend a classical music performance, the opera, or the ballet. Whites were twice as likely as blacks to attend a musical play or other type of theatrical production. Whites were also twice as likely as blacks to go to an art fair. Whites were also significantly more likely than blacks to attend a dance recital or an art museum.
The cost of attending these events is undoubtedly one reason for the racial gap in attendance. But money is not the only reason for the cultural gap. This is demonstrated by National Endowment for the Arts data on people who watch these types of cultural events on television. Here, blacks and whites have roughly equal access to the performing arts. And the racial gaps are considerably smaller. But whites are still more likely than blacks to watch classical music performances, plays, ballet, and dance programs on television.
You may be tempted to dismiss this report as but another attempt attack on African American culture and traditions. There are two very good reasons that you shouldn’t.
First, aside from classical music, opera, and ballet, there is nothing specifically racial about the events and activities described. Black people participate in dance and theatre (musical and non musical) as choreographers, directors, playwrights, and composers. Black people also make art of all types, from sculpture, to paintings, to textiles, to performance art. Also, classical music and opera are only racialized in terms of their origins. A number of African American performers have distinguished themselves as among the finest practitioners of these musical arts, including pianists like Andre Watts and Awadagin Pratt, and operatic divas like Kathleen Battle, Barbara Hendricks, Marion Anderson, and the grande damme of them all, the great Leontyne Price.
Few young Black people realize that before integration African American high schools had a strong tradition of high-level vocal training in both traditional Black art forms like the spirituals and gospel music and classical and operatic forms for all voices. That tradition lives on at America’s HBCUs, in the form of the Fisk Jubilee Singers, the Bethune-Cookman Concert Chorale, and other similar vocal groups. Unfortunately, our cultural memory is short, and while a Black child in — say — Jacksonville, Florida in the 1950s could well be accustomed to seeing young Black men and women singing works of Bach and Gershwin or a choral arrangement of “Go Down Moses” at school and church programs, today’s African American youth consider such activities to be far outside the scope of normal or even acceptable entertainment in their environs.
This second reason that the NEH report on the divide between Black and white participation in and attendance at certain cultural activities is based on my own anecdotal experience as a one-time standardized test taker, a long-time veteran instructor in summer bridge programs (at two institutions), and as a long-time reader of college applications (first as an admission office and later in various capacities as a faculty member). Over the years I have had the opportunity to teach, mentor and evaluate the full range of Black student standardized test takers, from those who struggled to simply complete the exam, to those whose scores place them among the elite ranks of National Merit Semi-Finalists.
The difference I have seen between these two groups is that the former group, comprised of those students who struggle with the SAT and similar exams, engage the test as an alien environment. For this group, the world of the test — the testing environment, the testing conditions, the tone of the instructions (both written and spoken) the questions asked, the topics addressed in the reading comprehension and essay sections — feel troublingly unfamiliar, as though they are part of an exclusive culture or community from which the test taker has been excluded.
Those Black young people who score well on their SATs, ACTs, and SAT IIs are those for whom the world of the test feels like familiar terrain. While they may feel challenged by specific questions, or by the time limit, they do not feel challenged by or alienated from breadth of cultural exposure and experiences that the test assumes.
Indeed, the SAT and ACT reward a breadth of experiences and cultural exposure, both directly and indirectly. The vocabulary on the language and literature-oriented portions of these exams are structured such that those test-takers who have encountered a range of words much broader than the relatively limited vocabulary that we use in our daily lives.
High scorers on verbal, reading comprehension, and other language-oriented tests tend to have encountered an extraordinarly broad range of words through two primary channels; such students tend to be avid readers, and they also tend to have experience a broader than average range of leisure, athletic, and arts activities, each of which has its own specialized vocabulary.
Black students decreased exposure to musical and dramatic theater, classical and jazz and world music concerts, museums (art, natural history, historical, and others), and dance (tap, modern, ballet, African, and other forms) as either participants or audience members leaves them at a disadvantage relative to many of their white counterparts, whose attendance at or participation in such events both provides them with opportunities to add the specialized vocabulary of these areas and significantly decreases the likelihood that they will encounter on standardized exams topics, settings, and figures with whom they are wholly unfamiliar.
