Blacks in College: The Most Exciting Around
Steif, William
BLACKS IN COLLEGE: 'the most exciting thing around' by WILLIAM STEIF Elias Blake is tall, black, and bright. He directs the Institute for Services to Education, a Washington- based...
...There were a lot of us who'd been out of school a long time...
...The dude didn't know what to say...
...Now we're getting it together, learning what you conveniently forgot to tell us...
...Yet the great expansion of the numbers of blacks in college pro- vides some hope for the future...
...At Stanford the shift was from 2.8 to four per cent...
...In 1964, according to the U.S...
...Last year Congress slashed the college budget one-third, forcing the rejection of 3,000 prospective stu- dents...
...What does that mean...
...Occasionally there is a spoken allusion to the American blacks' fear of apartheid and even genocide, a fear which may seem pre- posterous to middle-class whites but is all too real in the ghetto...
...So it went down the line...
...Federal City College in Washington is strug- gling to be the state university of the District of Columbia, although Con- gress has been trying to strangle it almost since it opened in 1968 in a thirty-year-old "temporary" Federal building...
...Back at the college level, whence a large propor- tion of the leadership of black Amer- ica is likely to come, I sensed a con- structive purposefulness which made me believe that many observers gravely underestimate the intelligence of black Americans and the strength of our so- ciety's fabric...
...It may be that the public com- munity college is tjhe most important single source of higher education avail- able to the minority student," says An- drew L. Goodrich, a black scholar who works for the American Association of Junior Colleges...
...First of all, I found that, just as Eli- as Blake had suggested, there were many thousands of blacks going to col- leges in the big Northern and Western cities who probably would not have been there under the conditions which existed as recently as five years ago...
...Elias Blake warns that "all enroll- ment data outside the black colleges has to be estimated...
...They've been robbing us of our pride...
...But the system says you got to have an education...
...Despite Vice President Spiro T. Ag- new's sneers about the "devalued di- plomas" of the city colleges, which ad- mit all high school graduates who ap- ply, the great bulk of these schools' black students are working hard, and learning...
...Educa- tion is a slow process, and results will not be obvious overnight...
...Office of Education adds: "A quarter of all black American collegians are concen- trated in public two-year colleges in three cities, New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles...
...But the most important thing I found—and this is almost purely sub- jective—is that younger black Amer- icans are, as they put it, "getting it all together, baby...
...Ten-fifteen years he was a pimp...
...But to me it was a challenge...
...It was as if he were talk- ing to a child, friendly but firm...
...They recognize the need for radical social change but also feel the pressures of marginal existence...
...Render spoke in a calm voice, with even tones...
...As one remarked to me: "It's a polka dot world...
...This does not mean, however, that the 300,000-plus blacks who enrolled in colleges outside the South last fall went to the Harvards, Yales, and Stan- fords, despite the highly selective pri- vate schools' generally sincere effort at enrolling minority students...
...I really wanted a drama course...
...At the same time, they feel a great new sense of commitment to the black community—the word "commu- nity" arises again and again in conver- sations—and many want to use their new training to "go back and help the community...
...Blacks are more than justified to be suspicious of white people...
...Not all aspects of the black college experience have been peaches and cream...
...There now is considerable anti-capitalist talk and numerous slurs against "the es- tablishment...
...f These blacks are going to com- muter colleges because they are easier to get into...
...One day his son asked him where he worked...
...Norma Davis, black, twenty-six, and the mother of children five, seven, nine, and ten years old, typified many of the students I met...
...A lot of dudes look at me and say, 'Why you go back?' " Price went on...
...Often married...
...last fall, the same schools enrolled 180,000 youngsters, a fifty per cent rise...
...Dennis Caple, a twenty-one year-old black sophomore at Malcolm X Col- lege, on Chicago's West Side, ex- pressed his view to me: "Until now, we've played around too much...
...One afternoon at Cleveland's Cuya- hoga Community College I invited myself to take an auto ride with twenty-one-year-old Bob Render, a tall, mocha-colored black who wore his reddish hair in an Afro...
...But I'm sure a majority is outside the traditional black colleges today—somewhere be- tween fifty-five and sixty-five per cent...
...School is another means of clearing the streets, a pacifi- cation-type institution that can very easily be converted into a maximum- security institution"—there was the apartheid fear creeping through...
...they offer instruction which often is as good or better than that at the prestige universities, and usually is friendlier...
...At the University of Michigan the two-year rise was from 2.5 to 3.8 per cent, at Penn State from 1.8 to three per cent, at Ohio State from 2.6 to 2.8 per cent...
