Splicetoday

On Campus
Jun 09, 2008, 05:40AM

The New Desegregation Argument

A student from the University of Mississippi feels that historically black colleges have outlasted their purpose, and that it's time for them to start building racially diverse student bodies like their traditionally white counterparts have. A potentially controversial argument made reasonably and respectfully? How refreshing.

I commend Delta State University for becoming the first "white" college in the state of Mississippi to have a student population truly representative of the state at about 40 percent black and 60 percent white. While such an accomplishment is a distant dream for us here at the University of Mississippi - perhaps not even a goal of the university - we should focus on the hypocrisy of forcing these "white" schools to be more representative of the state, while historically black colleges and universities go completely ignored.

If we are going to pressure Ole Miss to take measures to become more representative of the state's population, we should do the same for historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs), which are much more black than Ole Miss and Mississippi State are white. It's almost as if we just accept that it's OK for blacks to have a separate facility because various forms of racism still exist. Truth is, HBCUs in Mississippi seem to have become a place where black students can hide from interactions with white people under the claim they feel more comfortable and in a place that is over 90 percent black. I'm sure they do feel much more comfortable.

Discussion
  • One commenter in the origianl article makes an interesting point that no historically black college would discriminate against a white candidate for admission. But I still agree that the general goal for any school should be a campus that prepares students for real life, and it's hard to do that with only one race of people around.

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