Posted by Ajuan Mance
William F. Buckley, Jr. (1925-2008), Remembering a Respected Adversary February 27, 2008
Posted by twilightandreason in Affirmative Action, race, William F. Buckley.add a comment
As I type this blog entry, major media outlets around the nation are responding to the breaking news that William F. Buckley, the 82 year-old conservative thinker, pundit, television host, and founder of the bi-weekly National Review, was found dead this morning by his cook, at his home in Stamford, Connecticut. May he rest in peace.
While I never met Mr. Buckley, I followed his career with great interest. Rarely did I share his conservative perspectives, especially when it came to issues of race. Still, I found in Mr. Buckley’s articulation of his ideas two elements that are missing from so much of today’s right-wing political commentary — critical thinking and intellectual rigor.
This brief biography, excerpted from an obituary by Associated Press reporter Hillel Italie, charts Buckley’s rise to the rank of conservative icon:
Buckley founded the biweekly magazine National Review in 1955, declaring that he proposed to stand “athwart history, yelling `Stop’ at a time when no one is inclined to do so, or to have much patience with those who urge it.” Not only did he help revive conservative ideology, especially unbending anti-Communism and free market economics, his persona was a dynamic break from such dour right-wing predecessors as Sen. Robert Taft.
Although it perpetually lost money, the National Review built its circulation from 16,000 in 1957 to 125,000 in 1964, the year conservative Sen. Barry Goldwater was the Republican presidential candidate. The magazine claimed a circulation of 155,000 when Buckley relinquished control in 2004, citing concerns about his mortality, and over the years the National Review attracted numerous young writers, some who remained conservative (George Will, David Brooks), and some who didn’t (Joan Didion, Garry Wills).
“I was very fond of him,” Didion said Wednesday. “Everyone was, even if they didn’t agree with him.”
Born Nov. 24, 1925, in New York City, William Frank Buckley Jr. was the sixth of 10 children of a a multimillionaire with oil holdings in seven countries. The son spent his early childhood in France and England, in exclusive Roman Catholic schools.
His prominent family also included his brother James, who became a one-term senator from New York in the 1970s; his socialite wife, Pat, who died in April 2007; and their son, Christopher, a noted author and satirist (“Thank You for Smoking“).
In memory of William F. Buckley, Jr. and his ever articulate, always provocative ideas, I give you this excerpt from the August 1, 2000 edition of “On the Right,” a regular Buckley column. In it he critiques General Colin Powell’s stance on affirmative action, an issue of great interest to this blogger:
Gen. Colin Powell is a formidable asset of the GOP and indeed the nation. That he is himself black is providential. If he were a Scandinavian, one likes to think that he’d have risen as fast as he has. But a dirty little doubt in the matter would probably nestle in the closet of suspicion. His gifts are manifest, indeed radiant, so much so that anyone inclined to cultivate suspicion that his ascendancy depended on white patronization is quickly reassured by mere exposure to his strengths.
Now these aren’t always quite sufficient to keep him out of rhetorical difficulty. The New York Times wasted only three introductory paragraphs before showcasing Gen. Powell’s reference to affirmative action. “We must understand the cynicism that exists in the black community. The kind of cynicism that is created when, for example, some in our party miss no opportunity to roundly and loudly condemn affirmative action that helped a few thousand black kids get an education. But hardly a whimper is heard from them over affirmative action for lobbyists who load our federal tax codes with preferences for special interests.”
That is a paralogism of the first order. (1) The case against affirmative action is the same as the case for equal treatment under the law. (2) The purpose of lobbies is to engage legislative or regulatory attention in behalf of an entity. That might be a corporation, or it might be a class, or it might be a minority. Lobbies are sometimes pleading for equal treatment, sometimes for special treatment. If yours is a sugar lobby pleading for higher tariffs, you are engaged in the traditional exercise of special pleading, and the pain is borne by the consumers, who pay more for sugar.
(3) Affirmative action, of the kind opposed by public officials from Sen. Hubert Humphrey to Ward Connerly, targets individual victims, the non-black, non-Hispanic, non-Asian turned down for reasons other than competitive disqualification. There should be as many voices raised up against sugar tariffs as against racial discrimination, but the two contests are at entirely different moral levels. In the 1850s, the Yankees argued in favor of high tariffs and against human slavery. They’d have been disappointed to hear themselves indicted for cynicism.
