<p>There have been some interesting comments about this issue in this forum before. Here’s an article on the latest research. </p>
<p><a href=“http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/04/30/america/NA-GEN-US-Colleges-Black-Students.php[/url]”>http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/04/30/america/NA-GEN-US-Colleges-Black-Students.php</a></p>
<p>There also were more black immigrants kids at Ivies and similar college back in the 1970s, but they weren’t as noticable since most of them were born and raised in the U.S., so didn’t have accents.</p>
<p>I’m a black Harvard grad whose dad was from Jamaica, my mom was African American from D.C. Virtually none of my friends realized that I was half West Indian.</p>
<p>Lani Guinier, one of the first people to publicly address the issue, also is half West Indian. Her father, Ewart Guinier, who was a tenured prof at Harvard, was born in Jamaica. Her mom was white.</p>
<p>The Ivies also have always had a lot of bi-racial African Americans, in far higher proportion than exists in the general population.</p>
<p>From the article tokenadult posted:</p>
<p>"NEW YORK: Something in the crowd made Shirley Wilcher wonder. As a college graduate in the early 1970s, her black classmates were like herself — born in the United States, to American parents. But at an alumni reunion at Mount Holyoke College last year, she saw something different and asked for admissions data to prove it.</p>
<p>“My suspicions were confirmed,” said Wilcher, now the executive director of the American Association for Affirmative Action. She found a rise in the number of black students from Africa and the Caribbean, and a downturn in admissions of native blacks like her.</p>
<p>A study released this year put numbers on the trend. Among students at 28 top U.S. universities, the representation of black students of first- and second-generation immigrant origin (27 percent) was about twice their representation in the national population of blacks their age (13 percent). Within the Ivy League, immigrant-origin students made up 41 percent of black freshmen."</p>
<p>This has always been a “hot” topic in affirmative action discussions. Should admisssions be based on “color, race, ethnicity” as described in one category such as African American or Hispanic? How “black” is someone who is 1/8 black who has been raised in a white community with professinal parents and has as much contact with African American as his suburban white peers? The same with Hispanic kids who are not only integrated into upper middleclass white communities an just happen to have a Hispanic ancestor so they can legitimately check of that block on the app form. </p>
<p>I can’t see doing a private investigation on how black or how hispanic someone is. The fact that these groups are so underrepresented at some very vanilla colleges makes it a drop in the bucket in college admissions numbers which is why these groups are UNDERREPRESENTED. This will change, when the numbers change.</p>
<p>One of the problems I have with these studies is the way they define immigrant.
This study <a href=“http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/05/AR2007030501296.html[/url]”>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/05/AR2007030501296.html</a></p>
<p>defines a black student who was born and raised in the US but has parent(s) born in Africa or the Caribbean as an immigrant. No other group that I know of is defined in this way. For example, if a student has parents born in Germany who immigrated to the US, but the student was born and raised in the US, I haven’t heard anyone saying that the student is an immigrant.</p>
<p>Northstarmom, from your posts, it seems that you consider yourself black American, but according to this study, it seems that you could be (not sure if only one parent is caribbean) classified as an immigrant, not a black american, and maybe not adding to diversity on campus.</p>
<p>If only black students who currently live in Africa or the Caribbean or are citizens of these regions were counted in these studies of diversity/immigration, the numbers would be a lot different.</p>
<p>I would like to see epiphany explain why these black students from immigrant backgrounds, who are stereotyped as being “overly studious” (seen as a positive), are highly sought after by Ivy League universities, while she sees the same thing as a negative for Asian applicants from immigrant backgrounds (and uses that as an “explanation” for the lower admit rates).</p>
<p>Another interesting tidbit - a high % of students with parents from Africa or the Caribbean have parents with post-HS education (higher than that for the overall % of whites or Asians in the US).</p>
