HBCUs Recruiting More Latinos
The headline summarizes the phenomenon fairly well—many traditional bastions of higher education for blacks, including Howard and Morehouse, are reaching out to Latinos in part to keep from shrinking involuntarily. Right now, Hispanic* representation at those particular two schools stand at 1% and 0.5% respectively, so we’re not exactly talking about a takeover here, but the aggressive targeting of non-black minorities has some students and alumni concerned about the, ahem, dilution of “our” intellectual/cultural institutions. These individuals see the HBCUs’ stated intentions to remain the same size as the setup for a zero-sum situation in which every slot awarded to a person of Spanish-speaking heritage is one denied to someone of African heritage (as if the two groups were mutually exclusive, which they certainly aren’t . . .).
However, if the slots given to Latinos would otherwise go unfilled, it would seem that the problem lies not in the colleges’ recruitment strategies, but in an unfortunate dearth of young blacks to attend them. With the black male high school dropout rate standing at 50% or more, HBCUs are somewhat limited in their ability to help rectify the widening black gender gap in higher education. Obviously, this unfortunate state of affairs must be tackled long before the affected demographic reaches college age. So until stronger evidence emerges that Latinos are actually pushing aside qualified blacks that can’t get educated elsewhere, I’ll think of this development the same way I think of Latino immigration in general: as a net-positive.
Proponents of the Hispanic outreach efforts hold that HBCUS can and should take a leading role in promoting amicable relations between black and Hispanic communities, especially given that the latter eclipsed the former in size some years ago. Rising rates of African-American college attendance lend some credence to the contention that HBCUs are using increased competition from other public and private universities as an opportunity to strengthen ties between the two minority groups. Such understanding is vital in light of the stress that Latino immigration tends to engender on lowest rungs of the economic ladder, which frames the issue in terms of competition for jobs while leaving exploitation by managing elites out of the picture. Indeed, the recent salience of such a divisive approach toward black/Hispanic relations might lead some blacks to feel the growing Hispanic presence at HBCUs as an extension of the same displacement anxieties that wrack the working classes. As I mentioned earlier, I see no cause for alarm, but I do think that a greater spirit of cooperation between two peoples that share both history and political interests makes a great deal of sense.
*While I use the terms “Hispanic” and “Latino” interchangeably in this entry, they are not precise synonyms. The former refers to Spanish-speaking peoples in general and could conceivably include Spaniards, while the latter covers all denizens of Latin America, including those that do not speak Spanish, such as Brazilians. More on the finer points of this ethnic nomenclature issue here and here.
Published on August 14, 2006 at 3:46 pm.
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Filed under academia, inter-minority relations.