Gen. Powell, so clear in his vision on so many matters, gets swallowed up every now and again when the matter touches on race and discrimination. Thus he mourns that there are 2 million convicts and that “most of them are men and the majority of those men are minorities.” That is a conceptual tongue-twister, the business of majorities being minorities. And Gen. Powell was less than satisfying in his failure to plumb the question: Why should this be so? Why are there more blacks and Hispanics in jail?
On the other hand he was telling the Republican Convention and the American people at large that a successful approach to the problem has been made in Texas, under Gov. George Bush. Bush “expanded the charter school movement. Seventeen thousand Texas kids are now in charter schools. Seventy-eight percent of those kids are minorities. Their parents had a choice, and they decided what was best for their kids. The results in Texas have been dramatic. The number of students passing all parts of the standardized tests since 1994 has increased by 51 percent. Even more exciting, the number of minority students passing the tests has increased by 89 percent.”
Along that narrow road, avoiding the abyss of affirmative action on the one side, neglect on the other, Gov. Bush came out with a formula that Gen. Powell has embraced. “Governor Bush has guaranteed acceptance at public universities for the top 10 percent of every high school graduating class in the state.” If the cynicism Gen. Powell so much deplores is to be avoided, the world needs to know that some schools in Texas don’t become de facto conduits for noncompetitive minorities.
Prairie View Students March to Restore Voting Rights February 25, 2008
Posted by twilightandreason in African American Professors, African American Students, Black Colleges, Black Students, Primary Elections, race, racism, Student Voters, Waller County.add a comment
Down in Waller County, Texas it’s started to look an awful lot like the bad old days of poll taxes, grandfather clauses, and literacy tests. Back in the bad old days, the white folks could brag that “their Blacks” knew their place, and that place did not include the voting booth.
At a time when unprecedented young people are flocking to the polls to cast their vote for two candidates whose very presence as Democratic front runners encourages us toward “the audacity of hope” in a new future, Waller County voting officials have chosen not to support students involvement in the political process, but — instead — to audaciously and shamelessly resurrect a racist politics of disenfrancishement that should have been buried along with blackface minstrelsy and Jim Crow.
In my blog post of January 7, 2008, I wrote of the current backlash against the growing participation of student voters in the the various state primaries. My roster of these efforts includes proposed legislation from the GOP side of the aisle and derisive comments about college voters form select and high profile Democrat. Now I must add to that list the more hands-on approach of Waller County’s voting officials, whose inexplicable decision to “cut early-voting sites from a half dozen throughout the county to one in Hempstead,” about 7 milse from the historically Black Prairie View A&M University, home to approximately 3000 registered voters (source: The Houston Chronicle), has prompted a surge of student activism.
On Tuesday, February 21, more than 2000 Prairie View students (according to police estimates) and their supports held a 7 mile march to the polls in order to protest the lack of a polling place on the 7000-student campus. Just last week the U.S. Department of Justice intervened and Waller county added three temporary polling places for early voting.
Students protested the absence of an early voting location on or near the campus, a problem which — strictly speaking — was not immediately solved by the county’s promise to add additional temporary polling sites. The Texas presidential primary is on March 4, but the county’s temporary pollings sites only opened on February 22, three days after on-site early voting had already begun throughout the state. Tuesday’s march coincided with the opening of poll sites for early voting across Texas.
Viewed in the context of other recent efforts to discourage student voting, it might appear that the actions of Waller County officials are unrelated to the fact that Prairie View A&M has an overwhelmingly Black student body. Given that most students, reglardles of race, vote for Democrats, this could be seen as an effort to suppress the Democratic vote in this region. In Texas, however, primary voters only vote within their party; and so the desire suppress the student vote in Waller County can be nothing but race-based. To limit the A&M student vote at the primary stage is to disenfranchise substantial numbers of likely Black voters.
In short, then, the net effect of Waller County’s suspicious actions would be to limit polling access for African American voters who, like most young voters this primary season, are likely to vote for Obama, the African American presidential candidate. If Waller County officials are not willing to acknowledge that this was their main goal (to undercut Black voters’ ability to cast votes for a Black candidate), then they should at least concede that it was viewed as a desirable side-effect of their polling site maneuverings.
