The Weekly Standard / September 27, 2004

 

Diversity Dropouts

 

What we can learn from historically black colleges.

 

by mark bauerlein*

 

Last march, when the University of Georgia decided to 'revive race in the admissions process, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution hailed the move as sound educa­tion policy. "Diversity holds rewards for all students," the editors assured their readers. Set aside talk about remedies for past discrimination and minority role models in high places. By this rationale, an integrated classroom is inherently superior to a monoracial one on intellectual grounds. Different skin colors and the experiences that go with them create a more challenging discus­sion, a sharper mix of viewpoints, leading students to broader concep­tions of self and world. Little evidence exists to support the notion, but a Chronicle of Higher Education survey showed that 90 percent of college faculty believes it.

The "better learning" argument is worth noting because it makes racial difference an essential component of learning. The cognitive develop­ment of a student, it declares, is enhanced by encounters with peers of different skin colors. Pseudo-empirical support comes from "diversity research," a well-funded field that contrives experiments to show that kids think more critically when in the presence of other races. This sets diversity on the same level with strong curricula and quality teachers. Any good school must have it. In last year's decision on affirmative action, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor implied a 25-year cutoff for racial preferences. The "better learning" argument would keep them in perpetuity.

And yet, a mile away from the Journal-Constitution offices sit two college campuses that squarely con­tradict such reasoning. Morehouse College is all-male and Spelman Col­lege is all-female, and both are virtu­ally all-black. In 2003, Spelman reported 1 white and 1 Hispanic stu­dent in a population of 2,121, while Morehouse tallied 4 Asians, 8 His-panics, and 3 whites in a student body of 2,770. The culture, too, is all African American. Currently on dis­play at Spelman's Museum of Fine Art is an exhibition that typifies the environment. To commemorate the bicentennial of the Louisiana Pur­chase, the curators have mounted a show not on Jefferson, Napoleon, or the frontier, but on the position of white and black women in 18th-cen­tury New Orleans.

Presidents Walter E. Massey of Morehouse and Beverly Daniel Tatum of Spelman realize the unusu­al position of historically black colleges in the diversity debate. Both have enjoyed successful careers in predominately white worlds. A Morehouse graduate (1958), Massey has been a professor of physics at Brown University, president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and director of the National Science Founda­tion. When he came to Morehouse, many considered his move a with­drawal from the center of scientific inquiry. Taturn is a psychologist and author of "Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?" and Other Conversations about Race. Before joining Spelman in 2002, she was the acting president of Mt. Holyoke College. In July, she told me that colleagues wondered why she chose to leave the white campus­es she'd lived in her whole life.

It's true – historically black col­leges lie below the radar of most educators. Discussions of affirmative action focus on Ivy League institu­tions and major state universities, and advocates see race preferences as a tool for social progress. Historically black colleges recall the days of segregation, when they were the only option for students of color. Now, they compete with race-based admissions at other schools, whose officers regard the pursuit of African-American students as a quest. Moreover, the "better learn­ing" argument makes any monora-cial campus intellectually suspect. In the affirmative action case, when Justice Clarence Thomas asked if diversity arguments apply to histori­cally black colleges, Michigan's counsel John Payton replied, "I believe most every single one of them do have diverse student bod­ies," and the subject was dropped.

Massey and Tatum think their institutions play a special role in higher education precisely because of their un-diverse racial makeup. Morehouse attracts many black stu­dents who've spent their lives as minority figures, often as the only student of color in high school hon­ors classes. They arrive on campus somewhat complacent about their own talents, President Massey says, but, amidst a group of other high-performing black freshmen, the atti­tude dissipates, competition heats up, and students work harder. At Spelman, President Tatum observes, high school seniors from all over the coun­try apply to escape from the double pressures of being black and female. They come to school feeling alienated and find others of similar experience, the commonality opening them up to the rigors of higher learning. In both cases, an all-black environment relieves the racial identity of the youth. There is no tokenism to complicate their achievement, no condescension to cover over their needs. Students have flexibility in raising and lowering their race consciousness, and freedom to pursue non-race-related subjects.

Diversity proponents worry that a monoracial college experience estranges students from those of oth­er races. Do four years at an all-black institution leave students with a sep­aratist outlook? Not at all, observes President Massey. In fact, it is the tokenism of their high school years that sparks racial tensions, and that Morehouse and Spelman are able to dispel. Besides, Massey and Tatum repeat, their colleges have abundant diversity of other kinds – religious, economic, regional – and President Tatum rightly allows the principle to other schools: "Even in an all-white classroom we can have a diverse environment." Massey insists that while diversity of individuals is a benefit, "we also need a diversity of institutions."

At other universities, though, racial difference eclipses all others. Long after California voters banned race criteria in 1996, the former Berkeley admissions director wrote, "The aftershocks from that tumultuous, wrenching, and painful period are still reverberating today." One can hardly imagine the same response to losing regional or religious criteria. More important, according to the logic of diversity, a campus that is racially uniform shortchanges its students. A profound kind of learning must be missing. Again, evidence from Morehouse and Spelman belies the premise. Alma mater of Martin Luther King Jr., Maynard Jackson, and Spike Lee, Morehouse cultivates an ethic of study and attainment. In 2003, the Wall Street Journal ranked More-house 29th in a poll measuring colleges by how many of their students enter top professional programs. The ranking is remarkable given that Morehouse's endowment of $90 million is dwarfed by the billion-dollar endowments of similarly ranked schools. Spelman, whose alumni include Alice Walker and whose donors include Bill Cosby, is listed as "very difficult" in undergraduate admissions, its selectivity exceeding Smith College, Mt. Holyoke, and Bryn Mawr.

Both schools have shortcomings, to be sure, but they are working against a steamroller in higher edu­cation that seeks racial diversity in all things. But you won't hear diver-siphiles whisper a word of criticism against them. If pressed, diver-siphiles reason that because African Americans live in a white culture, they don't need classroom diversity as much as whites do. But that's not how the "better learning" argument works. Applied to historically black colleges, it says that a "critical mass" of whites is necessary to better education of blacks.

That's the kind of population engineering that takes place in the admissions offices of elite schools. Adapting it to historically black colleges reveals just how manipulative and ideological it is. Massey and Tatum have better things to do, such as developing a Morehouse/Georgia Tech engineering program and overseeing Spelman's Center for Scientific Applications of Mathematics. Their example poses a disquieting paradox for diversiphiles: Spelman and Morehouse students do as well as students at richer and more diverse institutions, and their leaders offer a more nuanced understanding of diversity and less anxious absorption in race than do the multiculturalist promoters at the flagship institutions of higher education.

 

 

Do four ó ears at an all-black institution leave students with a separatist outlook? Not at all In fact, it is the tokenism of their high school years that sparks racial tensions.


* Mark Bauerlein is a professor of English at Emory University.