| Echoing Flvadad and 2college - - racial diversity is important, but more important to some than to other black students, often for different reasons. (Also, Flvadad - - you hit the nail on the head w/ "doesn't" vs "shouldn't.")
I agree that girls are more likely to seek a diverse campus than boys. Dating is certainly a factor (way easier for boys to date cross-racially; black-male/white-female couples long pre-dated and signif outnumber the black-female/white-male couples). But sports play a role too, not only providing an oppty for males of different races to socialize together as members of the same peer group, but also confering status on team members (a very big deal at my brother's alma mater - Notre Dame).
I would also suggest that the URM cliquishness cited in earlier posts is not all one way. As 2College noted in post #2, the White kids at church didn't intend to be exclusive or racist - - they just didn't think of the black kids. A friend of mine who is bi-racial (black/Asian) had a similar experience w/ an Asian "friend" of hers. The Asian friend was recounting some incident, explaining that she was "the only Asian in the room and none of my friends were present." My bi-racial friend burst into tears stating, "I was there. I'm Asian and I thought I was your friend."
Similarly, when I was in college, one student asked why all the black students sat together. I responded "we're not sitting together any more than the White students are." And in fact, our "black" table tended to be the intergrated table because there were two or three White friends who routinely joined us for dinner.
One area where I noticed considerable segregation on campus - - Greek life. Even on predom White campuses the frats and sororities are almost exclusively White (even though there are no black frats drawing the urm students). This was one of the reasons my older D refused to consider any southern schools. Younger D, for whom diversity is more of an issue, is happy to consider southern schools, but only those w/ large (9%+) populations.
Finally, I agree w/ N'starmom that one can encounter racism pretty much anywhere. There are, however, differences (1) in degrees and (2) official response (check out threads comparing Smith College's response to "blackface" incident earlier this year to other schools'responses to similar incidents). |