To read more on this story, see the following coverage:
Black Academics Weigh in on Hillary Clinton February 22, 2008
Posted by twilightandreason in African American Professors, Black Faculty, Cornel West, Gender, Hillary Clinton, Obama, race, Shelby Steele.2 comments
The Clinton campaign, like the Obama campaign, is paving new political terrain, simply by virtue of the fact that the candidate is something other that a white male; and while bloggers, columnists, and pundits from all over the political spectrum are actively encouraging voters to look past race and gender and, instead, to vote based on the candidates’ records and ideas, there is no doubt that in this nation — one in which race and gender have far too long been the primary measures by which rights and wealth and granted — race and gender politics do and will continue to inform how Clinton and Obama, their parties, their advisors, and the electorate engage with both of these leading Democratic and their ideas.
Below are some of the most compelling and provocative statements by Black academics on the election and its link to the racial and sexual politics of this nation:
- from “Hillary’s Scarlet O’Hara Act: Why Some of Us Aren’t Falling For It,” on TheRoot.com, by Melissa Harris-Lacewell, associate professor of politics and African American studies at Princeton University
There’s been a lot of talk about women and their choices since Super Tuesday, when African American women overwhelmingly voted for Sen. Barack Obama, while white women picked Sen. Hillary Clinton. Some pundits automatically concluded that “race trumped gender” among black women. I hate this analysis because it relegates black women to junior-partner status in political struggles. It is not that simple. A lot of people have tried to gently explain the divide, so I’m just going to put this out there: Sister voters have a beef with white women like Clinton that is both racial and gendered. It is not about choosing race; it is about rejecting Hillary’s Scarlett O’Hara act.
Black women voters are rejecting Hillary Clinton because her ascendance is not a liberating symbol. Her tears are not moving. Her voice does not resonate. Throughout history, privileged white women, attached at the hip to their husband’s power and influence, have been complicit in black women’s oppression. Many African American women are simply refusing to play Mammy to Hillary.
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Media have cast the choice in the current election as a simple binary between race and gender. But those who claim that black women are ignoring gender issues by voting for Barack just don’t get it. Hillary cannot have black women’s allegiance for free. Black women will not be relegated to the status of supportive Mammy, easing the way for privileged white women to enter the halls of power.
Black feminist politics is not simple identity politics. It is not about letting brothers handle the race stuff, or about letting white women dominate the gender stuff. The black woman’s fight is on all fronts. Sisters resist the ways that black male leaders try to silence women’s issues and squash female leadership. At the same time, black women challenge white women who want to claim black women’s allegiance without acknowledging the realities of racism. They will not be drawn into any simple allegiance that refuses to account for their full humanity and citizenship.
- from “Hillary or Billary? The Clintons’ Ugly Gender Politics,” on BlackProf.com, by Marc Lamont Hill, assistant professor of urban education and American studies at Temple University
Now that Obama has regained his momentum, the Clintons seem prepared to return to the strategy of promoting Hillary as an experienced politician with more than a matrimonial connection to the White House. Although this approach may win Hillary the presidency, it will do little to destroy controlling images of women as extensions of male desire and ambition.
Contrary to what Hillary has said, this is the real glass ceiling that women must crack.
- from “Renowned Princeton Professor Cornel West Assesses the Democratic Presidential Field,” on DemocracyNow.org. Cornel West is the Class of 1943 University Professor of Religion at Princeton.
…I think Hillary Clinton has a long way to go, because she’s carrying a baggage, as it were, of the kind of neoliberalist—the neoliberal project of her husband.
- Shelby Steele on MSNBC’s Hardball, December 7, 2007. Click here to listen to an audio clip. Shelby Steele is the Robert J. and Marion E. Oster Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution.
…she’s doing very well with the Black vote because she identifies with people like Al Sharpton. She identifies with people who African Americans are very comfortable with. In many ways she’s Blacker that Barack Obama is. His primary appeal is still with whites.
Posted by Ajuan Mance
In Higher Ed, There’s More than One Kind of Diversity February 20, 2008
Posted by twilightandreason in African American Professors, African American Students, Black Faculty, Black PhDs, Black Students, Business School, Education, Graduate School, Higher Education, race.2 comments
2007 may be remembered as the year that intra-racial diversity finally hit the news. From college dailies to academic weeklies to mainstream newspapers, reporters rushed to Harvard and other selective college campuses to address what has been portrayed as the overrepresentation at such schools of the children of Black immigrants and the underrepresentation at those same institutions of the descendants of U.S. Blacks. In so doing, they exposed the failure of college and university admission offices to understand the vast diversity that exists within Blackness, noting that, at Ivy League institutions in particular, outreach and recruitment efforts created in response to the lasting effects of slavery and Jim Crow upon Blacks of U.S. were disproportionately benefitting students of African descent whose parents were born outside of the U.S.
