Letters
Lucy Golsan's 'Wasting Black Minds' What an incredibly different world is taking place in the forty-one predominantly black, private colleges of the United Negro College Fund as compared to the...
...There are also a few 1948 issues...
...In these colleges the ratio of non-black students is just about comparable to the ratio of non-white students in other "integrated" colleges...
...We were all equal there," she writes...
...And I'm unconvinced that Ladies and Gentlemen, Jacks and Jills, and Lions and Lionesses (yes: at M-G-M) constitute the forefront of the struggle...
...Most years are complete from 1949 to the present, with the exceptions of 1968 and 1969...
...I agree with him that tracks or special programs develop in white institutions to accommodate poorly prepared black students...
...White PhDs where I taught are put under black department heads who often have only Master's degrees — some in education rather than their subject field...
...She feels this wouldn't happen in an integrated university...
...Expanded use of examinations in skill and content areas (with an essay component, I would hope) for college admission and high school graduation may force elementary and secondary teachers to teach specific skills and content...
...Vivien Leone New York, New York Nora Sayre replies: Alas for accuracy and irony...
...She writes of faculty members at her black college getting big, fat salaries for doing little and we look at our hard-working, dedicated teachers making about 60 per cent of what they could be getting at white counterpart schools, but sticking to it because they are so inspired by the dynamic results they are getting...
...Lucy Golsan's 'Wasting Black Minds' What an incredibly different world is taking place in the forty-one predominantly black, private colleges of the United Negro College Fund as compared to the educational disaster area described by Lucy B. Golsan in her article, "Wasting Black Minds," in the September issue of The Progressive...
...Others arrived while some of the originals departed...
...I find this teaching stimulating and fulfilling and often exciting...
...I do not doubt that institutions such as Golsan describes exist, but to generalize from her experiences at one college to all black colleges or United Negro College Fund colleges is unfair, unscholarly, insensitive, and could probably be considered racist...
...As I wrote in the article, there are ways and ways of meeting accreditation requirements...
...I questioned each about her role at the convention...
...They are open to anyone to examine and many media have...
...If a library needs them, we will donate postage...
...But to blame all this on the colleges themselves is like blaming a hospital for the illnesses its patients have...
...She would have had a much better chance if she had gone to a non-black institution...
...Obviously Miss Golsan has taken her own personal, restricted experience of teaching at one black college somewhere in the South and extrapolated it to include all black colleges anywhere...
...Could she be totally ignorant of the other tradition and experience of black colleges...
...My student who wanted to be a doctor but couldn't get her credits from the black college accepted for medical school is ambitious and intelligent...
...military expenditures grew (accepting his dollar figures) from $91.9 billion in 1975 to $114.9 billion in 1977, an increase not of 20 per cent as stated but in fact of 25 per cent, that aid to cities and states fell from $90.2 billion to $63.4 billion, a drop of 29.7 per cent, not 26.8 per cent, and that "controllable' income security outlays (for food stamps, supplemental security income, unemployment insurance, and the like)" fell from $43 billion to $39.9 billion, a decrease of 7.2 per cent, not 8.9 per cent...
...Where has Golsan been...
...Our story is a fine one, dynamic, positive, exciting...
...Does Golsan really believe that in any area to do with black progress, "the whites have given way with fairly good grace...
...1) That particular door at the Statler Hilton reads "Ladies...
...Certainly the black colleges have serious problems — in facilities and financial support, to name only two...
...Something is wrong somewhere...
...I was later approached by the same university about a position on the faculty (this time it was I who said no...
...I have the impression a remedial track (or the equivalent) may result in an equally inferior education and even less desirable attitudes...
...Howard Zehr Associate Professor of Humanities and History Talladega College Talladega, Alabama Lucy Golsan replies: I'm happy to have the chance to reply to several points raised by Progressive readers responding to my article on experiences I had teaching in a black college...
...I don't know to what extent this is the case, but it should be investigated before deciding that the lack of standards in black colleges is simply due to segregated schooling...
...Miss Golsan writes of low academic standards at black colleges, and we continue to receive full accreditation and reconfirmation from the same accrediting agencies that certify the best white schools...
...Miss Golsan writes of black colleges which automatically graduate everybody, with nobody receiving an adequate education, while we look at our record of 20 to 25 per cent of our UNCF graduates going on to graduate study, accepted at the best schools in America (and most of them on grants and scholarships because they couldn't afford to attend otherwise...
