African American Colleges?

LakeWashington
Fri, 21 Jul 2006 10:22:38 +0000

It’s very hard for me to resist the urge to respond to a post like this. But, I’ll give the poster a fair shot and chalk up the limited perspective to a lack of knowlege about the subject, which is why, I presume, he posted the question in the first place.

To summarize others’ comments, HBCUs are not here to be a mirror copy of “traditional” institutions, just for Black folk. They have a special mission that was/is necessitated by pervasive events in the history of this nation.

One example is that African-American studies (history, literature, sociology, anthropology) was not considered an area for serious study at nearly any college until very recently. Black colleges kept said scholarship alive all these years, and a few white scholars like Aptheker and Foner, followed in the footsteps of E. Franklin Frazier, W.E.B. Dubois, Alain Locke and John Hope Franklin, but few joined them. Now finally, the rest of academia finally gives the field the scholarly weight it always deserved.

For the record, some HBCUs [particularly state-supported schools] actively recruit not only American white students but immigrants from Europe. U of Arkansas-Pine Bluff has several eastern Europeans among the student body. As reported by the NY Times, they are having a great time living and learning with their Black American classmates.