Moderated by Curry, President and CEO, Compton College, our conversation explored the historical and contemporary barriers shaping Black student access and success in higher education, the history of minority-serving institutions, and why California’s new BSI designation matters. Johnson also introduced the California BSI Data Dashboard, a new public resource designed to promote transparency and accountability for Black student success. The discussion that followed was thoughtful, energetic, and hopeful. One question, however, stayed with us long after the session ended: Does the rise of Black-Serving Institutions put Black and Latino communities in competition with one another?
We understand why this concern has surfaced. In September 2024, Governor Gavin Newsom signed Senate Bill 1348, making California the first state to create a formal designation for colleges and universities committed to serving Black students. Thirty-one institutions received the inaugural designation, including two University of California campuses, three California State University campuses, one private institution, and twenty-five California Community Colleges. Many of those same campuses are also federally designated Hispanic-Serving Institutions, with 175 HSIs in California—a reminder that institutions can be accountable to more than one community at the same time.
And California has not stopped there. Just earlier this year, lawmakers introduced Senate Bill 1255 to establish a California Hispanic-Serving Institution designation and Assembly Bill 2374 to create a state designation for Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander-Serving Institutions. Together, these proposals point to a broader shift in California’s approach to higher education. Indeed, rather than recognizing institutions only for whom they enroll, the state through legislation is beginning to recognize how institutions serve the people of California and how those commitments can be supported and measured.
At the same time, institutions are confronting shrinking budgets, escalating attacks on race-conscious policies and programs, new federal policies and mandates, and many leadership transitions. In that context, it is understandable to fear that each new designation will force historically underserved communities to compete for an already limited share of resources. But scarcity should not determine the boundaries of our solidarity. The pursuit of equity for one community should not come at the expense of another.
We all reject the idea that designations must compete with one another. Black-Serving Institutions, Hispanic-Serving Institutions, and other enrollment-based designations respond to different histories and different forms of educational inequity. And recognizing those differences should not have to divide the work. It must be a shared effort to ensure that colleges and universities serve historically underserved students with greater intention, accountability, and care.
The competition narrative also overlooks the complexity of students’ identities. Black and Latino are not mutually exclusive categories. Many students identify as both Black and Latino, yet their experiences are often overlooked when our institutions treat these communities as separate constituencies with separate interests. Collaboration between BSIs and HSIs gives us an opportunity to better understand and support Afro-Latino students while strengthening conversations about race, ethnicity, and belonging across higher education.
Coalition building also requires us to wrestle with some hard truths–that anti-Blackness exists within the Latino community is not new. And, to be sure, anti-Latino prejudice is also present in Black communities. However, both are a product of white supremacy—and are among the ways it sustains division. Defending our communities should not mean denying these realities. It should mean confronting them openly, having difficult conversations, holding one another accountable, and doing the difficult work of building trust across lines of difference.
The conversation in Napa led us to another question. Why do we keep assuming that gains for one community must come at the expense of another?
That assumption is reinforced by the way public policy is often designed. Last fall, the federal government eliminated roughly $350 million in grants supporting Hispanic-Serving Institutions and other minority-serving programs while announcing a one-time infusion of nearly $500 million for Historically Black Colleges and Universities and Tribally Controlled Colleges and Universities, funded largely through those same cuts. This spring, it moved to cancel minority-serving institution grant competitions altogether, despite Congress appropriating the funds.
In no uncertain terms, HBCUs and TCCUs deserve every dollar they received, and they did not ask to be positioned against Hispanic-Serving Institutions. Pitting communities against one another is not an accident of budgeting. It is the strategy many of us see over and over again. The problem is manufactured scarcity, not each other. Every investment in Black student success strengthens the case for investing in Latino student success, just as every investment in Latino student success strengthens the case for investing in Black student success.
What connects all of these designations is the idea of “servingness.” The concept emerged from research on Hispanic-Serving Institutions, where one of us (Garcia) has defined it as holistic and multidimensional—something that cannot be reduced to enrollment numbers, but must be reflected in institutional structures such as mission and purpose, leadership practices, policies, curriculum, and co-curricular offerings. Building on that framework, two of us (Harris and Curry), with J. Luke Wood, have offered indicators of what servingness looks like at BSIs specifically: an aspirational set of commitments spanning mission and leadership, representation and belonging, institutional accountability, curricula and co-curricular programs, and support and wellness for Black students. The frameworks differ in context, but they point in the same direction: enrolling historically marginalized students is only the beginning of serving them. Viewed this way, BSI and HSI are not competing identities. They are complementary approaches to organizational improvement and change.
Those commitments must lead to tangible improvements in Black student outcomes. That is why Johnson introduced the California BSI Data Dashboard. The dashboard tracks outcomes across all thirty-one designated institutions and makes it possible to see where progress is happening and where more work is needed. Establishing the designation was the beginning. Public data now gives students, families, policymakers, and institutions a meaningful way to assess whether recognition is producing real gains for Black students. The next step is investment: a grant program to support BSIs, which many of us have advocated for, has been left out of the California State Budget two years in a row. Being denied that funding is not something we will accept. Designation without investment asks institutions to do transformative work on recognition alone.
We left Napa energized because the conversation was never truly about Black-Serving Institutions competing with Hispanic-Serving Institutions. The deeper question was whether California is willing to imagine a different future for higher education—one in which institutions are recognized not only for the students they enroll, but for how deliberately and effectively they serve them.
California has already taken an important first step. As additional state serving designations emerge, the choice before us is not whether to invest in Black students, Latino students, Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander students, or any other historically marginalized community. The choice is whether we will continue accepting the politics of manufactured scarcity or build a broader coalition around educational opportunity. We refuse the first path. Being denied funding for our institutions and our students is something we will not accept.
We have and will continue to choose coalition because our communities have far more to gain by working together than by competing for an increasingly limited set of resources. California’s students deserve nothing less.
Royel M. Johnson is an associate professor at the University of Southern California. Gina Ann Garcia is a professor at the University of California, Berkeley. Frank Harris III is a professor of postsecondary education at San Diego State University. Keith Curry is president/CEO of Compton College.