...None of the responses to my article speak of her...
...It was the foundation of a solid black professional and leadership group, most of them black colleges graduates, which enabled profound changes in our democracy within the past two decades to take place...
...This is a little like arguing that all colleges overemphasize athletics because the three astronomy students I had at Harvard were on the rowing team...
...Joan and Sig Cohn 26 Rock Lane Berkeley, CA 94708 Women, Ladies, & Wives My spirits sank when Nora Sayre ("The Democrats: Winning Is the Only Thing," September) set the scene for her coverage...
...I happen to believe college is the wrong place to begin to enforce standards, but colleges, by establishing higher admissions standards (based on standardized examinations) , may be the place to exercise leverage in secondary and elementary education to raise standards...
...Last year statistics revealed that the college at which I taught had more Federal and state money to spend per student than any other university in that state...
...I have considerable academic freedom and, within budget restrictions, have a great deal of control over course material...
...One particular group of these "other" colleges are those related to the United Church of Christ, which are probably the best integrated colleges in the country in that their faculties have always been quite evenly mixed racially and their boards of trustees racially balanced...
...Otherwise we will pack them and ask for postage...
...Christopher F. Edley Executive Director United Negro College Fund, Inc...
...Whether she intended to do this or not she did it also by taking our slogan "A mind is a terrible thing to waste" and using it in her title, her leads and her conclusion...
...His copy editors changed it to "a circular curbside erection...
...I admire Lens too much to nominate him for Minister of Misinformation, preferring instead to imagine that his abacus was simply overwhelmed by the arithmetical, not to say social, enormities...
...Their problems, as well as their future and the futures of those who attend them, deserve a more reasoned and careful treatment than The Progressive has given them this time around...
...If a black student from a black college does receive an M.D., it is likely to be from a black medical school...
...The very nature of a black college is to protect students from a frightening white world and to avoid competition with white students who may be better prepared...
...Wesley A. Hotchkiss General Secretary Division of Higher Education and the American Missionary Association United Church Board for Homeland Ministries New York, New York Lucy B. Golsan blames black colleges' failure to educate on a lack of standards for graduation and course credit...
...As long as certain doors mirror the mentality which insists on ladyhood, I will not substitute "Women" or "Powder...
...She must have been aware of the non-government supported colleges which have always been integrated, where there is a good record of qualified graduates going on to professional and graduate schools all over the nation...
...certainly I can match Golsan's horror stories with tales of administrative inefficiency and absurdity from my experiences at some prestigious white institutions...
...A mind is a terrible thing to waste, and statistics show that many black colleges are doing their best to see that this does not happen...
...I am so sorry to see valuable pages of The Progressive wasted on unfounded generalizations...
...It is true that under such programs blacks can never achieve positions in the top rank of professional people, but for an ambitious student the possibility of a better education does exist in predominantly white institutions...
...A black colleague expressed it to me in this way: "The good things are out there in the white world and I tell my daughter to go on out there and get them...
...It just hasn't worked...
...Moreover, I graduated from a black college and, contrary to Lucy Golsan's charges, I was not poorly prepared, nor did I lack opportunities...
...This is true after years of costly remedial courses, of more expensive PhDs on the faculty, of innumerable "workshops," all designed to make the college meet minimum academic standards...
...2) There were eleven women, including myself, in the scene I described...
...Tom Shuford Roslyn Heights, New York I am surprised and disappointed to see The Progressive print such a mishmash of stupidity, prejudice, and ignorance as Lucy B. Golsan's purported discussion of black colleges, "Wasting Black Minds.'" Golsan was apparently unable to decide whether black colleges' "facilities are old and inadequate" or too lavish ("some of the money was obviously wasted on un-needed...new dormitories"), whether their isolation from surrounding white communities is because "the administration can find good excuses for isolating the students," or because "whites would rather stay away," whether "no one will question the kind of college" the students' diplomas come from or "even their class credits are questioned by other institutions...
...Since women make up half of the world and over half of this country's population," she quotes California's Ronald Dellums later on, "my spirit and my soul cannot understand why fifty-fifty representation in the decision-making process may still be controversial...
...If the miseducation of black students is less a question of integrated versus segregated schooling than it is a question of standards, then standards should be the focus of attention...
...These white PhDs from "outside" are rarely given decision-making positions, but are there to be counted for accreditation and to be listed in the university catalog...
...So much for racism...
