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[Colloquy Moderator]

Fifty years after the U.S. Supreme Court outlawed school segregation in Brown v. Board of Education, a number of states have had their higher-education systems declared desegregated. Several others are nearing the end of decades-long litigation or multiyear agreements with federal officials aimed at forcing their public colleges to remove vestiges of segregation. Has this process worked, and has it helped or hurt historically black colleges and universities, which opened their doors in the Jim Crow era but now are being asked to integrate themselves? Read more ...

[Patrick Mattimore]

 
     

           Before considering affirmative action let's put black student academic achievement in context. According to a report in last week's "Washington Times"  "black high school graduates perform a little worse than white eighth-graders in both reading and U.S. history."  In a book published last year by Abigail and Stephan Thernstrom,"No Excuses: Closing the Racial Gap in Learning," the authors argue that black high school graduates perform at about the level of a seventh grade white student in geography and math.

              A study published recently by the American Psychological Society, "The Relationship Between the Scholastic Assessment Test and General Cognitive Ability," concludes that the SAT is mainly a test of general intelligence. Further, the report cites prior research to support the proposition that the relationship between academic achievement and general intelligence is well established in the field of intelligence research.

            There is over a 200-point difference on the SAT between the typical black student who enters college and her white counterpart. Only one in six blacks actually finishes college, compared to about one in three whites, even though the approximate percentages of blacks and whites attending college are equal. So blacks attending college are significantly less academically competent than whites and not surprisingly drop out at much higher rates.


               There's more bad news, too. Meredith Phillips of the University of California, Los Angeles and her colleagues estimate in a 1998 study that about half of the total black-white math and reading gap at the end of high school can be attributed to differences that exist at the beginning of elementary school, according to a "Commentary" in this week's edition of "Education Week."

                So here's the summary: Blacks are behind whites when they enter school; they fall further behind during school; college-bound blacks are significantly behind whites entering college; blacks are much less likely to graduate from college.

                 What does affirmative action do? Affirmative action attempts to remedy the educational achievement gap by means of racial preferences. Lower achieving non-Asian minorities are given breaks in admissions to highly competitive universities.

                  But leveling the playing field, as proponents of affirmative action would propose, does not make the players equal. What it does is to highlight even further the great academic discrepancies between the races and breed resentment among many of the more qualified students who are now kept off the field because of affirmative action policies.

                   We need to affirmatively intervene in our education system at the front-end. Insist upon standards at the earliest levels of elementary education and unless and until those standards are met do not socially promote children. If we are afraid that this will stigmatize retained students, abolish the lockstep primary grade system and reinstitute a little red schoolhouse type classroom in which we mix children of different ages.

                    Continue testing students throughout school according to national standards. A black student graduating from high school has the right to expect that he will have the competencies of a high school graduate and not those of a seventh or eighth grader.

[richard handelsman]

"Before considering affirmative action let's put black student academic achievement in context." OK. What are the relative (blacks, whites, Mormons, Jews, Asians, Pacific Islanders, Hawaiians, Native Americans,women, gays/lesbians) proportions from one (or no) parent families; from homes that have a separate bedroom or study area; a subscription to newspapers, magazines or the internet; a library card; a need to work; three square meals; health care; ad infinitum.
Mr. Mattimore insists "upon standards at the earliest levels of elementary education." But, as his own quoting of Meredith Phillips shows ("differences that exist at the beginning of elementary school") waiting until the earliest levels is already too late.
And exactly what "standards": that a parent read to a child, take him to the library, provide study space, feed him, be there?

[%sig%]

[From Molly Mfume,emeritus prof]

As I've stated already in many previous posts in one form or another:

Well surprise, surprise, surprise. After all of these years of the radical left-wing educational lobby telling our kids they have rights and everyone should kiss their royal behind, this is what we get.

Instead of teaching civility, respect, and decency, you taught self-esteem (where none was warranted), tolerance (where none was deserved) and rights (where none was earned). And now, only now, do you see this might lead to a problem. How stupid.

The generation of the 60s produced this. You people on the left got exactly what you wanted.

enjoy...

[Psychologist]

Molly, repetitive is one thing, but cutting and pasting a post from an entirely different discussion is just downright lazy. And what in the world does your message have to do with the topic of this discussion? The discussion has to do with Brown v. Board of Education and its legacy in higher education. Your fixation on the "generation of the 60s" as the root of all evil is really perplexing.

Of course, when I recall the Dubya is a member of the generation of the 60s, I have to admit you can find some folks who fit your lovely simplistic view.

Seriously, though, Brown has to be one of the most significant legal decisions of the past century. The fact that we still have persistent and stubborn problems in education related to race 50 years after Brown reflects the complicated and entangled reality of all siginificant social issues and the limited ability of government to solve such problems. Desegregation couldn't guarantee that all race related problems in education would be solved, but segregation guaranteed that they wouldn't be solved.