<p>“Northstarmom, from your posts, it seems that you consider yourself black American, but according to this study, it seems that you could be (not sure if only one parent is caribbean) classified as an immigrant, not a black american, and maybe not adding to diversity on campus.”</p>
<p>Yes, according to that study, I probably would have been classified with the immigrants. Truth is that I had very little contact with the immigrant side of my family. Where I did benefit, however, was from the fact that – as is typically the case for black (and Asian) immigrants, I came from a highly educated family, which in my case was on both sides of the family probably because people who value education tend to also look to marry people who value education.</p>
<p>The people who manage to leave places like the Caribbean, Africa and Asia to emmigrate to the U.S., tend to be the best and the brightest: very intelligent, hard working and ambitious, and very driver to get higher education. Consequently, their offspring also tend to be more apt to have the grades and amibitions and academic backgrounds to get into top colleges than would typical Americans of any race.</p>
<p>I remember my mother – who was African American non Caribbean – telling me that when she went to Howard U. back in the 1930s, the top students there were from the Caribbean and Africa because of their ambition and willingness to work hard academically.</p>
<p>The only thing new that’s going on now is that due to the changes in the immigration laws after about 1965, there are more African and Caribbean immigrants (A higher proportion of African immigrants, incidentally, have doctorates than is the case for any other immigrant group), and their kids now are heading to places like Ivies in numbers that make them far more visible than when I was in college .I remember only one girl of African immigrant background in my class at Harvard or in any of the other classes who were there when I was an undergrad. There were a few guys from Africa. </p>
<p>Now, however, things are very different. Indeed, in my region – which has far more African Americans than people of immediate black African background-- there have been about 3 black students who have gotten into Harvard in the past 10 years. All have had Nigerian parents.</p>
<p>When it comes to the National Achievement finalsts and semifinalists from my area, where we get typically 1-3 students a year in those categories, all except for my sons have been offspring of Nigerian immigrants; bi-racial; or biracial adoptees raised by white parents. This is in an area in which about 40% of the school children are African American. My sons were the closest to being “African American” non bi-racial, non first generation American, and my sons are 1/4 Jamaican, 1/4 black Canadian.</p>
<p>I remember my mother – who was African American non “Caribbean – telling me that when she went to Howard U. back in the 1930s, the top students there were from the Caribbean and Africa because of their ambition and willingness to work hard academically.”</p>
<p>I find it interesting that your mom noticed this apparent difference in academic motivation and work ethic all the way back in the 30s. I have to admit I was surprised, as I’ve long assumed that the real problem with academic nonchalance and anti-intellectualism began somewhere in the mid-sixties. I remember as a child growing up in the black baptist church and attending segregated schools, that academic excellence was celebrated and encouraged. Star students were regularly and proudly recognized during church services and nobody seemed to think that being smart was the equivalent of “acting white”. That seemed to change almost overnight, at least in my view, when the likes of Stokley Carmichael and H. Rap Brown began to call for the burning of cities, and rejection of all things “white”. </p>
<p>I’m sure you’ve had many occasions to ponder (and discuss with your mother and other AF Ams) what might account for this phenomenon. I’ve thought about it a lot, also. What’s your take?</p>
<p>One thing I think we should probably consider is the idea that African and Caribbean immigrants, by and large, have to pass some pretty stringent criteria in order to be admitted to this country (perhaps more stringent than those required of immigrants from non-black countries). Only the best and the brightest make it here in the first place. They arrive preprogrammed for economic and academic success. I believe this is true of many immigrants from other countries as well.</p>
<p>"I’m sure you’ve had many occasions to ponder (and discuss with your mother and other AF Ams) what might account for this phenomenon. I’ve thought about it a lot, also. What’s your take?
