Efforts To Integrate Black Colleges Are Counterproductive

8-20-97
University Park, Pa. -- Recent efforts to integrate historically Black public colleges on the grounds that they violate the 1964 Civil Rights Act are gravely damaging these institutions and the young people they serve.

"It would be a travesty to destroy the Black college in the name of equality when empirical evidence shows that these institutions have served as conduits to success for generations of African Americans," says Dr. M. Christopher Brown, who just received his doctorate in higher education from Penn State.

"Combined with the anti-affirmative action initiatives confronting predominantly White universities, these programs will halt any significant progress by minority youths to better their lives, because education will be out of their reach."

Brown and Dr. Robert M. Hendrickson, professor of higher education at Penn State, are co-authors of the article, "Public Historically Black Colleges at the Crossroads: The United States v. Fordice and Higher Education Desegregation," which appeared earlier this year in the Journal For A Just and Caring Education.

"Desegregation suits are threatening historically Black public colleges like Tennessee State, Virginia State, Grambling State in Louisiana and Morgan State in Baltimore, which were established under the `separate but equal' interpretation of the 14th amendment," says Hendrickson, head of the department of education policy studies at Penn State.

"The `separate but equal' interpretation was practiced until 1954, when it was struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court's Brown v. Board of Education decision," Hendrickson adds. "The Supreme Court ruled that `separate but equal' was unconstitutional, giving strength to the civil rights movement of the late 1950s and 1960s."

One of the key provisions of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was Title VI, which prohibited segregation in any institution or program receiving federal assistance. In the sphere of education, Title VI was applied at first only to elementary and secondary schools and not higher education. Colleges and universities were not organized by school district and at least officially were open to any qualified student who wished to attend.

A series of court rulings on dual education systems culminated in the U.S. Supreme Court's 1992 U.S. v. Fordice decision, which determined that Mississippi had not desegregated its dual system of higher education. The heart of the ruling was that if current policies discouraged or prevented students from choosing a particular public college, then the state was participating in de jure segregation.

"It is the Fordice decision that is now being used against the historically Black colleges," Brown says.

"As a result, some states have been imposing White enrollment standards and quotas on historically Black colleges," Hendrickson says. "Tennessee wants Black colleges to have a 60 percent White enrollment, while Mississippi has instituted scholarships for Whites only at the Black colleges. Everything has been turned on its head."

This supposedly more equitable system is in effect hostile to the historically Black colleges, according to Hendrickson.

"To begin with, state budgets have always left these schools grossly underfunded, yet these same schools have been able to do wonders with the money they've had," Hendrickson notes.

"In short, Black colleges are in jeopardy," Brown says. "There may no longer be able to provide quality Black leaders who go on to graduate school. In the name of racial equality, our government is dismantling what has always been a successful social equalizer for the Black community."

**pab**

EDITORS: Dr. Brown can be contacted at (816) 235-2248 or at brownmc@smtpgate.umkc.edu by email; Dr. Hendrickson can be reached at (814) 863-0619 and (814) 865-1487, or at rmh6@psu.edu by email.

Contacts:
Paul Blaum (814) 865-9481 (office) (814) 867-1126 (home) pab15@psu.edu
Vicki Fong (814) 865-9481 (office)(814) 238-1221 (home) vyf1@psu.edu