[%sig%]

[Cheryl Brown, Prof. of Math]

Patrick hit the nail on the head.  Affirmative action programs put unprepared blacks into no-win situations.

This is oh so typical of the radical liberal left.  Instead of promoting these racist, reverse discrimination programs, the left should be pushing for the following:

1.  accountability for all of the money the taxpayers spend on public education
2.  elimination of tenure so incompetent teachers can be fired
3.  elimination of all "teaching certificates".  (If you want someone to teach history, hire someone who majored in it.)
4.  higher standards---i.e., no more social promotions


That way there will be no need for affirmative action programs because blacks will have the education they deserve.  They will be able to compete on their own.

[Bloom]

"That way there will be no need for affirmative action programs because blacks will have the education they deserve. They will be able to compete on their own."

Right On! After all, where is it written that blacks ought to get a free freakin' ride? What have they ever done to MERIT such treatment? The Brown decision was ALL messed up! Just LOOK at what it did to blacks in higher ed! Why it gave many of them chances that they otherwise wouldn't have had due to racist legislation and racist admissions policies, and many of them are still giving back to their communities, unlike whites who take it all for granted. Well, that is...I mean, until now, where it's all TOTALLY REVERSED and all blacks do is sit around expecting me to give give give of my time and at my cost. See what integration of education has done? Oh god! Molly, Patrick, and Cheryl (not to mention our fair Marys MacGowan and McGory) are all SPOT ON when it comes to you dastardly left-wing liberals who've ruined EVERYTHING for whites, blacks, straights, gays, boozers, smokers, bad drivers, foul-mouthed undergrad b-ball fans, cat-haters.... PRAISE BE TO THE RIGHT WING MAJORITY. FOUR MORE YEARS! FOUR MORE YEARS! I HATE BLACKS (AND WOMEN), TOO. FOUR MORE YEARS! FOUR MORE YEARS!

[Anne]

Yes, I do agree with much of what Patrick says, but I don't believe that testing and testing is the answer-- at least not the way it's often done...in an effort to test teacher effectiveness

My dentist is great! He sends me reminders so I don't forget checkups. He
uses the latest techniques based on research. He never hurts me,and I've got
all my teeth, so when I ran into him the other day, I was eager to see if
he'd heard about the new state program. I knew he'd think it was great.
"Did you hear about the new state program to measure effectiveness of
dentists with their young patients?" I said.
"No," he said. He didn't seem too thrilled. "How will they do that?"
"It's quite simple," I said. "They will just count the number of
cavities each patient has at age 10, 14, and 18 and average that to
determine a dentist's rating. Dentists will be
rated as Excellent, Good,Average, Below Average, and Unsatisfactory. That
way parents will know which are the
best dentists. It will also encourage the less effective dentists to
get better," I said.  "Poor dentists who don't
improve could lose their  licenses to practice."
"That's terrible," he said.
"What? That's not a good attitude," I said.
"Don't you think we should try to improve children's dental health in this
state?"
"Sure I do," he said, "but that's not a fair way to determine who is
practicing good dentistry."
"Why not?" I said. "It makes perfect sense to me."
"Well, it's so obvious," he said. "Don't you see that dentists don't
all work with the same clientele; so much depends on things we can't
control?  For example," he said, "I work in a rural area with a high
percentage of patients from deprived homes, while some of my
colleagues work in upper middle class neighborhoods. Many of the
parents I work with don't bring their children to see me until there
is some kind of problem and I don't get to do much preventive work.
"Also," he said, "many of the parents I serve let their kids eat way too
much candy from an early age, unlike more educated parents who understand
the relationship between sugar and decay. To top it all off," he added, "so
many of my clients have well water which is untreated and has no fluoride
in it. Do you have any idea how much difference early use of fluoride can
make?"

"It sounds like you're making excuses," I said.
I couldn't believe my dentist would be so defensive. He does a great job.
"I am not!" he said. "My best patients are as good as anyone's, my
work is as good as anyone's, but my average cavity count is going to be
higher than a lot of other dentists because I chose to work where I am
needed most."
"Don't' get touchy," I said.

"Touchy?" he said. His face had turned red and
from the way he was clenching and unclenching his jaws, I was afraid
he was going to damage his teeth."Try furious. In a system like
this, I will end up being rated average, below average, or worse.



