Color of Our Classroom, the Color of Our Future, The

Academe, Nov/Dec 2006 by Hubbard, Dolan

Democratizing the academy means opening what Du Bois called the "doors of opportunity" and making it a receptive place for African American students. A competitive environment and a nurturing one need not be mutually exclusive. We must work to remove the perception that the academy is a private preserve in which African Americans are all too often spoken of but rarely spoken to or with. African Americans are frequently out of the loop in regard to meaningful academic discourse; many of them discover upon their arrival in the academy that they are tolerated in an atmosphere of benign neglect. This neglect may serve to create feelings of inadequacy and ambivalence on their part and may prevent their departments from benefiting from their presence. These black students can help us to see our field anew, no matter what specialty they choose. Their success is the success of all members of the department as well as the university.

Black Scholars

Are we scholars who are black or hlacks who are scholars? As African American students wrestle with this question, those outside the academy see them as having made it. while those on the inside sometimes perceive them as necessary but unwelcome interlopers. The fortification that occurs in HBCUs often helps to nourish the young scholars who take this journey and prepares them for the times ahead when the legitimacy of their own imaginations may he challenged.

According to the 2004 Fall Staff Surrey of the National Center for Education Statistics. 57.9 percent of the full-time faculty at HMUs in fall 2003 were African American: only 4 percent of the full-time faculty at all other U.S. institutions were African American. Although some people view the nation's HBCUs as a pale simulacrum of their traditionally white counterparts, they in fact contrihute to a culture of excellence and fulfill an important function.

Despite the nearly forty-year push to integrate the academy following the death of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., HBCUs remain the colleges of choice for many of the nation's black students. They see them as sites where they can imagine freedom, places where they are affirmed. Black students need to see someone who looks like them and who can speak with authority, and without restrictions, on the great issues that confront the human community. White students need to know that academic citizenship is not a property right and that the world in which they will reach their majority will he a mostly black and brown one.

HBCUs practice a pedagogy of success, instilling in their students an intellectual toughness that, in the words of a well-known spiritual, invests them with the determination not to "let nobody turn me 'round." The number of future PhDs HBCUs produce is testimony to their success. Graduate departments looking for more minority PhD recipients need look no further than the nation's HBCUs for the scholars who will make it in their programs. And we can all take lessons from HBCUs when it comes to inspiring undergraduates of color to become the faculty members of the next decade.