The downside of this reporting is that it could fan the flames of intra-diasporic competition and dissension. The upside is that it underscores the wide range of nationalities, ethnicities, and cultures that constitute the Black population of the United States. As diverse our ethnicities may be, however, we — the Black people of the U.S. — seem to be of one mind (or maybe two) when it comes to choosing a graduate program.
A recent report in the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education (JBHE Weekly Bulletin for 12/17/07) revealed that more than 50 percent of all Black graduate students are enrolled in either business or education programs. This follow passage from the JBHE Bulletin explains the current trend:
A new report from the Graduate Record Examinations Board and the Council of Graduate Schools finds that among all black graduate students, 31 percent were enrolled in graduate education degree programs. Another 22 percent were enrolled in graduate business programs. No other graduate field had more than 10 percent of black graduate students.
These statistics reveal a key tension in Black students’ pursuit of higher education. It is the tension between Black America’s belief in the value of education and Black America’s general ambivalence toward the notion of learning for learning’s sake.
Do not misunderstand where I am going with this assertion. I do not believe that Black people are resistant to or opposed to higher education. In fact, I vehemently reject the accusation by John McWhorter, Bill Cosby, and other prominent Black voices that African Americans somehow associate good grades and the pursuit of education with “acting white.” Indeed, people who pay attention to what African Americans express about their beliefs (as opposed to the insults that angry teens might hurl at their schoolmates) understand that U.S. Black people believe deeply in education — as a ticket to upward mobility, as a stamp of legitimacy necessary for success in a white-dominated workplace, and as a profound rejection of the subordinated status that Euro-dominant mainstream has encouraged us to occupy for so long.
When I say, then, that many Black Americans feel a general ambivalence toward the notion of learning for learning’s sake — toward the acquisition of knowledge undertaken solely for the purpose of knowing and, similiarly, toward undertaking the pursuit of a line of scholarly inquiry as one’s life work — I mean that for many U.S. Blacks the pursuit of higher education is tantamount to upgrading life’s toolkit for success. Education is undertaken pragmatically, and it is embraced as the key which will open the door to post-graduate stability and prosperity.
At the undergraduate level this means that Black business and economics majors outnumber Black science and math majors; Black journalism and communications majors outnumber Black English majors; and history, philosophy, language, music, and art majors are rare or even non-existent.
At the graduate level, business and education are the fields of choice; and thus the cycle is perpetuated. As long as African American graduate students flock to business and education, and as long as they underenroll in other disciplines, there will continue to be a dearth of Black professors in medicine, in law, and in most academic fields. Black students need Black mentors in all fields, to inform them of the possibilities for post-graduate study in those fields, and to help them understand the important links between undergraduate disciplinary studies in English, history, philosophy, and modern languages and success in careers like advertising, law enforcement, politics, and public policy, or to advise them in some of the important ways that majoring not only in the sciences and social sciences, but in the humanities and arts as well can lay a strong foundation for graduate study in medicine, law and — yes — even business.
In my life, it was my direct classroom contact with African American English professors Dorothy Denniston and Michael Harper that made real to me the possibility that my passion for this subject could become a viable career. On the other hand, the absence at my undergraduate institution of Black art professors conveyed to me a completely different message about my other great love, the visual arts. As far as I could see, unless I was wealthy and white, there would be no real work for me as an artmaker; there was no point in even enrolling in a course in that department. Since that time I have, of course, learned differently; and even though I am very happy in my career as a literature professor, I cannot help but wonder how different my life might have been if I had had personal contact with even one Black art professional.
I was lucky. Although I was turned off from pursuing one of my great pleasures, I have found great satisfaction and joy in the pursuit of another of my fields of choice. But how many budding painters, engineers, surgeons, archivists, and legal scholars of African descent will be turned off by the absence of Black mentors and role models in their areas of interest? How many great Black artists or physicists, philosophers or historians put these passions aside in favor of those career paths that appear to be more welcoming to Black people?
