Surveying the battleground in the fight for access - equal opportunity in education cases

Black Issues in Higher Education, May 15, 1997 by Cheryl D. Fields

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

In California, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court

of Appeals recently ruled that Proposition 209

-- the controversial ballot initiative aimed at

prohibiting state-funded institutions from

considering race and gender in admissions,

hiring, promotions, and contracting decisions

-- does not violate the U.S. Constitution, as had

been suggested by a lower court judge in an

earlier review of the case. Proponents of the

ballot initiative have applauded the ruling

and have committed themselves to assisting

other states in following California's lead.

Leading Proposition 209 advocate Ward

Connerly, an African American businessman

and former regent of the University of

California, is drafting similar legislation for

consideration by the U.S. Congress.

Opponents of Prop 209 are expected to

appeal the case as far as the U.S. Supreme Court.

Even before the proposition passed, however,

the University of California (UC) Board of

Regents banned the use of race, religion, sex,

color, ethnicity, or national origin as

considerations for admissions and hiring

decisions into the UC system.

Colorado

In Colorado, State Attorney General

Gayle Norton decided more than a year ago

that race-based scholarships would no longer be

allowed in her state. That decision not only

affected the way public institutions dole out

scholarship funds, but also influenced the way

private scholarship funds, such as the

non-profit Colorado Scholarship Coalition,

provide scholarships to minority students.

Even though the scholarship program had

traditionally collected contributions from

communities of color and awarded the funds to

students of color, it was forced to abandon the

race-based eligibility criteria for its

scholarships so that white students would also

be eligible. Students who win

Coalition scholarships must now demonstrate

that they belong to an underrepresented or

nontraditional student group, but that status

does not have to include being a person of

color.

Georgia

A case filed in U.S. District Court in

Savannah could potentially threaten the very

existence of historically Black colleges and

universities in the state.

The case, filed by Lee Parks, the attorney

who helped dismantle the former

majority-Black congressional district of U.S.

Representative Cynthia McKinney, D-Ga., calls