...Admittedly my application to one prestigious Ivy League graduate school was turned down, but that may say as much about admissions policies toward graduates of black colleges as about the quality of students being produced...
...New York, New York What a shame that Lucy Golsan generalizes about all black colleges from her limited experience at one black state college in the South...
...These are usually in fields like sociology, counseling, education, criminal justice, and these are repeats of the programs offered in black colleges to insure quota-based jobs to their students...
...This year's UNCF film reporting on innovations and activities within our schools is narrated by Derek Bok, president of Harvard...
...Is the record of integrated colleges with substantial black enrollment better, however...
...Golsan appears to have based this muddled diatribe on "my own experience" at one black college teaching "three French majors...
...and the Carnegie Commission on Higher Education calls the black colleges "invaluable national assets...
...UNCF colleges over the years have turned out such leaders as Martin Luther King Jr., Thurgood Marshall, Julian Bond, and hundreds of others, without whom America would be a poorer country...
...David Baker Jackson, Tennessee I read Lucy B. Golsan's article, "Wasting Black Minds," with some frustration...
...Equally null and void, for the habit of mind that conditions Sayre to assume that women engaged in the proceedings must be "delegates' wives" rather than delegatej is the very same reflex that defeated the fifty-fifty plank...
...The UNCF is widely known for that slogan and identified as the consortium for practically all the private, accredited black colleges in America We at the United Negro College Fund are proud and thrilled by what is happening at our schools...
...I'd rather see the energy spent in ratifying the ERA and protecting legalized abortion...
...All present were delegates' wives...
...The answer in large part lies behind the eyes of all who, when they look at women, see only wives and ladies...
...Mark Woodworth San Francisco, California of the Democrats' convention in the "ladies' room" of a nearby hotel because the rosy tone of the whole event seemed to her to have been captured by the spectacle of "delegates' wives" holding open the doors of pay toilets for one another...
...Surely my sisters would not ask me to jettison facts for fiction...
...Christopher Edley is anxious for us to believe that accreditation of an institution means that standards are high...
...I am white and teach at a black college...
...As Tom Shuford points out, the real problem is one of measuring up to standards...
...I'm at a loss to explain how the library ever managed to be accredited...
...Until our society truly throws itself into the task of providing equal educational opportunities for the poor and the discriminated against, institutions like the black colleges will probably continue to exist...
...And the students who come to them (and, often, who leave them) are, for the most part, poorly prepared...
...Certainly there are frustrations, but I am not convinced that they are greater than they would be at a comparable white college...
...She writes of black college graduates who can't hold on to jobs they get after graduation because of their inadequate schooling backgrounds and we see unprecedented levels of recruiting by major corporations on our campuses, companies coming back for more, and top executives like Thomas A. Murphy of General Motors saying they've been recruiting on our campuses for fifteen years and find our graduates top-notch...
...Or washroom or terlit...
...I would hope that sometime The Progressive would find the space to tell this side of the story, too...
...It is she who is specific and real and the responses which are general and abstract She is black and she has been given an inadequate education by black administrators in a black college...
...But such an education will not prepare a student for topnotch professional jobs, certainly not to be a doctor as the UNCF commercial clains...
...But scores were the lowest of all the state's institutions on an English exam required to graduate...
...Vague or low standards do not provide the specific curricular goals, the incentive, direction, and accountability which teachers — as a group — need to insure good performance...
...They are protective institutions which avoid contacts between black and white society, contacts which enrich both races and which open up the most challenging opportunities...
...Of course language is extremely important in the realms of equality — and une-quality...
...Last year's Peabody Award-winning documentary, The Right Man, was about one of our presidents and one of our schools...
...I do not agree with David Baker that more money will help students of black colleges...
...That the "resentment against whites" she found in her students can be attributed to the "faculty's obsession with the race issue...
...These colleges were founded by the same Congregationalist educators who founded the prestigious colleges of the liberal arts in New England, and their commitment to the same high intellectual standards is legendary...
...Lens's Abacus In his "Perspectives" column in the August issue is it possible that Sidney Lens means to say that U.S...
...Here I'm reminded of a dustup of some years ago, when a visiting English critic referred to a pissoir — which happened to dominate the stage set of a French play he was reviewing...
...A Progressive Offer We would like to donate our collection of The Progressive to a library or individual...
...But the wives or husbands of delegates cannot function as delegates...
Vol. 40 • December 1976 • No. 12
