Forty-three years have passed since the Supreme
Court issued its decision in Brown v. Board of
Education, which desegregated the nation’s
public schools, yet America’s war over equal
educational opportunities continues to rage. And
the most heated battles in recent years have
centered around access to education at the
postsecondary level.
A series of federal court rulings and political
battles have begun to effectively chip away at
the legislative framework upon which the
desegregation and affirmative action strategies
are constructed. The message these rulings and
actions seem to convey is that neither state nor
federal government intervention is needed to
assist the process of balancing the scales of
opportunity, even when, as in Mississippi, the
court finds that vestiges of segregation remain.
Today, even though record numbers of
African Americans are enrolling in and
graduating from colleges and universities around
the country, whites continue to represent
approximately 80 percent of the student
population at four-year institutions, according to
the National Center for Education Statistics
(NCES). In contrast , African Americans, who
according to a recent study published by The
College Fund/UNCF represent approximately 14
percent of the traditional college-age
population, constitute only 10 percent of the
Student Population at four-year institutions.
Data gathered by the NCES reveals that on
the whole, minorities represent approximately
20 percent of all the students attending
four-year institutions. It is important to note that of
the Black students attending four-year
institutions, approximately one in four attend a
historically Black college or university (HBCU).
On the faculty and administrative side of the
higher education equation, the statistics paint an
even less diverse picture. Roughly 88 percent of
full-time faculty at the nation’s colleges and
universities are white, according the NCES.
African Americans represent roughly 5 percent
of full time faculty and many of these work at
HBCUs.
To understand the war, it is important to
know the terrain upon which the war is being
fought. The following offers a bird’s eye view of
the events that have occurred over the past
couple of years. But the situation is constantly
evolving and changing.
Alabama
Three trials and fifteen years after the U.S.
Department of justice filed a case against
Alabama, U.S. District Judge Harold Murphy told
the state its responsibility to desegregate its
higher education institutions includes giving two
historically Black colleges, Alabama A&M and
Alabama State University in Montgomery, up to
$1 million a year each for ten years for
scholarships to recruit white students.
The mostly white schools that shared the
focus of the 1995 trial are not required to take
further steps to increase minority enrollment
or faculty.
California