My more educated patients who see these ratings may believe this so-called
rating actually is a measure of my ability and proficiency as a
dentist. They may leave me, and I'll be left with only the most needy
patients. And my cavity average score will get even worse.  On top of that,
how will I attract good dental hygienists and other excellent dentists to
my practice if it is labeled below average?"
"I think you are overreacting," I said.
"Complaining, excuse making and stonewalling won't improve dental
health'...I am quoting from a leading member of the DOC," I noted.
"What's the DOC?" he asked.
"It's the Dental Oversight Committee," I said, "a group made up of
mostly laypersons to make sure dentistry in this state gets improved."
"Spare me," he said, "I can't believe this.
Reasonable people won't buy it," he said hopefully.
The program sounded reasonable to me, so I asked,
"How else would you measure good dentistry?"
"Come watch me work," he said. "Observe my processes."
"That's too complicated and time consuming," I said. "Cavities are the
bottom line, and you can't argue with the bottom line. It's an absolute
measure."
"That's what I'm afraid my parents and
prospective patients will think.  This can't be happening," he said
despairingly.
"Now, now," I said, "don't despair. The state will help you some."
"How?" he said.
"If you're rated poorly, they'll send a dentist who is rated excellent
to help straighten you out," I said brightly.
"You mean," he said, "they'll send a dentist with
a wealthy clientele to show me how to work on severe juvenile dental
problems with which I have probably had much more experience? Big help."
"There you go again," I said. "You aren't acting professionally at all."
"You don't get it," he said. "Doing this would be like grading schools
and teachers on an average score on a test of children's progress without
regard to influences outside the school, the home, the community served and
stuff like that. Why would they do something so unfair to dentists?
No one would ever think of doing that to schools."
I just shook my head sadly, but he had brightened.
"I'm going to write my representatives and senator," he said.  "I'll
use the school analogy- surely they will see the
point."   He walked off with that look of hope mixed with fear and
suppressed anger that I see in the mirror so often lately.

[Bob Wheeler Buffalo State]

The very idea of waiting until higher education is involved to deal with educational inequality is absurd. The “problem” needs to be addressed long before students arrive at the halls of higher education. Establishing remedial programs or artificial standards at a higher education level does not address students that are inadequately prepared during their secondary school years. It seems that we as a nation do not want to admit that we have created the conditions for racial inequality starting with preschool and progressing up through high school. We allow inner-city and rural schools to remain under funded, ill equipped and poorly staffed. Predominately white suburban schools reap the benefits of a higher tax base while the decaying economies of our inner city rob black children of a quality education.

This sets up a dilemma because it becomes an exercise of power and racial oppression both by the deplorable condition of our secondary schools and the need for a distributive remedy to deal with ill prepared students who desire a quality college education. The very idea that “entitlements” and special programs need to be devised to set the conditions for equality implies that the white power base controls admission to advancement for people of color. However, without these distributive efforts, people of color are forced to lag behind white students. The economic face of repression is evident in the very idea that minorities are forced to rely upon grants and scholarships that exclude poor whites and therefore fosters resentment and bigotry on behalf of those poor white students. There is also the implication that black students are being given a place at the table for no other reason than the color of their skin. The white power base is successfully playing divide and conquer to preserve its own position.

If there are not enough black professors or administrators in higher education, then it follows that there is not enough incentive to put them there. No amount of legislation or distributive effort will remedy that situation. If a black student is “fast tracked” into the system, there will be cries of injustice by whites. If oversight on the higher education level is to be meaningful, the conditions for success must be set in our secondary schools. There should not be any reason for the system to plead that they were not given enough to work with when asked why there is not greater black representation on their campus. The incentive for change has to occur back in our communities where children are not given a school that provides a quality education. This means that the funding for poor schools needs to be changed. How that change takes place is a major challenge because it may depend on people living in suburbia to pay higher taxes from which a portion goes to the inner-city schools. Ideally, our cities need to become revitalized to raise the tax base while preserving ethnic communities. This means higher paying jobs and improvement of community infrastructure and housing.

Waiting until the problem is at the doorstep of higher education is no more than putting a Band-Aid on a sucking chest wound!

[%sig%]

[richard handelsman]

The Chronicle should require a reading and understanding of The Shape of the River (Bok and Brown) before printing any comments about Blacks in college.
Otherwise, writers remind one of the blind men and the elephant.

[Bloom]

Bok and Bowen are ANATHEMA to colloquy readers. Do you understand? ANATHEMA! We WILL NOT READ such LEFT WING LIBERAL BLEEDING HEART TRIPE!! No no. Instead, we'll read McWhorter, Steele, D'Souza, the Thernstroms (lovely Therns) and Charles Murray's incredibly RATIONAL, LOGICAL and self-serving study on the Bell Curve--entirely misunderstood by the wounded left-wingnuts. And we will LISTEN to Molly and Patrick and Cheryl--The Spot-Ons, for only such as THEY ask the PENETRATING questions. THEY provide the TRUE answers that we're all too SCARED to understand: that our unwarrated efforts to merely boost Blacks', women's and other minorities' self-esteem COST me and mine; that if they can't do it by themselves, if a few decades of scandalous affirmative action haven't been enough to undo CENTURIES of embedded, institutionalized racism and its lingering, irresolvable half-life, then THEY NEVER WERE QUALIFIED and never will be! Not on my watch! Thank God above that George I had the irreverent and audacious COURAGE to move on from the misguided Marshall to the INCREDIBLY talented and thoughtful Thomas-Scalia. NOW the TRUE legacy begins!

