Negro Digest - Freedom Archives

If black students were in the vanguard
of the Civil Rights Revolution,
why did it take so long for the
black students on integrated campuses
to awaken? Possibly the
answer to this question is the nature
of the integrated university
itself .
Many integrated colleges and
universities have long sought Negro
and other minority-group students
and some have given a
disproportionate amount of their
scholarship money to minoritygroup
students . These colleges and
universities have insisted for the
most part that the minority-group
students meet the same standards,
with minor revisions, as the white
students. On the surface this looks
good and seems fair, but it overlooks
the educational disadvantages
that most black students face
in ghetto schools . Thus, the type of
black student selected in the past
has been a black counterpart of his
middle-class white fellow student .
Because he was in a definite minority
(sometimes 2 per cent or 3
percent of the entering class) and
because he was more like the middle-class
white student in background,
the black student had little
compulsion or desire to challenge
even the most unfair aspects of his
college life .
One such indignity that black
students at integrated colleges have
had to put up with for years is a
kind of unspoken prohibition on in-
terracial dating .
Another has been
the toleration of unknowing racial
bias on the part of fellow students
3 0
and professors concerning such
things as racially tinted humor and
the alleged rhythm that all Negroes
are supposed to have . More painfully,
they had to accept the inconsistencies
about equality on campus
and the existence of racially segregated
fraternities and sororities .
Fortunately, many integrated
colleges have now recognized that
they have been servicing only a
fraction of the talent among black
high school graduates and have
reached out to attract more black
students from a wider variety of
backgrounds. As more black students
come to the nation's campuses
and have an opportunity to
experience both the positive and
the negative aspects of a university
experience, the black students have
begun to organize and discuss what
they can do themselves to improve
the situation. Most black students
view their proposed improvements
as of ultimate benefit to the white
students as well . In more than one
demonstration for more black
courses, students and professors,
white students who have tried to
participate as members of the black
student groups have been told to go
back to the white student body and
begin to eradicate the racism that
exists there .
Mention of the word "racism"
in this context requires a brief
clarification about what the black
students mean when they use it .
Racism is used to refer to an attitude,
often not conscious, which
causes an individual to respond to
Morcb 1969 NEGRO DIGEST