"</p>
<p>The African and Caribbean immigrants had to be far more ambitious, hard working and intelligent than the norm in order to manage to emmigrate to the U.S. Their kids were brought up on tales of, “Your dad used to eat potatos and tea for dinner,” and were expected to succeed at a high level.</p>
<p>In other words, the same thing causes black immigrants and their kids to do exceptionally well in the U.S. academic system as is true for most other categories of immigrants here.</p>
<p>Interestingly, in Great Britain, Caribbeans and their offspring have very high rates of academic problems. That’s probably because it’s far easier for them to enter Great Britain (since their countries were former colonies of Britain) than it is for such people to enter the U.S. </p>
<p>The same is true of France, where Caribbean and African immigrants are connected with high crime rates and academic problems. African Americans, however, are welcomed and have a wonderful reputation. Why? African American expats tend to be the cream of the crop: People educated enough and sophisticated enough to speak French and to be happy living abroad.</p>
<p>
I think it began with the fallout between Dubois and Washington. Not to say Dubois was wrong, but that his victory, while producing the freedoms we enjoy today, created several negative effects we must yet overcome. Under Dubois, we focused so much on social equality with whites, and met with such success in that focus, we lost Washingtons focus on building a moral, intellectual and economic underpinning for our culture. By the sixties, we were hearing the echoes of our earlier twice as good ethic, but its producers were all but dead.</p>
<p>k&s,
You need to seriously stop lying about my statements or I will notify the moderator about what a ■■■■■ you are. This time you’re not even stalking, which is your usual habit (following me, not other posters, around CC). You are merely ■■■■■■■■ and lying.</p>
<p>First of all, I had not so much as entered this thread until now. So the fact that you bring up my screen name gratuitously merely reinforces your previous behavior as exhibiting a personal campaign against <em>me</em>. </p>
<p>Second, your first paragraph is a collection of lies.</p>
<p>Parents, I never said the following:
(1) that black students from immigrant backgrounds are overly studious.<br>
(2) that being overly studious is “seen as a positive.” (By me? never said that. By colleges? That’s k&s’s judgment, not mine)
(3) that “being overly studious” is something that (a) I attribute to Asian applicants from immigrant backgrounds (never said that), and that (b) I supposedly saw such traits (which I never even stated, let alone evaluted as “positive”) as “negative” for Asian immigrants but “positive” for black immigrants.</p>
<p>I said none of that, implied none of that.
Further, I do not represent admissions offices of Ivy League Universities even indirectly. And I promise you that my D did not “take away” k&s’s “spot”, at any of them. She’s probably, first of all, in a different class/year than k&s, and she’s not URM. So I bear zero responsibility for the college admissions results, let alone policies, of U.S. Elite Universities.</p>
<p>The only admissions communication role I have ever played on CC is to try to explain the reasoning behind <em>some</em> of the policies that I did not create, as they have been explained to me by admissions officers, directly, and on CC, and in books. None of my communications (debates on various CC threads, esp. the Admissions forum) included the nonsense written in post #5.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>People who make it through a 10 or 1000 times harder selection barrier will, on average, be an extremely strong group. There are few MIT students (undergrad or graduate) from Malawi, but those who make it there will be a rather exceptional bunch. The absence of a pipeline from most African countries to the educated sectors of the US economy means that those who do immigrate have to be very resourceful in addition to the more scholastic type of ability that leads to college degrees. </p>
<p>It is a bit different for study in the UK, France or (in the Communist days) Russia, because there were direct ties from those countries to various places in Africa, and schools and scholarships that would funnel a few African students to those countries’ universities. For study in the US, it was a matter of luck and skill to try and get in as a (non-wealthy) student or degree-holder from Africa.</p>
<p>For the same reason, there is much less of a selection effect for students coming from Beijing University to the US; there are already dozens or hundreds of students before them who have done the same and it’s mostly a matter of academic credentials, not all that different from a UK-to-US migration.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Same here in Canada. The immigration process usually starts with the mother coming to work in Canada, leaving the child with her own mother. Then once the mother gains resident status, she would then sponsor her child. I always assume it works the same way in the US, and was wondering why the Caribbean immigrants work out so well there. Just learned something again.</p>
<p>A month ago I took my car to a garage and discovered that the owner is a black Canadian whose father was from southwest Ontario and the mother was from Alberta. I am aware of black settlements in southwest Ontario and Nova Scotia, but settlements in Alberta is news to me.</p>