people with disabilities are part of diversity now? Including white people with disabilities????????

Yes take any course in cultural diversity and you will see diversity as race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, ability, gender, class, religious/spiritual belief, etc. I thought people in higher ed. knew this?

Wouldn't it be nice if higher education could actually focus on education rather than expending so much energy on becoming a utopian institution?

abichel, or better yet, wouldn't it GREAT if H/E actually devoted itself to transmitting culture, contributing to academic/scientific/technological advancement, promoting the healthy civic development of its community and NOT gratuitously playing charades with politically correct topics that it begrudgingly acknowledges, at best.

"Diversity" is the MOST abused, over-used, confused buzz-word on campus today and sadly the parrots on the highest perches seem to have a very limited vocabulary. Just look up and see them for what they are --- a**holes without a clue.

More of this we are going to see, with our Obamanational purpose bhaving become a college degree in every pot, and every pothead. The most common learning disabilities I have seen are laziness, stupidity, and devoidity of intellectual curiosity.

Hmm, does diversity include intellectual diversity, from the really dumb to the really smart? Or athletic diversity, from the physically inept to the highly performing? Or artistic diversity, from the completely untalented to the most skilled? Where does one draw the line in deciding what kind of diversity counts, or doesn't?---Sandy Thatcher

Honore - which/what "culture" should H/E be transmitting? What would that look like? If you mean that H/E should broaden the study and teaching of culture to reflect the fact that white men no longer hold a monopoly on determining what matters in our culture, then I am right there with you.

As long as people with disabilities are routinely discriminated against (for example, research consistently shows unemployment rates of 70% amoungst people with disabilities) then there needs to be a response to this that is more thoughtful and effective than looking at skin color alone. Having legs, having sight or the ability to hear does not limit intelectual capacity and possibility as much as the social response to these conditions, regardless of skin color.

Sandy Thatcher - the argument that diversity is a meaningless term because it can be extended to talent is a red herring. No one (other than desperate students hoping for a better grade) makes such a claim. Diversity is the process of making sure we make a good faith effort to consider all perspectives & people in society especially those who have historically been left out. Diversity applies to people with less talent ("the really dumb", "the physically inept", and "the completely untalented") only if the tools we use to assess their talent are biased in favor of a certain culture. If not, one would be hard pressed to (and I said above, no one does) argue that those with less talent are equal to those with more in the skill being assessed.

Obama didn't invent racism, classism, sexism, or hate in general. Universities aren't utopian, far from it. They have produced and reproduced some of the most racist, classist, and sexist ideas. How nice it would be for everyone to learn that such universities have been the bastion of our hateful, warmongering society. The disabled, minorities, and the poor already know this somewhat. It is good for whites to take their medicine. You can pay now, or you can pay later. The world is going to pass you by, slug-like thinkers (no offense to UC Santa Cruz). Save your (parochial)skins before it is too late.

And the comments get to the heart of the matter - the whole diversity tribute is anti-white male. It can be spun in many different ways, the underlying agenda is the same. It's problematic because the youth are being taught that this is the only viewpoint to have, and thus the situation perprtuates. At some point, this approach will come to a head, and I'm wondering what the consequences will be. White guilt will not last indefinitely. And neither can the one-sided liberal radicalism in our universities. The students will make the final decision, and it will be a glorious day.

There is such a clamor for "Diversity" especially in the humanities because otherwise, those innumerate, illogical but nonetheless self- important individuals from the humanities who write these silly articles and who unfortunately administer our universities (who would otherwise be unemployable in the private sector) could no longer pretend that they are making a positive contribution to our society. Counting gender, noting the distribution of skin pigments, lost limbs etc...is something they can do as well as anyone who does real research and teaching. Insinuating moral inferiority of others based upon those distributions is something they do better than everyone else!

I agree, tbdiscovery, that much of the discourse on diversity assumes an anti-white, misandric point-of-view. alvitap is correct in suggesting that universities 'have produced and reproduced some of the most racist, classist, and sexist ideas': I recently asked 20 college students to complete a survey on how men are treated in the academic environment, and the results suggest that they are routinely subjected to direct- and disparate-impact discrimination. Some students also mentioned how race and class worked against white male students because of a blanket assumption that all white males are privileged.
I also think that at some stage white Americans will realize that they are an interest group and will start advocating for their unique issues. Let's hope that day arrives soon--that will be a glorious day.

