The following statistics, from the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education (JBHE), strongly indicate that in the very near future the color and gender of scholarship and leadership on U.S. college campuses and beyond in changing more rapidly than ever before in the history of the United States.

• Percentage of all African-American full professors in 2005 who were women: 36.2%
• Percentage of all African-American assistant professors in 2005 who were women: 54.9%
(U.S. Department of Education)

• Number of master’s degrees awarded to blacks in 1990: 15,336
• Number of master’s degrees awarded to blacks in 2006: 58,976
(U.S. Department of Education)

• Percentage of all African Americans ages 18 to 24 who were enrolled in college in 1981: 19.9%
• Percentage of all African Americans ages 18 to 24 who were enrolled in college a quarter-century later in 2006: 32.6%
(U.S. Department of Education)

• Male percentage of total enrollments at all of the nation’s historically black colleges and universities in 1980: 45.6%
• Male percentage of total enrollments at all of the nation’s historically black colleges and universities in 2005: 38.5%
(U.S. Department of Education)

• Percentage of all master’s degrees awarded at the nation’s historically black colleges and universities in 2006 that were awarded to women: 72.5%
(U.S. Department of Education)

• Percentage of white parents of fifth-grade students who report that their child does schoolwork at home five or more times per week: 44.7%
• Percentage of African-Americans parents of fifth-grade students who report that their child does schoolwork at home five or more times per week: 55.4%
(U.S. Department of Education)

Posted by Ajuan Mance

These institutions and their distinguished Black grads are the latest additions to my growing roster of Notable Black College Grads, listed alphabetically by college. If you know of anyone who you think I should include, contact me a [email protected]. Recognize any names from your college years?

Eastern Michigan University

Judge Mathis (Bachelors, 1983 — led the “Free South Africa” and voter registration campaigns on campus)

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Emory University

• Judge Glenda Hatchett (J.D.)
• Sanford Bishop, D-GA (J.D., 1971)

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Fisk University

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Florida A&M University (FAMU)

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Fordham University

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Fresno State University

• Lee Brown (B.S., Criminology, 1960)

<Posted by Ajuan Mance

Commencement day at Tuskegee Institute (now Tuskegee University), 1917.

(Source: BlackPast.org)

Posted by Ajuan Mance

Just as each generation of teens and young adults needs to distance itself from the values and culture of the previous generation, so too does each generation of mature adults — 30-somethings, 40-somethings, and beyond — need to amass “factual” information to support its perception that today’s young people are dumber/lazier/more apathetic/less ambitious/less curious and generally worse (at everything)  than they were when they were young.

The latest round in this cycle has appeared in the form of a recently completed study described in U.S. News and World Report (USN) and other media outlets. In an article headlined “Today’s College Students More Likely to Lack Empathy: Generation Me’ Tends to Be Self-centered, Competitive, U.S. Research Shows,” USN quotes the University of Michigan’s Susan Konrath who explains, “College kids today are about 40 percent lower in empathy than their counterparts of 20 or 30 years ago, as measured by standard tests of this personality trait.” Konrath was the lead researcher in this study.

Her findings are based on a review of 30 years worth of scholarship on college students and empathy, which seems to be a broad enough scope for any study of changing attitudes; and yet I remain skeptical.

Aside from the existence of studies indicating that today’s students are “more globally aware” and “less materialistic” than previous generations of undergraduates (see The Chronicle of Higher Education), more willing to date other students of different races (see The Daily Orange), and more willing to date across religious lines than previous generations (see Knox, Zusman, and Daniels), my own observations as a person who has spent the last 26 years on college campuses is that today’s students are considerably more tolerant and even celebratory of all kinds of differences than they were in the mid-1980s. Maybe Konrath’s notion of empathy has nothing to do with students’ acceptance of racial, gender, class, and sexuality differences. Personally, I can imagine no greater test of empathy.

Or, maybe, the question of empathy is the wrong one to ask in the first place. Maybe today’s students are less empathetic and more self-centered than previous generations. But maybe students’ ability to walk in another students’ emotional shoes doesn’t matter in the way that Konrath and her colleagues assume it does. In terms of one’s ability to create community with others, to support social justice-based ideals, and to create a better world for all people, maybe today’s generation is able to be generous to others, to treat others equally and with respect whether they can imagine what things are like from their perspective (Konrath), or not.

In addition to embracing difference with greater ease than previous generations, today’s students are voting at a higher rate that students have in decades; and they are interested in and involved in social-justice-related activities at greater rates than their predecessors, as well. If this is self-centeredness, then bring it on!

