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Pride in conserving black traditions has contributed to the reviving fortunes of the nation's 117 historically black colleges. Twenty years ago, many of the best-prepared black students turned their backs on such institutions, preferring to get their education at elite Ivy League universities. Now the tide is turning, in part because of a surge of racist incidents at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth, Purdue and other prestigious colleges.
Twelve-year-old Khalil Kinsey is one of only three black youngsters in his sixth-grade class in Los Angeles. In school, he says, "kids like to feel my hair because it's fuzzy. They ask questions like do I get sunburned when I go to the beach. Dumb questions like that. Just because I'm black doesn't mean I'm different." Khalil's father Bernard, a Xerox executive, would like his son to someday attend Florida A&M, the mostly black school he and his wife attended. "It's important for a black kid to understand that there are lots of other smart, talented blacks in the world," says Kinsey.
As a result of this outpouring of pride, black colleges have seen their endowments rising. The United Negro College Fund reported a record $44.1 million in contributions for its past fiscal year. Bill Cosby's announcement in November that he would donate $20 million to Spelman College, the Atlanta institution from which his daughter graduated, was another dollar sign of support from black parents.
Born to a working-class family in a rough part of Washington, Kenneth Glover thinks he was lucky to get out alive. "One-third of the friends I grew up with are dead," he says. "Another third are in jail or on dope. The rest of us just made it." He did more than just make it. A magna cum laude graduate of the University of Maryland, the Chicago investment counselor recently co- founded the Harold Washington Foundation. Named for the late Chicago mayor whom Glover once served as campaign manager, it provides grants to blacks for education, health care and the arts. "The black middle class has not done enough to keep the door of opportunity open," Glover insists. "Many of them try to assuage their conscience with an annual check to the Urban League or the N.A.A.C.P. Our job isn't over once we send that check."
One of the most sensitive issues for the black middle class is its relationship to the ghetto poor. University of Chicago sociologist William Julius Wilson has elaborated a persuasive theory suggesting that the worsening status of the underclass is inextricably tied to the flight from the inner city of most of its upwardly mobile black population. Its departure not only deprived poor youngsters of successful role models but also knocked the props from under churches, schools and other neighborhood institutions that provided stability and support for the impoverished. Middle-class flight, together with economic shifts that have resulted in a dearth of low-skill factory jobs, dooms the inner city to social isolation and despair.