Sorry, I surveyed 120 students--not 20.

Notice the lack of discussion of sexual orientation and gender orientation

The color of African leaders have become much more representative of the African population since independence from European nations. And, yet, I think the sad fact is, Africa is more ravaged by corruption, war and disease. Please stop these shallow judgments on the quality of leadership by the color of the leader. That kind of thinking has already done so much harm to those it was supposed to help. Liberals, you aren't helping anyone but by exploiting people's prejudices that those who look like them will more likely act in their best interest. Study some history please!

When considering the concept of diversity, approach it as each of us having a unique "cultural DNA profile" -- it is not simply about a single category, whether race or disability or gender. We each possess a unique set of cultural affiliations and experiences which profoundly affect how we perceive and interact with others, inevery area of our lives. This approach to diversity is inclusive: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thTgveMQcKE

@Sean912 - "blanket assumption that all white men are privileged" - ALL white men are priveleged by the very fact that they wake up every day and don't have to think about how their race or gender will affect their daily lives. The idea of white privilege encompasses so much more than simple economic power. In a patriarchal eurocentric dominated society white males are "programmed" from birth to believe they are the norm and their beliefs and attitudes should be the beliefs of everyone. "Issues related to diversity or the other people's problems because they just need to be more like us and then we could all get along" is the overarching theme in today's world. Until we start recognizing the strengths and qualities of each other and appreciating them, breakdowns in communication and understanding will continue to exist. Please - be honest - for generations throughout history whatever the white man has wanted, he has taken, and whatever he could not have,he has destroyed. That is the reality of a postcolonial world.

Reading through these comments reinforces the need for sensitivity to "diversity" not only in our educational system, but in the larger culture in general. I have a disability that isn't apparent when looking at me; it doesn't affect my mental ability, but it does affect much of my physical ability. Until suffering this injury, I couldn't have begun to understand what "disability" can mean, and it certainly has made me extra aware of and sensitive to the diversity of our student populations. Can you all hear yourselves right now? It's attitudes like these which fund the disenfranchisement of entire groups of people within society. If the pendulum is swinging hard towards confronting these issues, perhaps it's because it needs to. Look at Steven Hawking; can anyone argue that it was a mistake to allow someone with severe disability the opportunity to learn? None of us can predict what gifts any individual has or how they may contribute to society at large. When all people have equal opportunity with mutual respect, regardless of their native ability, and this culture finally grows up to embrace diversity (except for native peoples, we are a nation of immigrants, remember?), we really will have found a true democratic society.

#12, spot on.

@eddocstudent, I disagree with your statement that 'ALL white men are privileged by the fact that they...don't have to think about their race or gender will affect their daily lives': most white men have to think about these issue everyday becaue some media producers and many educators are doing a good job trying to depict them in the ways you describe. (See the work done by Paul Nathanson & Katherine Young for more on the gendered aspect of this.)I think a discussion of privilege ('unearned access to resources' according to one of my professors)is useful if one also considers gynocentric privilege and affirmative-action privilege as part of the conversation. An 'honest' examination of these issues would surely include some consideration of these aspects. In our post-postcolonial world, in which the discourses of economic and cultural power are changing in such interesting ways, we should surely be wary of the old blanket racial-and-gender-based assumptions about white people and men--and we should start to ask critical-literacy questions about those who would represent white people and men in these ways. Are these people interested in 'recognizing the strengths and qualities of each other [or one another] and appreciating them,' or are they more interested in having everyone subscribe to their beliefs--becoming 'more like' them in outlook--thereby leaving their privileges and interests unchallenged? I and some other researchers are starting to ask these kinds of questions. Please let me know if you would to continue this conversation elsewhere; I would be great to hear more of your ideas. Thanks.

No 19 says, among other things,

(except for native peoples, we are a nation of immigrants, remember?

No, I don't "remember". Which "native peoples" do you have in mind? It is not the case that the ancestors of all American Indians (let alone the Eskimos) came over the Bering to the Americas all together on one day. But what immigration has to do with this is unclear to me.

and I've had a partial disability most of my life, which has, rightly in most cases, kept me from certain kinds of options. I've never used it as an excuse. You say "all people have equal opportunity with mutual respect, regardless of their native ability..."

You can't have it both ways. Not unless what you really want and what the Sensitivity Police are really pushing is equality of outcome and result. But then you probly won't have it at all.

