Given the increasingly shrill, or at least loud and widespread, insistence that diversity is “compelling” enough to justify racial discrimination, I wonder if Jesse Jackson (see this recent post) and those preferentialists who agree with him have launched a movement I’ve somehow missed to promote white, Asian, and Hispanic attendance at historically black colleges. Are there any inducements, financial or academic, being offered to non-blacks to attend?
As Jackson said in the article linked above, “We want students at every level exposed to students of many races and backgrounds.” If diversity really is as important as he and others say, surely those students are being shortchanged to the degree that their campuses lack significant representation of other races.
If racial preferences were held to be illegal, those minority students who would no longer be admitted to the most selective universities would of course be able to attend other, less selective schools, and they and the other students at those schools would continue to receive the benefits of diversity. The only diversity losers would be the whites and Asians at the elite, flagship schools. It’s touching that Jesse Jackson is so concerned with their welfare.
John: I think there actually are minority-presence scholarships available to whites who wish to attend historically black colleges and universities. I had a friend from high school (black) who said there were a few hundred white kids at N.C. Central who attended through these kinds of scholarships. I’ve just tried to Google for it and can’t find anything, though. If it’s true, then it’s not something that gets a lot of publicity.
OK, I think I found something. As part of a consent decree to desegregate the N.C. university system, black colleges sought more whites and whites sought more blacks. Here’s a link (if it works):
http://www.jointcenter.org/databank/educationfinal/1997%20Educational%20Digest/Enrol-HiEd/reference1.htm
Here’s a link about a similar plan in Mississippi.
http://www.edweek.org/ew/ewstory.cfm?slug=33deseg.h20
Also, Alcorn State University is currently operating under a similar desegration order requiring that they set aside 40% of their academic grants budget for scholarships for Whites.
Haven’t heard from Roger Clegg and Linda Chavez on this. I wonder why?
MM and Jim – Thanks very much for your interesting comments. Public scholarships restricted by race, of course, are now illegal, at least in the Fourth Circuit (Podberesky v. Kirwan), but I still would think anyone who is convinced that that diversity is so compelling the sky will fall without it would at least have made some noise about the fate of students in black colleges. Also, that restriction may not apply to the private black colleges (Moorhouse, Spelman, Fisk, etc., though if they take federal funds Title VI would apply.) (I must confess that I don’t know how many whites attend those schools, but will try to find out at some point.) You would also, of course, indeed expect to hear from Roger Clegg, Linda Chavez, Terry Pell, et. al. about any public scholarships limited by race. Maybe the fact that these things were part of consent decrees, etc., insulates them. Worth looking into some more.
There are similar scholarships for whites at the HBUCs in Alabama. This is part of the federal court decree desegregating higher education in Alabama.
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