Diversity Enrollment at Nation's Colleges and Universities
Diversity Enrollment at Nation’s Colleges and Universities has done little to improve condition of Black Middle Class and Community.
In a time when this nation can celebrate how more racially and ethnically diverse many of our traditional white colleges and universities have become, not much can said about the true condition and state of the black middle-class and community as a result. The educational and financial success and gains of the black middle-class continues to struggle in its ability to raise those blacks with lower income and education beyond the conventional standards of living. This picture is what it is because increased college enrollment of African-American students has not translated into equal overall black empowerment to improve, re-shape, re-construct, re-think, and uplift the plagued socio-economic conditions, which faces most black middle class urbanity. What is a more troubling signal in these struggling economic times is a increase of African-American people within the median and lower sectors of the middle class who are gradually sliding into the position of the working poor despite their level of education.
Many of our nations cities and towns have more elected black officials, affluent neighborhoods, degreed professionals, and others with what we call "obtained career success", but this has done little to improve the status and image of Black America. Reading this trend what are we to make of our career and economic choices if our future in getting a degree, cannot transfer itself into automatic career success nor condition state improvement for the African-American community. Black faces no longer dominate in communities such as Leimert Park, Watts, Harlem, Atlanta, Detroit, and Washington, D.C. as they once did in the past. Many upwardly mobile African-American professionals in these cities as well as other areas around the country are no longer settling in simply black-dominated communities, instead what we are seeing is further disbursement of black presence in more integrated areas. Nonetheless, while racial and ethnic minority enrollment is up at many of these white-dominated institutions of higher learning, it has not led to an overall demographic shift in our society and culture of the number of African-American opportunities to climb into a new socio-economic category.
In effect, what has happened in the last decade in a half is that we as African-Americans have increasingly become fragmented within of our black communities and this disorder to change the cultural tide is currently taking us off the political and economic map. We have become regulated to second-class attentiveness and dependency to democratic political promise to retain our trust in affirmative-action guarantee in this crucial election year of 2006. This is critical because it shows that despite the fact that more blacks are attending colleges and universities no upward gains have been made across the board in many traditional black middle class sections of society. Other reasons why this is occurring include people being hard hit by daily unemployment, housing discrimination, bank loan denial, and other areas of racism and institutional discrimination that have long limited racial minority upward mobility. As it is, many African-Americans including those without a college education remain crusted to the middle-class spectrum but will not be able to or do not want to move out their old neighborhoods for a variety of reasons. African-American college graduates are twice as likely as other races not to land a job in their field of choice and many are opting for careers that equivalently they could have almost obtained without the degree. In recent times, studies continue to indicate that a white male with a high school or community college degree is more likely to land a job similar to his black male counterpart with a university bachelor’s degree. More importantly, when it comes to taxation without representation, the black middle class carries the load for the masses of the black population.
What then are we to make use of these factors and what does it all mean long term for the black middle class and community segments. Well one important note is the change in demographics among black men and black women who attend many of our nation’s colleges and universities. Twenty years ago, black men out enrolled black women by a percentage of 2 to 1 or 3 to 1, now, those percentages are reversed identically as a progressive number of black women have entered the workforce. This empowerment has also changed the structure of many African-American households today where women lead in more than half of them. However, those demographics alone do not tell the full story. Black men between the ages 13-25 are more likely to be affected by social and economic hardship than any other group. Black and Latino men represent three-fourths of the nations 2 million population serving in the penal system. These conditions are just some of what has contributed to the plight of the black middle and lower class structure. Our community also has not strongly recovered from the crack cocaine boom of the 1980’s and continues to be stricken with more HIV-AIDS related cases everyday. Most of all, the children of these cases have suffered at the hands of poor adult-parent choice. Equally, these children are not being raised in a society that nurtures the African proverb ‘It takes a village to raise a child’, an adage that now has become sloganeered by politicians and corporate America, but by the state welfare and county systems. Add in gang crime and violence along with other mischievous lifestyles, dysfunctional behaviors, and degraded morals it only further contributes to the plagues of our community.
This while affirmative action and diversity admission continues to be challenged in the courts and some our black colleges are closing, losing enrollment and remain under funded. In addition this signaling is saying that Black colleges have in some ways lost their significance. Nevertheless while some of our best and brightest students are coming out of these colleges, they are not the bedrock of our cultural institution that they once set precedence for. African-Americans today are offered an array of college and career choices that invite them out of the box of thinking, black first. The fact of the matter is black enrollment at colleges has not translated into overall black achievement and success for the community as a whole. Individuals and selected communities are achieving gains, but the collective mass has struggled, and it has struggled for such things as identity, culture, and self-determination, which are deep-rooted principles of our history and past. We are also struggling in many other areas including our public education institutions as well as not leading the socio-political charge against the ruling establishment.