RE 21 *it would be great' -- I find it difficult to proofread this small text.

Hmmm, once in a while I find a white, male student who understands the notion of white privilege. Many more white females than white males empathize with this situation ("Oh, it is so sad," they say.) On the other hand, practically all of the minority students I've talked with can enumerate numerous ways that faculty and students and staff ignorantly say destructive things, or advise them poorly, or send them on wild goose chases.
This white patriarchy will end. Every hill has a plain. This is what scares the warring national mindset of many Americans --their former and present-day slaves are "acting up." If you DON'T have white guilt, and you are white, you are messed up. As that great philospher, James Brown says, "Deal with it."

The most revolting feature of this discussion is the left's relentless practice of sorting persons into one social category or another. This is sociology run wild. It's one thing for you to say, for the sake of generalization, that I seem to share certain attributes with others, whether it's religion, age, sex or whatever. But when you start treating me as if that's essentially what I am--a member of some alleged grouping--then you have insulted my individuality profoundly. And I am an individual. I'm like everybody else in some respects, I'm like somebody else in some respects, but most of all I'm like nobody else when all respects are considered. If there's a core principle in our moral philosophy--call it Western, Christian, Protestant, Existential or whatever--that's it: The dignity and inviolability of the individual. Every political tyranny or discriminatory tribalism in the past has used the categorical approach in dealing with humans, and now we're seeing it again in this institutional fixation on "diversity." This is prejudice disguised as "progressivism." Resist it, or be moved around like a piece on a chessboard. You may think you're a pawn, but I'm not.

People have yet to learn that sometimes an inconvenience to them is not discrimination. Sometimes it's just the limitations of the program, the technology, or the budget.

We are rapidly approaching a place where we may not offer some programs because we can't afford to design them for every possible combination of disability, diversity, preference or limitation... even though perhaps 1% of the students who would ever potentially participate would have even one of the possible challenges.

What's the balance point? When we stop offering education because we can't design it to suit everyone in the world, IMO we are tilting the decision in the wrong direction.

#25 'This is prejudice disguised as "progressivism."' Well said.

Throughout all of recorded human history, human beings have developed ways to group ourselves as "us" and everyone else as "them", our unique individuality not-withstanding. So, it behooves us to learn more about how to tame the "us" vs. "them" spirit in our nature and to be equally vigilant about mitigating its negative consequences in our society. That is not sociology run wild, nor Obamaism or any other thing besides dealing with human nature.

One thing this news report suggests is that we need to be more careful and precise in the language we use to describe disabilities given the unfunded mandates placed on all educational institutions (pre-college as well as higher education) to avoid bankrupting the entire enterprise. Having raised a child with significant physical and learning disabilities (and that child successfully, if with considerable challenge, earned a bachelor's degree) I understand something about what is needed in this regard. The law is too vague and subject to abuse. Charlatans can divert resources from those with genuine needs.

As for all the claims and counter-claims about privilege and who has it, a dispassionate examination of our current social reality can put to rest some of the pointless arguing about privilege. In the USA, there is a major socio-economic divide that too often, though not always, coincides with group characteristics such as skin color, language, and immigration status. We would better serve the cause of unity if we spent more time working to reduce that socio-economic divide by removing the structural causes (inferior schools, inadequate health care, unaffordable housing, etc.) for it. We may not be able to create a perfect society but we sure can improve the one we have today. And if we spent billions of dollars on that rather than on war or Wall Street bail-outs, we would get a much better return on our investment.

#28 (rick1952) - I couln't agree more.

Nice to see this discussion rolling along...

Why is it that only poor and "disadvantaged" minorities of all persuasions have a lock on truth when it comes to matters of "diversity" in H/E? Is it their self-inflicted sense of victimization, or just their hatred of the white man? Their claims to moral superiority are always amusing, cemented as they are in the quaint belief that if the tables were turned THEY would somehow perform better. That discourse of this type passes for education is yet another sad sign of the times.

We in north America are the inheritors of the 95%+ mortality rate from the European disease pool. Plymouth was founded in an Indian village that had crops in the fields, deserted because all but one had died and the last had fled. This is the origin of "manifest destiny" doctrine prior to the germ theory of disease.

Some, such as myself, have ancestry of many kinds, and so do not have the luxury of wallowing in an ethnic identity. My great grandfather was dry-gulched (shot in ambush) in 1906 in North Dakota. He was a half-breed, so no charges were brought. Another great grand cousin was general Longstreet, my grandmother was a Scotch-Irish performer in PT Barnum's first circus, she and Barnum grew up together in Wisconsin. Most places I go, some of my ancestors fought the others.