Posted by Ajuan Mance

Statistics from the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education (JBHE):

• Percentage of African Americans over the age of 25 in 1940 who were high school graduates: 7.7%
• Percentage of African Americans over the age of 25 in 2009 who were high school graduates: 84.2%

(U.S. Department of Education)

• Percentage of African Americans over the age of 25 in 1940 who held a four-year college degree: 1.3%
• Percentage of African Americans over the age of 25 in 2009 who held a four-year college degree: 19.4%

(U.S. Department of Education)

• Number of African Americans enrolled in degree granting educational institutions in 1990: 1,247,000
• Number of African Americans enrolled in degree granting educational institutions in 2008: 2,584,500

(U.S. Department of Education)

• Black percentage of all students enrolled in degree granting educational institutions in 1990: 9.0%
• Black percentage of all students enrolled in degree granting educational institutions in 2008: 13.5%

(U.S. Department of Education)

• Percentage of whites who earned doctorates in 2008 who had a father who was a college graduate: 63.4%
• Percentage of African Americans who earned doctorates in 2008 who had a father who was a college graduate: 33.4%

(National Science Foundation)

• Percentage of white Americans who earned doctoral degrees in 2008 who had a mother who was a college graduate: 54.5%
• Percentage of African Americans who earned doctoral degrees in 2008 who had a father who was a college graduate: 37.2%

(National Science Foundation)

I am especially heartened by the comparisons between the percentage of white earned doctorates whose parents graduated from college and Black earned doctorates whose parents graduated from college. These numbers indicate that family education history is not destiny for U.S. Blacks. Indeed, it never has been. Denied access to most colleges and universities until the rise of HBCUs during the Reconstruction era, Black college students at all levels are usually the first-generation in their families to enroll in degree programs. The challenge for post-secondary institutions of all types is to provide the necessary mentoring for Black student to succeed regardless of family background. Even in the absence of such support, Black students have somehow seen their way to achieving degrees from the A.A. to the Ph.D., and in steadily increasing numbers; and yet those numbers could be better, the graduation rates and G.P.A.s higher, and the years to degree shorter for African American students from all backgrounds. As colleges and universities become more effective at helping students of all classes and races reach their peak potential, we will likely see African Americans join the ranks of many other U.S. ethnic groups in making up a disproportionate number of U.S. college grads. I look forward to that day.

Posted by Ajuan Mance

Spelman College graduates, academic program, 1892.

(Source: Make It Yourself: Home, Sewing, Gender, and Culture, by Sarah A. Gordon)

Posted by Ajuan Mance

When it comes to the immigration debate, I generally defer to those whose families and friends are most directly impacted by U.S. immigration policy. As an African American parts of whose family have been in the U.S. since at least the 18th century, I don’t always feel that mine is the most important voice on the subject. I try to make sure than my actions are in line with the principles of social justice, but I tend to blog on those issues that I know the best, mostly related to the experience of Black folks in the academy.

The Democratic Senators’ new immigration policy proposal has inspired me to weigh in this issue. There are many parts of his proposal that I either don’t understand or don’t agree with. The idea of a national I.D. card, for example, feels a little too apartheid-era for me. We already have passports and licenses; and coming up with but another card for people to forge when and if they deem it necessary won’t change the practices of those employers who depend on undocumented labor for the survival of their businesses.

I am also unimpressed by Democratic legislators’ promises to step up enforcement along the border. Individuals don’t make the choice to immigrate lightly, and any policy that fails to address the economic conditions that move people to risk arrest, injury, illness, or death in an sub-legal border crossing in the first place is bound to fail.

There is, though, one part of the Democratic Senators’ immigration proposal that I am very enthusiastic about, and that is the creation of a pipeline to legal residency through higher education. I welcome this opening of a route to Green Card status as a much-needed alternative to the military service route. Here’s how the 26-page policy document describes this part of Obama’s reform:

Foreign students will be permitted to enter the United States with immigrant intent if they are a bona fide student so long as they pursue a full course of study at an institution of higher education in a field of science, technology, engineering or mathematics

[…]

To address the fact that workers from some countries face unreasonably long backlogs that have no responsiveness to America’s economic needs, this proposal eliminates the per-country employment immigration caps.

— excerpted from REPAIR proposal (Real Enforcement with Practical Answers for Immigration Reform)

I am glad to see the Democrats in the Senate beginning to address the issues of college students who are non-residents, though I would like to see this policy expanded to include students in all majors.

As the blogger DreamActivist wrote,

Welcome to the United States of Technocracy. We have no use for humanities, social science, or the arts.  No use for the future Isabel Allendes, Dan Akroyds, Mikhail Baryshnikovs, Elaine Chaos, Madeleine Albrights, and Isaac Asimovs.  I mean, let’s be real.  Their contributions to society are negligible.

— from AlterNet.com

I’ll be watching to see what happens on this and, in the interim, I’ll be writing my state senators to suggest that the policy expand to include students in all fields, not just the sciences, engineering, and mathematics.