Our charge for reparations has not garnered a widespread coalition to make it a full-fledged national political and social platform beyond black media and sympathetic interest. Because America has become so multicultural in its approach and appeal, it has been harder for us as blacks to vie for the top spots in many social, political, and economic mediums without speaking for everyone rather than strictly for ourselves. Other communities are able to establish these platforms without significant black help, which was once how everyone thought of us. Latinos, Asians, Arabs, and others are making strides without a significant call and role for the African-American voice and support, although it was us that essentially gave them their rights through our struggles in this country. Hasn’t it always been that way with us that others are benefiting off our work, struggle, and efforts to make a change or difference? It has been that way for a long time and an advantage that others use without saying even thank you. Yet while we have come to agree on many issues worldwide in this post 9/11 world. How have these relationships benefited us in our deeply downtrodden communities?
The point is that our community interests are being put off the shelf and interest toward self-determination is no longer our leading objective. Something that gets us back to the lenses of our lack of accountability for all of this seemingly educational and financial success, that popular culture and media pushes in our faces that we should be proud of. The black community seems more focused on an agenda self-prosperity rather than collective riches. Individuals are making decisions less reflective of traditional black thought and conscious and more about get it while I can for myself and use the system the way the system has used me. Today African-Americans have the means and resources to travel around the world and our combined per capital wealth would represent the ninth largest nation in the world if we were our own nation state.
However we are apart of the mosaic of American culture and life, and within that our destiny should be to reclaim the heritages and principles that always have made us a great people and community. Often times there is a quick judgment to criticize others when it comes to addressing us as a monolith but we ourselves often think and address each in those terms when it comes to black identity and representation. Colin Powell and Condelessa Rice get criticized for not thinking black enough while Louis Farrakhan and Malaenga Karenga are too black. This thinking and experience is not new in our Diaspora in American culture. Whether it was Fredrick Douglass, Nat Turner, Marcus Garvey, Harriet Tubman, Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. Dubois, Martin Luther King Jr., or Malcolm X. African-American leadership and thought has offered us diverse solutions and thought to address our needs. Something I think in the long term will lead to us greater prosperity or prove to be the most destructive cultural instrument that will bear out that diversity at colleges still shackles us from greater success.
Rashad A. Baadqir is a Sacramento-based Diversity Consultant and Author of the book “The Browning of Europe”. He may be reached at browningofeurope@yahoo.com.
In a time when this nation can celebrate how more racially and ethnically diverse many of our traditional white colleges and universities have become, not much can said about the true condition and state of the black middle-class and community as a result. The educational and financial success and gains of the black middle-class continues to struggle in its ability to raise those blacks with lower income and education beyond the conventional standards of living. This picture is what it is because increased college enrollment of African-American students has not translated into equal overall black empowerment to improve, re-shape, re-construct, re-think, and uplift the plagued socio-economic conditions, which faces most black middle class urbanity. What is a more troubling signal in these struggling economic times is a increase of African-American people within the median and lower sectors of the middle class who are gradually sliding into the position of the working poor despite their level of education.
Many of our nations cities and towns have more elected black officials, affluent neighborhoods, degreed professionals, and others with what we call "obtained career success", but this has done little to improve the status and image of Black America. Reading this trend what are we to make of our career and economic choices if our future in getting a degree, cannot transfer itself into automatic career success nor condition state improvement for the African-American community. Black faces no longer dominate in communities such as Leimert Park, Watts, Harlem, Atlanta, Detroit, and Washington, D.C. as they once did in the past. Many upwardly mobile African-American professionals in these cities as well as other areas around the country are no longer settling in simply black-dominated communities, instead what we are seeing is further disbursement of black presence in more integrated areas. Nonetheless, while racial and ethnic minority enrollment is up at many of these white-dominated institutions of higher learning, it has not led to an overall demographic shift in our society and culture of the number of African-American opportunities to climb into a new socio-economic category.
In effect, what has happened in the last decade in a half is that we as African-Americans have increasingly become fragmented within of our black communities and this disorder to change the cultural tide is currently taking us off the political and economic map. We have become regulated to second-class attentiveness and dependency to democratic political promise to retain our trust in affirmative-action guarantee in this crucial election year of 2006. This is critical because it shows that despite the fact that more blacks are attending colleges and universities no upward gains have been made across the board in many traditional black middle class sections of society. Other reasons why this is occurring include people being hard hit by daily unemployment, housing discrimination, bank loan denial, and other areas of racism and institutional discrimination that have long limited racial minority upward mobility. As it is, many African-Americans including those without a college education remain crusted to the middle-class spectrum but will not be able to or do not want to move out their old neighborhoods for a variety of reasons. African-American college graduates are twice as likely as other races not to land a job in their field of choice and many are opting for careers that equivalently they could have almost obtained without the degree. In recent times, studies continue to indicate that a white male with a high school or community college degree is more likely to land a job similar to his black male counterpart with a university bachelor’s degree. More importantly, when it comes to taxation without representation, the black middle class carries the load for the masses of the black population.