I also tend to agree with #12. But I am very happy to see that today's college students scarcely seem to notice the color of anyone. It is the ideologically rigid religionists who draw hard lines of "us and them" among students I see today.

It is hard to speak about and of diversity unless one is a minority and knows what it is like to be discriminated against. This is the source of privilege that many do not and do not want to understand.

And what of cities, such as Philadelphia, and states, such as California, where whites are not the majority minority? Is there a general time frame from which whites can expect to claim the benefits from minority status? Or are we following the academic model of only whites possessing racist souls because they are privileged?

It is quite interesting that the same folks who claim that the privileged can never understand the suffering of discrimination actually harbor a hatred for Other and perpetuate this hate through reverse discrimination.

Is there such as thing as responsibility and giving your all for knowledge and pride? Those days seem lost.

@ steiny--your discourse on diversity seems to privilege minorities. Perhaps some of your assumptions could benefit from critical scrutiny?

I guess some of you don't see a problem with the statistics that IF the over 60% of population in the United States are people of color, yet our H/E institutions are 95% white, that is a statistical improbability? That something else is to account for this, like oh, I don't know....discrimination, as they found in the 1960's!!!!

Higher Education is about educating people, and if you don't think your job is educating whoever comes to you wanting to learn, we don't need you.

In some aspects of our lives, everyone identifies oneself as a minority. Admittedly, some identities are more important than others. I do not wish to enter the ideological debates I have read here. However, the Chronicle has noted that in the near future the majority of university students in the university will be female, and being white will not constitute the majority of Americans. This re-balancing constitutes a rise in demographic pluralism in our nation and universities. But we cannot exactly equate pluralism either with democracy or equality. There are demographic subsets that will still remain in the lower economic classes and others will remain in the upper eschelons. As time passes, we will continue to make adjustments to meet the various needs of the American populace in our universities. Without a doubt, we will make mistakes, and we can never make everyone equal. But we should reflect on not only who is succeeding and who is not but also what needs to be done to make university students more prepared than we have in the past. If we do that, perhaps we have fought half the battle.

Women have been the majority of undergraduate students since 1982 (according to a 2008 AAUW report). In 2007-2008, women earned 62% of associate's degrees, 57% of bachelor's degrees, 61% of master's degrees, and 51% of doctor's degrees (2010 NCES2010-028). I wish the Chronicle would pay closer attention to, and investigate the reasons for, the underrepresentation of male students in American Higher Ed.

Broadening diversity? Is this a serious proposal or just scrambling for new areas of litigation? Both? Perhaps.

It seems to me that academic issues of diversity are really context-dependent. For instance, one often hears refrains in colleges of education about making things equal for women, busting patriarchy and all that lingo.

But take a look at a field like elementary education at the undergraduate level. Where is white, male hegemony here? And...who is trying to level out this discrepancy, legally or otherwise?

Or what about religious diversity in fields like philosophy or religious studies? For example, is there an effort to recruit poor students from Christian, Pentecostal, fundamentalist backgrounds to become the future historians or leaders in the humanities?

Maybe, I am missing something here, but these possibilities for making the academy diverse don't even seem to be on the radar screen.

Are they? Could someone enlighten me here?

In fact, if you want to look at an even larger issue, what about the decreasing numbers of white, young men disappearing from college enrollments overall? Was this a subject for recent policy and law discussions?

Hey, I am open here...but let's be honest. Okay?

To #12 BobbyFisher:

"... those innumerate, illogical but nonetheless self- important individuals from the humanities who write these silly articles and who unfortunately administer our universities (who would otherwise be unemployable in the private sector)...."

I've spent half of my working life in each sector, and, hands down, those who work in the private sector would be far less employable in academia than those in academia would be in the private sector. The empirical data would crush you. Your comment reeks of envy.

Somewhere I learned that, "...a house divided against itself cannot stand."

