Colin Flaherty: Tells Conference (700 Educators 13 Nations 4 Days) Blacks Are Victims of Racism

Tells Conference (700 Educators 13 Nations 4 Days) Blacks Are Victims of Racism - Colin Flaherty Commentary News Video "CGS Meeting Hears Sobering Report on Black Student Access" December 6, 2018
WASHINGTON – Institutional racism, White supremacy and anti-Black attitudes fuel underrepresentation of Black students on college and university campuses across the United States, with access a battle constantly being waged in legal courts and the court of public opinion, according to an academic who addressed the 58th annual meeting of the Council of Graduate Schools this week.

But there is hope because today’s students appear determined to hold institutions of higher learning to their promises to live up to their stated ideals regarding diversity and access, said Dr. Walter Allen, the Allan Murray Carter Professor of Higher Education and Distinguished Professor of Education, Sociology and African-American Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles.

“Anti-Black sentiments are major drivers in inequality, enrollment and degree completion in higher education,” Allen told the gathering’s 700 attendees from 13 nations and five continents at a plenary in an Omni Shoreham ballroom. The four-day conference, which features a wide range of speakers and sessions, concludes Saturday.

Anti-affirmative action efforts are a factor in “severe” underrepresentation of Black undergraduate and graduate students at many colleges, particularly flagship schools, he said. The problem originates in continued segregation and subjugation of Blacks in broader society, as noted in the federal Kerner Commission report of 1968, and policies and practices in higher education perpetuate the problem, Allen said.

While Black students are 15 percent of the student population at private four-year schools, he noted, they are only 11 percent of student bodies at public four-year schools. Further, Black students constitute 10 percent of total degree enrollment and completion at only three flagship schools in the nation, even though Black people are 15 percent of the population in 14 states and more than 25 percent of the population in six states.

Black student underrepresentation can be better understood by considering critical race theory and legal context, Allen suggested. He cited research data about full-time Black student enrollment and completion at all levels of public higher education over a 40-year period in the 20 states with the largest numbers of Black residents. The numbers – always “stubbornly low,” he said – declined.

So, Black students are underrepresented at flagship schools while public schools that attract large proportions of Black students are underfunded. Those factors, along with laws, policies and customs, “uphold a racial caste system” that disadvantages Black students, Allen said. “Narratives of meritocracy and colorblindness and neutrality continue to be leveraged and used by those in dominant positions to defend their absolute right to exclude.”

Gradualism “is not to be accepted and not to be taken as a convenient excuse for not pushing for dramatic change, because we are capable of dramatic change,” he said. “And it is necessary. Change is possible, and that becomes the beauty of higher education and education writ large.”

“We search far and wide to find students to come into these programs,” she said. “There are all kinds of barriers, both real and imagined, that these students encounter.”

Most are first-generation students who are smart but just don’t know how to navigate advanced-degree programs, she said.
“The students are talented, so it’s often small things – other things in the system – that are roadblocks that we help remove,” she said. “And we have been successful.”

Dr. Renita Miller, associate dean for Access, Diversity and Inclusion at the Graduate School of Princeton University, said Allen’s remarks caused her to think “more broadly about what is happening,” particularly his observations that not all Asian students support the highly publicized discrimination lawsuit against Harvard University.

“When you think about the setbacks to Black enrollment from different policies, you have to change things at a legislative level,” she said. “And there are things you can do in your own communities and universities as teachers and administrators to increase the pipeline. It’s going to take multiple people working in multiple ways, and working together at all levels.”
by LaMont Jones