Until Black students enroll in medical, law, and Ph.D. programs with the same enthusiasm that they undertake studies toward the M.B.A. and the Ed.D., institutions will have to develop innovative strategies for introducing Black students to the possibilities that exist for success, fulfillment, and career satisfaction beyond the fields of business and education.
As I close this post, I cannot help but think of how much it meant to me to encounter real live Black professors of English. The experience of studying with people of African descent who shared my passion for reading, writing, and thinking about literature was transforming. More than any diploma, award, or academic honor, their reflection of my academic interests and passions validated my pursuit of literature study, during my undergraduate years and for many years after.
I feel great sadness for those Black students who will never have a similar experience. I trust in their capacity to find validation for their interests and affirmation of the possibilities available to them as scholars without the benefit same-race role models; but I still look ahead to the day when no African, African American, or Afro-Caribbean student at any institution will have to wonder whether or not Black folks can succeed. I look ahead to the time when the presence of Black men and women, as full-time, tenure-track faculty in all disciplines, at all institutions will make such questions obsolete.
Posted by Ajuan Mance
Oxford U Press Takes Aim at Bias in Reporting and Research on HBCUs January 31, 2008
Posted by twilightandreason in Black Colleges, Current Events, Higher Education, race, racism.2 comments
When it comes to mainstream reporting and research on Historically Black Colleges and Universities, it seems that the rules are the same as for mainstream reporting on Black people: take anecdotal accounts of failure and incompetence, and extrapolate to the rest of the group.
OUPblog, maintained by Oxford University Press USA, points this out in “Historically Black Colleges: Anecdote Doesn’t Equal Evidence,” an entry published on January 29, 2008. Written by Dr. Marybeth Gasman, an Assistant Professor of Higher Education at the University of Pennsylvania, this entry explores some of the history of selective reporting and research on Black colleges, tracing the phenomenon to Christopher Jencks and David Riesman’s “The American Negro College,” a tragic masterpiece of faulty and anecdotal research that appeared in 1967, in the Harvard Educational Review:
Having taken on a variety of social ills before, the two Harvard University scholars [Christopher Jencks and David Riesman] decided to embark on an exposé of America’s colleges. When it came to Black institutions, though, the pair didn’t bother to check facts. Based largely on anecdote and hearsay, they presented a scathing document that has been a blight on Black colleges’ reputations—and fundraising efforts—ever since.
OUPblog highlights the reality that all Black bloggers know — indeed, the very reality that compelled many of us to begin blogging in the first place — that mainstream coverage of Black topics has little investment in presenting any perspective on our communities, cultures, institutions, and issues that challenges prevailing notions of race and power in the U.S. OUPblog reaches beyond many treatments of anti-Black media bias by highlighting its relationship to similar issues within academic research.
A lot has changed in the 40 years since Jencks and Riesman’s poorly researched smear of Black colleges and universities, but not so much that OUPblogs’ take home message is rendered irrelevant. OUPblog reminds us that a bias against both Black involvement in education and even the very existence of Black colleges and universities is woven inextricably into the fabric of both media reporting and academic practice. As critical readers and thinks we must remember this truth integrate it into our engagement with all mainstream reporting and research on HBCUs and other aspects of Black life and Black community in the U.S.
Posted by Ajuan Mance
Reasons to Be Cheerful: The 5 Best News Stories of 2007 January 9, 2008
Posted by twilightandreason in African American Professors, African American Students, Black Colleges, Black Faculty, Black Students, Denzel Washington, Diverse Issues in Higher Education, Good Black News, Higher Education, Imus, IQ, James Watson, race, Ten Best List, Wiley College.add a comment
If I was asked to choose a single phrase to describe the state of Black higher education in 2007, it would have to be, “the changing same.” Also title of Deborah McDowell’s landmark study of Black women’s literature and literary theory (The Changing Same: Black Women’s Literature, Criticism, and Theory), this phrase captures the peculiar contradiction between the perception and the reality of Black people’s involvement in higher education during the year 2007.
Perceptions of Black people’s relationship to college and university education are progressing much more slowly than Black people’s real life achievements in academe, largely because Black academic progress simply depends on supporting African Americans’ pursuit of their goals and dreams, while a shift in the perception of Black people’s role in academe depends on changing the minds of people not only within, but also outside of the African American community, including many who have no vested interest in thinking about Blackness in more progressive ways, and who might even have an investment in maintaining the old biases.
