despite great strides in admitting more black students, many civil rights leaders and scholars contend the success of affirmative action is little more than skin deep. Yes, they say, more black students attend elite universities -- but who exactly are they?
As reported recently in the New York Times, a high percentage of undergraduate black students at top universities are West Indian and African immigrants or their children or, to a lesser extent, children of biracial couples. In the case of Harvard University, only about a third of the black students are the descendants of African-American slaves, born into families hobbled by generations of segregation and racism.
"If people think the current registration of African Americans in elite colleges is somehow addressing past wrongs, that's not entirely true," Princeton sociologist Douglas S. Massey said. "We should be debating and talking about this and coming up with some kind of seat-of-the-pants policy, rather than deceiving ourselves."
The Rev. Jesse Jackson said, "Universities have to give weight to the African-American experience because that is for whom affirmative action was aimed in the first place. That intent must be honored."
Most universities, including Northwestern and the University of Chicago, don't keep tabs on the origins of their black students. But Massey, who is studying the achievements of black students at 28 colleges and universities, found that 41 percent of these black students were immigrants, children of immigrants or biracial.
'Successful, smart people'
This curious makeup of the black student population at top universities has been discussed quietly on campuses for years, but became public only earlier this year when Harvard law professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. raised the issue bluntly at a reunion of Harvard University's black alumni.
Before then, academics tended to skirt the issue, in part because there is no agreement on the proper goals of affirmative action and in part because criticism might be misconstrued as an attack on immigrants.
"I think all the elite institutions need to be more open and straightforward about what we are seeking to achieve," said Kenneth Warren, professor of English and co- director of African and African American studies at the University of Chicago. "Affirmative action has multiple goals, and I don't think that's stressed enough."
