THE trauma that Cornell University went through last week (see EDUCATION) exemplifies a problem that is shared in varying degree by almost every college and university in the U.S. It is how to satisfy the aspirations of an aroused minority of black students who reject academic programs designed for a majority of students who happen to be white. As blacks see it, the result is "whitewashed" education that robs Negroes of the pride and skills they need to fulfill the black destiny in America. The blacks want something dramatically different—now.
Grating as it seems, the black demand cannot be ignored by a nation that views education as salvation—indeed, as the key to bringing Negroes into the mainstream of U.S. life. Ironically, colleges have helped to bring the problem on themselves. For years, select colleges accepted a token handful of bright Negro students from relatively privileged homes. In effect, they blackballed ghetto youths for alleged failure to meet white academic standards. Now the colleges have broken their own rules (often smugly) by seeking "disadvantaged" Negroes, many of them straight out of the ghetto. The eight Ivy League colleges, for example, have just accepted a record 1,135 black applicants for next year's combined freshman class of 8,080, a rise of 89% over the number of blacks admitted by the Ivies last year.
Negroes, though, are still a tiny minority on most campuses. Only 4% of U.S. collegians are black; they number 300,000 (half at Negro colleges) in a total enrollment of 6,700,000. The result makes Negroes both defensive and militant. At the same time, colleges are getting many blacks who resist the notion that they were ever failures, and who think, in fact, that the colleges are the failures. The reaction is natural; white administrators simply failed to foresee it. For lower-class Negroes, whose whole lives have been spent in black ghettos, the sudden move to white campuses often produces cultural shock. Everything is so white. How can a slum Negro cherish the glories of Greek culture, for example, while his sister supports him by ironing The Man's shirts? Even middle-class Negroes are often upset. Says Byron Merrit, a political science major at Syracuse University: "If white education is increasingly 'irrelevant' for whites, what is it for us?" Merrit's concern is that college will sweep him into the white world and alienate him from his less fortunate black brothers in the ghetto. "I know I can get my $20,000 a year, but then what? Where do I fit into the black community?"
Erasing White Culture
The answer demanded by Negroes is "black studies"—a concept that baffles white teachers, who have not yet caught up with a profound change in black attitudes toward education. Until recently, most Negro leaders preached racial integration; Negro collegians felt a special responsibility to set an example by using their education to build successful careers in the white middle-class world. Today, new leaders preach black "nationhood," not integration per se. Negro students now feel an even heavier responsibility than their predecessors—not to escape the ghetto, but to return to it and improve the lot of the black community at large.