The National Center blog has a response to my post, as an addendum from Amy Ridenour. I'm going to respond part by part to make myself clear. Amy writes:
1) DarkStar/Ed Brown refers to Mychal's "race hustling ways." I've been unable to find a definition anywhere for the slang term "race hustling," but I thought it referred to the exploitation of racial divisions for personal profit.
My calling Massie a race hustler is a continuation of using the term against self identified right leaning individuals who I think behave in the same manner as those from the left who they claim are race hustling. As I understand the use, personal profit is not just economics but also getting media attention. And, that IS on intent of Project 21, correct?
2) DarkStar castigates Mychal for not addressing a litany of other, related issues, but letters to major newspapers intended for publication nearly always must be short and succinct to have any hope of being published. Writers can't address everything they might wish to.
She is correct about this point. However, the letter by the president's of the Maryland HBCUs touched upon many topics. Massie touched upon alleged double standards but doesn't even BRIEFLY mention why HBCUs existed in the first place.
Mychal's letter didn't call for closing down historically-black colleges; he exposed the hypocrisy inherent in calling for integration while promoting segregation.
Here is something I guess I didn't explain well. When I wrote, and is quoted by Amy Ridenour:
Here is the bottom line to all of this, besides the disgust I'm feeling towards Massie's letter. Why is it that people like Thernstrom and Massie say close down HBCUs because of their segregated history, instead of saying close down HWCUs, because of THEIR segregated history?
Close down the HWCUs, transfer the money and facilities to the HBCUs, and then let's see what happens.
The intended implication was closing historically white colleges and universities (HWCUs) would further integration of the HBCUs because the white students would be transferred to the HBCUs. So I have to ask why defending HBCUs is promoting segregation? HBCUs didn't discriminate, historically white colleges and universities (HWCUs) discriminated. So, to promote integration, close the HWCUs and transfer the programs, money, facilities, and students to the HBCUs.
Here is some further information that I probably should have written.
In the Mississippi case, not only was funding increased to HBCUs, but the HBCUs were required to increase their efforts to get white students to attended. This is all from my memory, but if I am correct, the HBCUs even offered white students money to attend the schools, money not offered to Black students. In other words, they had affirmative action for white students.
Ridenour continues:
The four HBCU presidents opposed and supported segregation in the same sentence.
This is most interesting when you consider efforts by Bowie, Morgan, UMES, and Coppin.
Bowie, like other universities, offers programs geared towards working adults. In fact, the working adult degree programs, as I'll call them, cause the Bowie campus to become more even in race, with, I have been told, the business program to be heavily white. Morgan has an engineering program which has white students in it and I've worked with people who have used that program to obtain masters degrees "after work hours." I have family who recently graduated from Coppin, and their nursing and social services degree programs have white students in them. And, again, money has been offered to white student to get them to come to those schools.
Ridenour continues:
As to Thernstrom: Although you'd be hard-pressed to tell from the college presidents' and DarkStar's attack on her views, she expressed support for the continuation of historically-black institutions.
Hmmm... I don't understand this part of her reply. Here is part of what I wrote:
Massie doesn't deal with the issue the presidents of the Maryland HBCUs was addressing. Nor does he address other points like this:
Maryland's four historically black institutions account for 64 percent of African American undergraduates enrolled in the state's traditionally public four-year institutions. That enrollment includes many high-achieving high school graduates, as well as significant numbers of students not eligible for admission to more selective institutions. The best-prepared students enrolled at the HBIs graduate at the same rates or better than similar students at other public institutions. Other students may take longer or even discontinue their studies because of unmet financial need.
You see, the Thernstrom's wrote something interesting in their article. They wrote this:
In fact, a remarkable 40% of all African-Americans with a bachelor's degree in the physical sciences, and 38% of those who majored in math or the biological sciences, attended HBCUs. Conversely, almost no students at HBCUs gravitate to black studies, gender studies and the like. Moreover, among blacks who earned a Ph.D. in the late 1990s, 31% had done their undergraduate work at HBCUs.
If you just read for the statistics alone, that is a strong point to be made for the continued existence of HBCUs.
I don't understand why "hard pressed" was used when what I wrote is right there.
She continues:
Hardly a call for the "closing down" of HBCUs, as DarkStar alleges.
I provided a quote from the Thernstrom's from which the implication is made. I'll provide it here as well, with emphasis added this time:
Fisk University is in such dire financial straits that it is considering selling off part of its valuable art collection. The Nashville, Tenn., school is one of the nation's 103 historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs), and its money problems raise an obvious question: Half a century after Brown v. Board of Education, should we still support an institution of higher education that is less than 1% white?
...
But overwhelmingly white institutions are also eager for a significant black presence. If all educational doors are so wide open to black students and professors, should we really hope that schools such as Fisk survive? At the height of the civil-rights movement, some thoughtful observers expressed grave doubts. Research by Christopher Jencks and David Riesman concluded that these "by-products of the Southern caste system" were usually an "ill-financed, ill-staffed caricature of white higher education." The "great majority [stood] near the end of the academic procession in terms of student aptitudes, faculty competence, and intellectual ferment." And it seemed self-evident that the demise of Jim Crow would make these schools even weaker by exposing them to new competition. Their best students and teachers would have choices denied earlier generations of African-Americans, and few would choose even the better HBCUs like Howard over Harvard.
So, again I'll ask, why must just the Black schools be held solely responsible?
I have an idea. My mother and other relatives obtained their nursing degrees from Provident Hospital. (I wrote about it here). In fact, when we lived in New York, my mother used to contact nurse relatives in Baltimore to get them to order more nursing hats for her. The tradition was nurses wore nursing hats that symbolized the school from which they got their degree.
Let's close down the University of Maryland Nursing School and re-open the Provident Hospital Nursing School, and have the UMD students "transfer" to Provident.
Ridenour ends her addendum with this:
4) The college presidents and DarkStar attacked Abigail Thernstrom, yet Abigail Thernstrom's essay was jointly written with her husband, Stephan Thernstrom. Isn't the man's input as worthy of note as the female's?
Possibly this anti-male inequity could be addressed by establishing and supporting all-male universities...
...or perhaps it is that kind of thinking that got all this higher education inequity started in the first place.
I updated the original post to include both husband and wife. That was my mistake for not including him and I'll apologize, again, for the oversight. But I have to highlight this part:
...or perhaps it is that kind of thinking that got all this higher education inequity started in the first place.
I find the total lack of taking history into account to be revolting. Why must Black history be destroyed at the expense of integration? Especially since this part of "Black History" is actually American history? Let's keep the HBCUs around and remove the HWCUs.
When Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, Sr, or whomever is considered to be a "Black leader" is targeted by the right, many times they are criticized because in their "advocacy", they are leaving out pertinent information. It appears to me that Massie left out pertinent information. He wrote:
There is no debate that historically black institutions have been permitted to escape adherence to Title IV specifically because they are black. What's more, they have escaped penalty while their proponents viciously castigate other institutions for lacking diversity.
So, where exactly is his proof that HBCUs have escaped adherence and penalty?
Did Massie mention in his letter, and the editors didn't include, the affirmative action programs at HBCUs in his letter? Did Massie mention in his letter, and the editors didn't include, that there are HBCUs like Bluefield State College in West Virginia or Lincoln University in Missouri, which are now mostly white? Did he mention history in the letter and it was not included by the editors?
I have to end here. My kid demands my attention. If needed, I'll continue in another entry.
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