...I wanted to go to college but they were all too expensive," she told me...
...Andress Taylor, a bearded black English professor at Federal City Col- lege, offered this explanation: "What's relevant to an eighteen- year-old middle-class white suburb- anite is not what's relevant to a thirty- year-old black man with a low-paying job and a family...
...I talked to hundreds of students, mostly black, and at least 100 teachers, administrators, counselors, and other employes, black and white, in the eleven colleges I visited...
...they are rooted in the lives of their communities to an extent un- known to the prestige "ivory tower" universities, thus permitting black stu- dents to fulfill their sense of obligation to their communities...
...Clarence Bennett, a thirty-four- year-old marketing major who holds down a fulltime job in the District of Columbia government, put it this way: "The myth is that all the brains have gone to suburbia...
...I had to take preparatory courses," Mrs...
...These are publicly supported two-year institutions, many of recent vintage, in the nation's big cities...
...The white stu- dent has the option of cutting his hair and going home to mama and papa...
...The economic and social problems of the black ghettos are not only not being solved but in many instances are worsening...
...At Yale the proportion rose from 2.8 to 5.6 per cent in two years...
...Inner-city blacks have a greater grasp of reality...
...they are cheap...
...There is, of course, much bitterness over past and current injustices...
...She used to bring her youngest child to class...
...For the year recently ended, 1970-71, the Bureau puts black college enrollment at 522,000, a ninety-one per cent increase...
...They think the system holds promise for them...
...Louis, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Miami, Dallas—more blacks study at public community colleges than at all nearby institutions combined/' Not all the schools I visited were two-year community colleges...
...He'd leave the house early in the morning, come back at night...
...There are brains in the city, but they haven't been developed—yet...
...John C. Morrow, director of research at Chi- cago's Malcolm X College, told me, "Fifty-four per cent of our enrollment comes from the ghetto schools...
...Driving through Pittsburgh's Homewood- Brushton area—decaying old homes into which two, three, and four black families are crowding—McCoy told me this story: "There was this thirty-eight-year- old dude who lived out this way...
...The teachers take advantage of us for their financial progress...
...if they are wom- en they often have children and are separated or divorced from their hus- bands...
...Baruch College on 23rd Street in New York is a four-year institution which has been in operation more than fifty years, and City College of New York's alumni include such distin- guished men as Jonas Salk and Lewis Mumford...
...Pride is the key, said Walter J. Mc- Coy, a black assistant to the president of Community College of Allegheny County, in Pittsburgh...
...Right now, though, I favor blacks getting separated to get orga- nized...
...and, at the same time, they open avenues out of the ghetto through the twin processes of education and acculturation...
...Davis recalled...
...It is noteworthy that both the dilap- idated buildings in which Malcolm X College was situated until last April and the modern new structure into which it has moved are marked by an absence of graffiti on the walls, as if the overwhelmingly black student body was either too busy for childish scrawls or too proud of their school to deface it...
...So I did...
...They're closer and participate more...
...But he began faking like he had a job...
...They are not Yip- pies or Weathermen...
...But the four-year schools and the community colleges I visited all share the "citiness," the sensation of belong- ing to the urban center, that more tra- ditional American colleges and univer- sities, with their manicured campuses and faculty clubs, simply do not have...
...Then some more...
...That sense of reality is a potent force...
...You ought to go take a look...
...And that, it seems to me, is the pre- vailing mood—friendly but firm...
...Warren Levert, eighteen, wore green-tinted "shades"—dark glasses...
...Our heads were screwed off...
...BLACKS IN COLLEGE: 'the most exciting thing around' by WILLIAM STEIF Elias Blake is tall, black, and bright...
...last year it was 5.8 per cent black, according to Federal records...
...Black youngsters are swarming into those schools...
...WILLIAM STEIF is a Washington staff writer for the Scripps-Howard News Alliance...
...That's not true...
...As we talked, it became evident that the three blacks represented widely differing viewpoints...
...These students tend to be: f Older than their white counter- parts, and poorer...
...I found that "open admissions" pro- grams, which open college doors to anyone with a high school diploma, the founding of new city colleges, the push for equal rights, governmental aid, and special "remedial" or "com- pensatory" programs all have contrib- uted to prying open the college doors...
...He was married, had a family...
...She will get her degree at the end of this year, and plans to teach English...
...After she had three children she returned to high school at night and got her diploma...
...The most exciting thing around," Elias said to me one day last winter, "is what's happening in the Northern city colleges...
...He said, "The education system is an- tiquated...