To read the entire text of the Senate REPAIR proposal, follow THIS LINK.

Posted by Ajuan Mance

Cornell Professor Grant Farred ‘s reference to “Black bitches” has caused a campus-wide uproar.

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It’s only the month of April, and I have already found the first item for my end-of-the-year Hall of Shame.

The internet is abuzz over the highly inappropriate comments of Professor Grant Farred to two African American women graduate students who he had invited to participate in a conference on Black intellectuals. Inside Higher Education explains:

In 1963, Vivian Malone Jones became one of two Black students who were the first to matriculate at the University of Alabama. Jones died in 2005.

(Source: Democratic Underground)

Posted by Ajuan Mance

(Source: African American Family Conference website)

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From AlterNet:

In his 2007 book, Supercapitalism, Robert B. Reich argues that while industrial and clerical jobs could be outsourced to cheaper labor pools abroad, service jobs would stay in America. But Reich didn’t count on First World clients flying to the global South to find low-cost retirement care or reproductive services. The Akanksha clinic is just one point on an ever-widening two-lane global highway that connects poor nations in the Southern Hemisphere to rich nations in the Northern Hemisphere, and poorer countries of Eastern Europe to richer ones in the West. A Filipina nanny heads north to care for an American child. A Sri Lankan maid cleans a house in Singapore. A Ukrainian nurse’s aide carries lunch trays in a Swedish hospital. Marx’s iconic male, stationary industrial worker has been replaced by a new icon: the female, mobile service worker.

— Arlie Hochschild, “Would You Outsource Your Womb?”, AlterNet

A few months ago I was listening to an interview, on PRI’s To The Best of Our Knowledge, with U of Michigan psychology professor Richard Nisbett, about his recent book, Intelligence and How to Get It. In it Nisbett argues, among other things, that it is not genetics, but the style in which a child is raised that determines his or her IQ, and African American parents are currently raising their children for the kinds of jobs that their grandparents did.

If Nibsett’s assertion is, in fact, accurate, then a considerable amount of the Black -white achievement gap can be attributed to the fact that Black children and being raised with a skill set that is best suited for agrarian, factory, and service positions, all of which are few and far between in this rapidly changing economy. The quote at the beginning of this post underscores that in our global economy, not only are manufacturing jobs easily moved from one nation or hemisphere to the other, but service labor, as well.

Nisbett suggests that African American parents differ from their white counterparts in, among other things, the amount of encouragement that their children receive. While white children of professionals receive 6 encouragements (compliments, accolades, and general offerings of approval and support) for every 1 reprimand, the children of the Black middle class receive only 2 encouragements for every 1 reprimand. In the most economically marginalized Black homes, African American children receive 2 reprimands for every 1 encouragement. There is a strong correlation between the proportion of encouragements to reprimands and childrens’ I.Q. score, and evidence suggests that Black peoples’ greater emphasis on reprimands than their white counterparts has and still does contribute significantly to the I.Q. and educational performance gaps between children of these two ethnic groups. In particular, the kinds of abstract thinking skills that are almost a requirement for high achievement in the U.S. depend on children’s early exposure to the space to explore, interrogate, and question — even their parents and their parents’ authority.

Anyone who has spent any amount of time in or around Black communities can attest to the fact that 1) Black parents (and grandparents) place a premium on obedience, and 2) Black parents often use dramatic forms of verbal and physical reprimands to enforce that obedience, both publicly and privately. As a people, we have inherited our expectations for obedience and our understanding (however limited) of child development from our forbears, whose children entered a very different world, economically, racially, and in terms of job opportunities available.

So, how do Black parents better equip their children for the labor market of the future? Well, African American parents, grandparents, uncles, aunts, and everyone else who has children in their lives can begin by making sure your encouragements vastly outnumber your reprimands. Tell the Black children in your lives how intelligent they are, who interesting their stories are, how original their drawings are, how lovely they are, and how much you love them. Encourage them to question by inviting them to ask how and why things are done the way they are — why some apples are green and some are red, why chickens lay eggs and cows don’t, why the sky is blue in. If you don’t know the answer, look it up together on the internet or — even better — during a trip to the library.

And you don’t have to limit your encouragement to kids you are related to. I often see strangers peering at other peoples small children and remarking how pretty or cute they are. Why not mention how smart they look (“What’s your daughter’s/son’s name? Mark? Well, Mark, you certainly look like a smart young man)?

It’s the responsibility of all of us who are Black, who care about children, and who care about our future to make sure that the current generation of children and young adults are prepared for the world as it is today, not two generations ago; and reminding them of their intelligence, ability, and beauty (mind and body) is one very simple thing we can do you help todays kids of African descent to become tomorrows autonomous, happy, and successful adults.

Posted by Ajuan Mance