Seriously? We are wasting our time with this? Have we lost the meaning of the idea of diversity? What happens when minority Muslim men demand that minority black women cover their faces on campus because the diversity and multi-culturalism call for all thing to be equal? Will Lakota be forced to sit in a class taught by a Crow? How will academia deal with homosexuals who find bi-sexuals repulsive? How deep into my DNA do I get to dig before I become special? What do we mean by "white men?" Are Jewish men white? My brother's wife is from Spain but her father and mother are from Mexico, is she white European or Hispanic? Would the children of Henry Lewis Gates or someone like Oprah Winfrey (if they had children) be more or less privileged than say the children of Joe "the Plumber" Wurzelbacher?

I have an idea. Why don't we call for an admission system that is race, religion, and even diversity blind? Why don't we set an academic standard and stick to it? If you ever wonder why for-profit colleges are so successful and mounting such a serious challenge to the traditional university establishment this is why. They don't care about this dribble. The model is simple. Enroll, take the class, met the standard, get the grade, learn and become a better person.

To 39. greggor -

I have friends who teach in sociology,where a lot of this diversity humbug comes from. They say that they get the dimmest students. Sociology, ethic studies...have little to offer students other than pride (self congratulations) and a sense of grievance. Unfortunately, that doesn't make them very employable, except at universities where such ideas are promulgated. As for envy of university jobs: I'm actually a professor. As for smells, your post reeks of a bruised ego. Go and learn something useful. Then you can feel better about yourself without the need for catharsis through moral indignation.

41, your idea is a good one -- if you want to end discrimmination on the basis of those things then quit discrimminating on the basis of those such things. However, it probably won't be adopted.

Part of the problem is that on the one hand we have too many colleges and universities chasing too few qualified or actually interested students so they have to do something to make their targeted recruits confortable. But on the other hand we are going to use higher education institutions to warehouse young adults for a while and keep em out of the full time labor force, so we have to have confort, coddling, feel good, hovering over them, "freshman "seminars "" (i.e. small classes), promise of "internships" (real interns are called "Dr.", and we have to push Deweyistic "life adjustment". So we're turning the undergraduate college experience into grades 13 - 16 of high school. And some educationists are even using the term "K - 16".

Women have been the majority of undergraduate students since 1982 (according to a 2008 AAUW report). In 2007-2008, women earned 62% of associate's degrees, 57% of bachelor's degrees, 61% of master's degrees, and 51% of doctor's degrees. I wish the Chronicle would pay closer attention to, and investigate the reasons for, the underrepresentation of male students in American Higher Ed.

Women have been the majority of undergraduate students since 1982 (according to a 2008 AAUW report). In 2007-2008, women earned 62% of associate's degrees, 57% of bachelor's degrees, 61% of master's degrees, and 51% of doctor's degrees. I wish the Chronicle would pay closer attention to, and investigate the reasons for, the underrepresentation of male students in American Higher Ed.

The demographic statistics don't lie nor do the projections for the future. I was fortunate enough to attend a post graduate certificate in multicultural diversity at Temple Universities Graduate School of Social Administration. The program made me more comfortable with people different then myself and more confident to deal not only with my own guilt of white, male priviledge more confident to act to work with others from my background and with other people in coalition to struggle to overcome the last bastions of institutional discrimination and oppression. We have made progress on many levels but there is more work to be done so merit and the "content of our character" will truely be the criteria for admission to higher education and employment in our society. Our ancestors to this country came by boat. Some against their will, some by choice, some by necessity fleeing religious persecution and some seeking a new opportunity. Now that we are all are here together, we are all in the same boat. So we need to find ways to work together and overcome the legacy of how we all got here. We need to overcome the guilt and shame of all of our heritages to build a "more perfect union" and provide for the "general welfare" of all.

Temple, in Philadelphia, where the murals display Nazi whites and segregated bathrooms. The children are raised to live in a past they never endured and refuse to assimilate. The whites are taught to feel guilty for a past they never, personally, procreated. As you can see, the cycle remains.

Until we recognize each person as an individual, with universal design in education to recognize that we each have something to offer this world, we cannot maximize education. Perhaps adding more categories to the definition of diversity will accomplish this necessary goal.

For your viewing please, a visual concerning post #47:

http://northernlibertiesdotorg.typepad.com/.a/6a01157001e35f970b0115711e49b0970b-popup

tbdiscovery @47 & 49 - I looked at the mural - it appears to recognize the contributions of the Tuskeegee Airmen during WWII. Perhaps you are not familiar with the "Red Tails" and their remarkable combat record - as a bomber escort group they never lost a single bomber over occupied Europe. Their leader, Gen. William O. Davis spent four years in silence at West Point due to the racial prejudice embedded in the military academy at that time yet he went on to create one of the most successful combat units of WWII. I think that is part of America's past worth recognizing and celebrating - how, despite our national shortcomings, we have a history of attempting to overcome our differences. Perhaps you are too young to know or remember the pre-civil rights era of our nation.