Certain events in 2007 have highlighted this divide between popular (and often racist) perceptions of what Black people can and do accomplish on college campuses and the reality of Black student and faculty achievements in U.S. Higher ed. People like Don Imus (who looked at a basketball team full of hard-working, talented young Black women and saw only “hoes”) and James Watson (who stunned progressive communities in the U.S. and abroad with his unabashed assertion that Black people’s intelligence is genetically impaired) espoused ways of looking Blackness that are mired in centuries-old stereotypes. On the other hand, on college and university campuses across the nation, Black students, faculty, and administrators spent the year achieving their goals and setting new ones, all undaunted by the subtle and not-so-subtle racism that swirled around them.
You don’t have to be a person of African descent to feel cheered by the news stories listed below. If you care about people, education, and the future of our communities, the positive changes that these stories point to will fill you with pride in our Black youth, as wells as pride in our capacity as a nation to rise above the worst of our racist history and to move towards a future full of progress and promise for everyone:
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Black women athletes graduate at impressive rates. The November 15th JBHE Weekly Bulletin reported that among Black men and Black women enrolled at U.S. colleges and universities, the graduation rate for athletes is significantly higher than the graduation rate for Black students who are not athletes. Most surprising is the finding that the national graduation rate for Black women student-athletes (64%) is higher than the national graduation rate for all white male students, athletes and non-athletes, alike.
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African Americans make “spectacular progress” in the acquisition of master’s degrees. The November 8, 2007 JBHE Weekly Bulletin reported that in the 20 years between 1985 and 2005, the number of African Americans earning master’s degrees from U.S. university nearly quadrupled, from 13,939 to more than 54,000. The most dramatic gains were made among African American women who, in the 2004-05 academic year accounted for 71 percent of the master’s degrees awarded to Black people in the U.S.
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Washington-led film project puts the spotlight on Black intellect. On Christmas Day African Americans received a wonderful gift in the form of “The Great Debaters,” the Golden Globe-nominated true story of how a debate team from Wiley College, a small HBCU located in Marshall, Texas, rose from nothing to eventually challenge the dominance of Harvard’s legendary squad. Washington compounded this gift of visibility for a little-known aspect of African American history with a special gift to the College itself, a $1 million donation to help re-establish Wiley’s legendary debate program.
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HBCUs lead the nation in faculty diversity. With Black professors making up just under 60% of the faculty, white professors making up another 21 percent, and other ethnic groups making up roughly 17%, historically Black colleges and universities feature the most diverse faculty composition of any grouping of schools in the U.S. As a point of comparison, consider that nationwide over 80% of all college and university faculty are white.
- The rising generation of scholars. Although this story was published in 2008 (this morning, as a matter of fact), I am listing it as one of 2007’s “reasons to be cheerful,” mostly because the young men and women included in the profile of the Diverse Issues in Higher Education “Emerging Scholars” for 2008 are being recognized largely for their achievements during the previous year. Of the eight scholars of color listed here, five of them are African American, all are under 40, and all are intellectual standouts, not simply among their respective ethnic groups, but among all scholars in their fields.
Posted by Ajuan Mance
Aptitude vs. Academic Knowledge: December 30, 2007
Posted by twilightandreason in aptitude, race, SAT, SAT II.add a comment
The following piece from the most recent edition of the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education raises some interesting questions about the relationship between race and so-called aptitude testing, versus race and subject-based testing. I plan to revisit this issue in a future post, but for now, I’d like to share with you the newsbrief as it appeared on the JBHE website. I’ve highlighted what I felt were the most provocative portions of the essay in bold type.
“Black-White Score Differences on Particular SAT II Subject Tests”
–From the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, December 28, 2007
SAT II subject tests are largely used by students who are applying to the nation’s selective colleges and universities. This past year showed a modest increase in the number of blacks taking these tests. Although the increased number of black students taking the tests is a good sign, there remains a large and growing racial scoring gap.
Of all the widely taken SAT II tests in 2007, the black-white racial scoring gap of 108 points, or approximately 18 percent, was the greatest on the world history test. There were also large racial gaps on both mathematics tests, English literature, and American history tests.