...We want no more crumbs from the table, no more second-class citizenship, no more ghetto teachers who are no good...
...Blacks can't...
...The Census Bureau reports that 274,000 blacks were enrolled in col- lege in the 1965-66 academic year...
...Politics is more important...
...And why...
...Bennett is typical of the striving black students at the commuter col- leges...
...Until the mid-1960s, higher educa- tion for American blacks was confined mainly to the South's segregated col- leges, which trained large numbers of teachers for the South's segregated school systems, and educated a small number of other professionals...
...they offer concrete job training which soon pays off materially...
...But in the same pe- riod of time, black enrollment in the colleges of the North and West more than doubled to more than 300,000...
...Associate of Arts degree...
...We've been in slavery 400 years and it's time to strip it off and get together...
...The statistics are instructive...
...It means that most blacks want to work within "the system...
...That theme—the growth of pride, of self-respect—was repeated over and over in my conversations with students...
...I'm sure the rate of increase has been much faster outside the traditional colleges...
...Bureau of High- er Education, enrollment in the South's 112 "traditional" black col- leges was 120,000...
...The teachers throw us a lot of bull...
...later she parked him in a nursery connected to the college...
...America created a monster...
...Obliquely, he criticized some of his fellow-blacks: "The people get half a story and they're out in the street right away...
...He started taking a couple of classes at Pitt...
...He directs the Institute for Services to Education, a Washington- based organization which retrains teachers in Southern, predominantly black colleges so that the teachers teach better, their students learn bet- ter—and not so many black youths drop out of college...
...He says his wife and kids like him better...
...Eighteen months ago—for the first time in his life—he got a taxable job, at the state employment security office...
...In virtually every large American city—Cleveland, St...
...Then Federal City College opened, and she was admitted—admission was first-come, first-served, so long as the applicant had a high school diploma...
...they pro- vide remedial help to compensate for defective grade and high schools...
...The answers I discovered were: fl Thousands of black youngsters— and not just youngsters, but black adults in their twenties, thirties, and forties—are going to "commuter col- leges...
...Over a six-week period in the spring I visited four-year and two- year colleges in five cities, New York, Chicago, Washington, Cleveland, and Pittsburgh...
...Usually first-generation collegians, often from large families...
...Davis did not finish high school...
...He said he had been out of high school since 1958, put in a four-year Navy hitch, worked at youth centers, traveled all over the country...
...Well, there's no time for playing now...
...They seek radical social change, yes, but they also put their bets on educa- tion and on the more traditional American political and economic methods...
...I'll do my two years, get an A.A...
...And that urban quality suggested to me something about the students which emerged late one day in a rap session with half a dozen Federal City College seniors, all blacks...
...People are more friendly here than in other schools I've been...
...Yet the American Council on Ed- ucation reported that blacks among college freshmen last fall amounted to 9.1 per cent, up from 5.8 per cent in the fall of 1968...
...If large numbers of blacks were not attending the South's traditional black colleges, and were not attending in great numbers the large, prestigious private and public universities, where were they going to school...
...Lev- ert was angry, putting down every- thing and everybody...
...f More experienced than their white counterparts because they have worked for some time or served in the military...
...He had never worked...
...But if enough blacks of this generation con- tinue to pull themselves up by their bootstraps they may well provide the leadership to relieve the pressure in the simmering inner cities...
...they provide social and cultural ties unavailable at insti- tutions dominated by middle-class whites...
...They tend to reject revolutionary separatism, in the Panther pattern, without necessarily rejecting the broth- erliness of the Panthers themselves...
...I held some decent jobs...
...The shifts at the selective state uni- versities were in the same range...
...George Price was older—thirty— and had been around a lot more...
...An official of the U.S...
...The steep odds against them do not deter them...
...Two other black students came along...
...In 1968 the University of California's Berkeley campus was 2.3 per cent black, last fall 4.5 per cent...
...I stuck with it despite no se- curity at all...
...If they don't make it they know they'll get hung up on dope or go into a dead-end job or be stuck on welfare with three or four kids...
...She married a Washington truck driver instead...
...Render, who was chairman of Cuya- hoga's conduct committee and a lead- er in a protest movement which re- sulted in the top campus official's resignation, said: "We shouldn't have to have black affairs courses...
...In 1968 Harvard's student body was 3.2 per cent black...
...More secure in colleges where blacks are in the majority, as in Chi- cago or Washington, than in colleges where blacks remain in the minority, as in New York, Cleveland, and Pitts- burgh...
Vol. 35 • September 1971 • No. 9