As for Temple University, of which I am a proud alumnus (like its more famous alum, Bill Cosby, I could have gone anywhere for my graduate education, but I chose Temple) a lot of good work is done there to educate students about diversity and the possibility for moving our nation forward in that arena.

And having lived in one of the most integrated (by race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, religion and age) neighborhoods in Philadelphia, I can attest to the fact that there are thousands of persons (some of us educated at Temple University) who are part of an America that is diverse and respectful of that diversity. The neighborhood in which my wife and I lived and raised our children is West Mount Airy. Granted, there are many other sections of Philly that are less diverse and welcoming of difference (I was raised in one of them, North Philadelphia) but those neighborhoods do not cancel out West Mount Airy.

To borrow from a famous quote about history, I suggest that those who fail to learn from and understand the past are doomed to repeat and continue its errors, including those associated with intolerance, hate and division. Those who learn about and understand past triumphs over human failings can learn how to continue that success rather than repeat past failures.

You may wish to re-read my original post @28.

White privilege? OH PLEASE!!!

Tell that lie to the blonde, blue-eyed "privileged" folks living in Appalachia, basking in the afterglow of their "whiteness" in their rusting trailers, walking barefoot on dirt roads that lead to schools so underfunded that the WORST school in Detroit, DC or Los Angeles looks like a fancy "ecole" in the Swiss Alps.

I guess these "privileged" masses missed your last dish-to-pass "diversity" workshop, didn't they? Probably too busy playing polo down in the holler.

Nothing more than the predictable campus, hatey-Whitey, anti-White male, anti-heterosexist parrot-speak that echoes on our campuses today.

Now repeat after me..."I will now put down my tofu puffs, my nasty water bottle, my Peruvian shoulder bag, my Moroccan scarf, THEN take a shower, brush my teeth AND my tangled bird' nest hair, throw away my tattered "el Che" T-Shirt and try to act like a responsible adult with some integrity"

But if that is too much to ask of our FAKE campus "diversity allies", here's a clue for you predictable apologist campus clowns:

...fatten your golden parachutes while you can, because the backlash against your fake politics of diversity (while you live in your all-white campus communities and vacation in NON-diverse Rocky Mountain ski resorts or New England vacation spots) is coming to an end and the students that have been subjected to your lies and hypocrisy will be swinging that club of reality in your direction.

Madison, WI home of unrelenting FAKE politics of "diversity".

I welcome the coming "multihued" student body for it means that White students will finally constitute a minority and therefore will be eligible for affirmative action admissions. And since Asian students are treated as White, they should be eligible too. See what a wonderful thing diversity can be? It changes with the times. The times they are a changin'. Now there's a catchy tune.

rick1952:

I am well aware of what the mural respresents. It is one of thousands in Philadelphia. You can congratulate yourself all day for your efforts toward diversity, but the reality is that Philadelphia, in many areas, looks akin to sections of underdeveloped countries - and this is not the fault of the "privileged."

You say that I may be too young to know about what you are speaking, but the reality is that the minds of the children are being infiltrated by the likes of you and those who choose to harbor a deep hate yet speak with a kind voice. These students were born in the 1980s and 1990s, yet their minds reside in way before 1964.

Instead of teaching responsibility and basic financial transactions, the students are taught to overcome a system of perceived prejudice. In Mantua, the voters can rejoice knowing that the "current construction of the new housing project was brought to us by President Obama and his ARRA." Rejoice! And if you went through these housing projects in Philadelphia, you would see 2009 and 2010 SUVs from one end to the other.

West Mt. Airy? That is known to be a primarily upper-class black area. Why didn't you stay in North Philadelphia with the murals? Why segregate yourself? In effect, those neighborhoods do cancel out the Northwest portion of the city because most of the 400 murders per year take place in them.

Philadelphia is a disaster because of views like yours, and these are inculcated from elementary school through and after Temple University.

As for Temple University, of which I am a proud alumnus (like its more famous alum, Bill Cosby, I could have gone anywhere for my graduate education, but I chose Temple) a lot of good work is done there to educate students about diversity and the possibility for moving our nation forward in that arena.
Centurion