The evolving perception of HBCUs
Welcome to Race on Campus. This week, I’m focusing on the ways Historically Black Colleges and Universities have worked to change their public perception.
To get a sense of how drastically the reputation of HBCUs has changed in the last decade, it’s worth revisiting a 2006 study conducted by Marybeth Gasman, today a professor of education and associate dean at Rutgers University at New Brunswick. The study, published in The Journal of Higher Education, was an albeit-too-late response to a 1967 study by Christopher Jencks and David Riesman and published in the Harvard Educational Review that characterized HBCUs as “academic disaster areas.” Neither scholar, Gasman says, had ever set foot on a Black college campus.
Gasman examined 300 mainstream publications’ articles about HBCUs and found that America’s 102 Black colleges were still stereotyped by reporters as being under fiscal distress, experiencing leadership turmoil, and, unlike other colleges, being constantly asked about their relevance in a so-called integrated society.
Five years after publishing her study, Gasman wrote in an article published on the website of the American Association of University Professors:
Perhaps the most serious problem with media coverage is the tendency to report the direst circumstances at HBCUs and then portray these circumstances as the norm. Some reporters, having little knowledge of HBCUs, paint them with a broad brush, not understanding the significant variation that exists among these institutions.
Good news for HBCUs
Last November, our reporter Oyin Adedoyin checked in on perceptions of HBCUs in the wake of George Floyd’s murder and after a video of Fisk University’s gymnastics team went viral:
For a half century, Black colleges have frequently been portrayed as the basket cases of higher ed. Unflattering media attention perpetuated a public perception that had a cyclical, compounding effect: Negative coverage of financial trouble led to fewer philanthropic contributions and lower enrollment, which led to more financial trouble.
Now HBCUs are suddenly awash in glorifying headlines. They are touted as engines of economic mobility, a refuge for Black students, and the apex of Black culture. The United Negro College Fund, which advocates for and supports private HBCUs, raked in over $215 million in 2021, a record-breaking amount. Within the past two years, MacKenzie Scott, the ex-wife of Jeff Bezos, donated more than $500 million to over 20 Black colleges. The federal government last year set aside more than $6.5 billion for HBCUs.
In the last month, HBCUs have pitched themselves as the locus of Black scholarship in a post-affirmative action world. If only philanthropists and government officials would adequately fund Black colleges, they’d be able to better compete with predominantly white institutions, the argument goes. While some laud the idea of a surge in enrollment for Black colleges, many worry that the mission of HBCUs to serve all Black students would erode if they became more selective.
Whether to embrace, muffle, or reject your Black identity is a centuries-old dilemma for Black people and Black-led institutions alike.
Historically, stereotypes about Black people, their leadership qualities, and their ability to learn has burdened Black colleges. When, after the murder of George Floyd, supporting Black institutions became a mainstream cause, Black colleges’ Blackness became an asset and many HBCU administrators sent their high-stepping marching bands on the road, described their campuses as “safe spaces” for Black students, and amplified their successes at getting Black students to and through college.
This identity crisis is especially acute at the smaller Black colleges, where enrollment is in flux and administrators are trying to establish culture and identity.
Recently, our Eric Kelderman profiled Bluefield State University, a majority-white HBCU which, amid a steep drop in enrollment, attempted to lean into its HBCU identity in order to recruit Black students. From Eric’s story:
A week before Thanksgiving, in 1968, a bomb blew a hole in the side of the new gymnasium at Bluefield State College.
The explosion was relatively minor. But the college’s response — eliminating housing on campus — left deep emotional wounds for the institution’s Black alumni and has made it difficult for the institution to rebuild trust with that community or rekindle a campus culture that reflects Bluefield State’s legacy as a historically Black college.
Amid plummeting enrollment, Bluefield State, now a university, hired its current president in 2019 with a promise to build housing on campus, attract new students, and put the institution on a path to embrace its identity as an HBCU. Four years later, alumni and some students say the West Virginia university has fallen short of its goals because of a failed effort to build a dormitory on campus.
In a separate story, Eric investigates how Bluefield’s president sometimes used the college’s HBCU legacy to enforce sweeping changes for its faculty.
What I’m currently reading
- “Once I-81 cut a swath through the neighborhood, property values plummeted, which led the city to use the 15th Ward as a dumping ground for its less desirable infrastructure projects, such as a sewage treatment facility and a steam plant for Syracuse University,” Jim Zarroli writes in The New York Times.
- “Debutante balls, which traditionally helped girls from high society find suitable husbands, emerged from Europe in the 18th century. Black Americans have adopted a unique version of them since at least 1895,” Charlie Brinkhurst-Cuff writes in The New York Times.
- “In lawsuits, shareholder letters, and petitions to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, activists are using some of the same tactics that progressive groups have used to advance diversity, equity, and inclusion, or DEI, programs. They are arguing that companies are violating rules against race- and sex-discrimination, including those drawn from legislation designed to secure the rights of Black Americans,” write Theo Francis and Lauren Weber in The Wall Street Journal.
- “Hip-hop may have, as Black Thought declared during the anniversary segment’s curtain raiser, come to dominate the world, but only twice has it won album of the year. And the community has come to feel some type of way,” Wesley Morris writes in The New York Times.