What then are we to make use of these factors and what does it all mean long term for the black middle class and community segments. Well one important note is the change in demographics among black men and black women who attend many of our nation’s colleges and universities. Twenty years ago, black men out enrolled black women by a percentage of 2 to 1 or 3 to 1, now, those percentages are reversed identically as a progressive number of black women have entered the workforce. This empowerment has also changed the structure of many African-American households today where women lead in more than half of them. However, those demographics alone do not tell the full story. Black men between the ages 13-25 are more likely to be affected by social and economic hardship than any other group. Black and Latino men represent three-fourths of the nations 2 million population serving in the penal system. These conditions are just some of what has contributed to the plight of the black middle and lower class structure. Our community also has not strongly recovered from the crack cocaine boom of the 1980’s and continues to be stricken with more HIV-AIDS related cases everyday. Most of all, the children of these cases have suffered at the hands of poor adult-parent choice. Equally, these children are not being raised in a society that nurtures the African proverb ‘It takes a village to raise a child’, an adage that now has become sloganeered by politicians and corporate America, but by the state welfare and county systems. Add in gang crime and violence along with other mischievous lifestyles, dysfunctional behaviors, and degraded morals it only further contributes to the plagues of our community.
This while affirmative action and diversity admission continues to be challenged in the courts and some our black colleges are closing, losing enrollment and remain under funded. In addition this signaling is saying that Black colleges have in some ways lost their significance. Nevertheless while some of our best and brightest students are coming out of these colleges, they are not the bedrock of our cultural institution that they once set precedence for. African-Americans today are offered an array of college and career choices that invite them out of the box of thinking, black first. The fact of the matter is black enrollment at colleges has not translated into overall black achievement and success for the community as a whole. Individuals and selected communities are achieving gains, but the collective mass has struggled, and it has struggled for such things as identity, culture, and self-determination, which are deep-rooted principles of our history and past. We are also struggling in many other areas including our public education institutions as well as not leading the socio-political charge against the ruling establishment.
Our charge for reparations has not garnered a widespread coalition to make it a full-fledged national political and social platform beyond black media and sympathetic interest. Because America has become so multicultural in its approach and appeal, it has been harder for us as blacks to vie for the top spots in many social, political, and economic mediums without speaking for everyone rather than strictly for ourselves. Other communities are able to establish these platforms without significant black help, which was once how everyone thought of us. Latinos, Asians, Arabs, and others are making strides without a significant call and role for the African-American voice and support, although it was us that essentially gave them their rights through our struggles in this country. Hasn’t it always been that way with us that others are benefiting off our work, struggle, and efforts to make a change or difference? It has been that way for a long time and an advantage that others use without saying even thank you. Yet while we have come to agree on many issues worldwide in this post 9/11 world. How have these relationships benefited us in our deeply downtrodden communities?
The point is that our community interests are being put off the shelf and interest toward self-determination is no longer our leading objective. Something that gets us back to the lenses of our lack of accountability for all of this seemingly educational and financial success, that popular culture and media pushes in our faces that we should be proud of. The black community seems more focused on an agenda self-prosperity rather than collective riches. Individuals are making decisions less reflective of traditional black thought and conscious and more about get it while I can for myself and use the system the way the system has used me. Today African-Americans have the means and resources to travel around the world and our combined per capital wealth would represent the ninth largest nation in the world if we were our own nation state.
However we are apart of the mosaic of American culture and life, and within that our destiny should be to reclaim the heritages and principles that always have made us a great people and community. Often times there is a quick judgment to criticize others when it comes to addressing us as a monolith but we ourselves often think and address each in those terms when it comes to black identity and representation. Colin Powell and Condelessa Rice get criticized for not thinking black enough while Louis Farrakhan and Malaenga Karenga are too black. This thinking and experience is not new in our Diaspora in American culture. Whether it was Fredrick Douglass, Nat Turner, Marcus Garvey, Harriet Tubman, Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. Dubois, Martin Luther King Jr., or Malcolm X. African-American leadership and thought has offered us diverse solutions and thought to address our needs. Something I think in the long term will lead to us greater prosperity or prove to be the most destructive cultural instrument that will bear out that diversity at colleges still shackles us from greater success.
Rashad A. Baadqir is a Sacramento-based Diversity Consultant and Author of the book “The Browning of Europe”. He may be reached at browningofeurope@yahoo.com.
posted by rbaadqir at 10:53 AM
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