College-bound black students generally fared well in comparison with the scores of white students on foreign-language examinations. The black-white scoring gap was only 36 points on the Latin test and 37 points on the French test. On the Chinese test, black students actually scored 77 points higher on average than whites. But only 19 blacks and 97 whites took the test, making racial score comparisons statistically insignificant. The 19 black students who took the Chinese SAT II test had a remarkable mean score of 734. Blacks also had a higher mean score than whites on the Korean language test, but only six African-American students took the test in 2007.
Posted by Ajuan Mance
Black on Campus Hall of Shame 2007 December 30, 2007
Posted by twilightandreason in African American Students, Black Colleges, Black Students, Boston University, Community College, Current Events, Fisk University, Georgia O'Keefe, race, racism.2 comments
On balance, it has been a good year for Black people on America’s college and university campuses. This banner year for Black progress in higher ed owes no thanks, however, to the individuals, organizations, and institutions on the following list. Fellow free to nod in disbelief as you give a Hall Shame salute to these 2007 inductees:
1)Boston University — Singled out because, although the population of the city of Boston is now 25 percent African American, Black people make up only 2.6 percent of the BU student body. These numbers are even more disappointing when considered in light of the fact that although Black applicants to Boston U have increased by 39 percent over the last 10 years (in fact, “between 2004 and 2005, [B]lack applicants increased by 18 percent”), the percentage of Black students enrolled at BU has remained constant. Source: JBHE
2)California Community Colleges — Singled out because, according to a summer 2007 report in The Washington Post, only about 25% of those California community college students seeking a certificate, associate’s degree, or transfer to a four-year school succeed in reaching their goal within six years of enrolling. The Post adds that the success rate is even lower for Black and Latin American students.
How much lower? Well, the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education reports that, “for black students seeking a degree at a California community college, only 15 percent earn an associate’s degree or transfer to a four-year college or university.” JBHE goes on to explain the importantance of this statistic, adding that, “one of every 14 African Americans who are enrolled in higher education [in the U.S.] today attends a California community college” (emphasis mine), and, “one of every seven black community college students in the United States is enrolled in a state-operated community college in California.” Sources: Washington Post and JBHE
3)The University of Virginia Cavalier Daily — Singled out because early in the fall 2007 semester, the UVA Cavalier Daily published two racially offensive cartoons created by Virginia senior Grant Woolard. The cartoons were printed only a few days apart and provoked accusations of racism from Black readers on the UVA campus and beyond.
The first cartoon was published on August 31, 2007, and mocked the controversial sexual relationship between UVA founder Thomas Jefferson and his enslaved teenage mistress.
The second cartoon appeared on September 4, and seemed to mock the very real legacy of famine in Ethiopia, depicting loincloth-clad Black people fighting each other with inanimate household objects.
When asked about the choice to print the “Ethiopian Food Fight” cartoon, Cavalier editor-in-chief Herb Ladley responded that, “my initial reaction was, ‘This is offensive.’ But we print a lot of offensive things. The instant the public raised a question about it, we realized it was a mistake.” On September 9th, the managing board of the paper voted to fire cartoonist Woolard. Reflecting on the way that his Ethiopian cartoon was received, Woolard was philosophical, saying, “I will admit that I really lacked the foresight in anticipating the reaction. I should have thought that they were going to think I was portraying Africans as savage and misshapen.”
4)Presidential Candidates Fred Thompson, Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney, and Sen. John McCain — Singled out because these four candidates snubbed a PBS-sponsored Republican presidential debate, held on the historically Black campus of Morgan State University. Each cited scheduling conflicts, despite being notified of this event well in advance of the official date. Source: Washington Post
5) Fisk University — Singled out because the current financial crisis at this pioneering institution (alma mater of Nikki Giovanni, W.E.B. DuBois, James Weldon Johnson, Judith Jamison, Hazel O’Leary, Johnetta B. Cole, and numerous other African American leaders and innovators) suggests strongly and tragically that too few within its current and recent leadership truly cherish and appreciate the immeasurable value of this historically Black university. Fisk University is also singled out because it’s most recent solution to its persistent financial woes (to attempt to sell off a substantial portion of it’s stake in a valuable art collection donated by the late Georgia O’Keefe) underscores the gulf between the high regard in which Fisk has long been held by many outside of the university (including Georgia O’Keefe and Alfred Stieglitz) and the apparent apathy of that handful of figures within within the institution who have overseen its financial decline. Source: NewsChannel5.com
Posted by Ajuan Mance
Black on Campus 