[Princeton Grad]

Bloom,

I agree with everything you say!  Bok and Bowen are tools of the left, justifying their respective institutions' discriminatory processes to appease their left-leaning faculties.  Thanks for your erudite support!

However, please don't refer to institutionalized racism as "irresolvable", as such would only give encouragement to those who want affirmative action to go on forever.  Affirmative Action is supposed to end one day, isn't it?

Best,
- Princeton Grad

[K. Engel..Baltimore]

Dear Bloom,

What happened????  Your mama leave your lily white daddy and his wet behind the ears runt for a successful african american woman that beat him out of job??

America and Brown vs the BoE did not change the educational options of Colored, Negro, Afro-American, Black African-Americans families.  Unlike the immigrants of Europe, who quickly assimilated and changed their names to blend in with the WASP, the above mentioned "CNAABAA" could not change their color.  Brown vs the BoE merely admitted that America had 2 educational tracks, one designed to keep the service provider in the service provider role, my people really didn't need much education beyond how much starch to add to the new electric washer.  We did not see America invest in new schools for the Black citizens they gave us the schools the whites didn't want anymore and we understood to make do.  My grandparents were from the south, my grandmother didn't even know her family, her mother had been sold as a young slave when 11 years old.  My grandfather was raised by a White Doctor and his wife when his mother(their maid) died.  They never had children, but left him their land.  He raised 10 children of which only one was able to attend college(my mother) my 5 uncles all served with honor for more than 30 years each in the U.S. military.  When my grandparents died in 1964, they had 1 college educated child, and 64 grandchildren....of those 64 grandchildren, 52 are college graduates and 15 of those have either Masters or Doctorate level degrees.  The rest are highly successful in their own personal or business ventures.  Brown vs the BoE only unlocked the legal shackle, Black folks have making good on their own without the likes of you.  Black people in America know you can't trust white america.  I think the question should be not whether desegregation has hurt HBCU's but has it helped HWCU?

[%sig%]

[Publius]

This dialogue on the causes & consequences of Brown v. Board has been refreshing. That being the case, no one has weighed in on the effects it had on HBCUS.

It seems to me that the Brown decision hastened the decline of HBCUs. Prior to Brown,  HBCUs were a great source of intellectual capital for black America. The curriculum of many HBCUs--with the exception of Tuskegee--were designed to cultivate intellects. The end product of this was the generation of a class of black intellectuals who were capable of negotiating and add to, the terms of thougth.

After Brown, the best and brightest left HBCUs--leaving behind both students and faculty who were thought only capable of doing "Applied" things. Today, HBCUs are merely thinly veiled job-training programs, with missions dedicated soley to preparing blacks for jobs.

I find it striking that there are no notable black intellectuals on the faculty of HBCUs--they are to be found elsewhere--this wasn't so before Brown.  Even among students, quality appears to be down, as well as their intellectual ambition. There are roughly 55 HBCUs who have not produced a
Ph.D in Physics in over 25 yrs----this is shameful, troubling, and clearly an effect of Brown.

Nor are there to be found among HBCU presidents, individuals with the stature of say Benjamin Mays--who was a  published intellectual. Today, HBCU presidents are rather unnaccomplished intellectuals, on average--there are a few exceptions (Massey at Morehouse).


So, should we celebrate Brown? Maybe---but let us call a spade a spade----it has hurt HBCUS.

[%sig%]

[Psychologist]

Dear K. Engel,

Ah, I believe Bloom's posts are parodies. At least, I surely hope so.

Thank you to Publius for responding to one of the issues raised in this discussion: the effects of Brown on HBCUs. I am quite ignorant about the history and current status of HBCUs and I was interested to see what folks had to say on the issue.

It seems to me that another impediment to equal opportunity in education is the persistent de facto segregation in neighborhoods. My daughter's public school is integrated: about 1/3 white, 1/3 African American, and 1/3 Latino and Asian (which breakdown, BTW, leaves out one of the fastest growing racial categories in California: mixed race children). Few of the African American and Latino students actually live in our neighborhood, though, which sets up an odd social environment for everyone involved. Other schools in the area, in particular the private schools, are much more exclusively white.  This "residential segregation" interacts with disparities in economic resources available to schools to produce markedly different educational experiences for children.

Brown was critical, but as Engel points out, it was only the necessary starting point in a long and contentious process of overcoming entrenched social and economic barriers.