How Many Protests Will It Take to Finally Diversify Our Campuses?

By William B. Harvey, The Chronicle of Higher Education

It may appear to outside observers that colleges and universities have made tremendous progress in regard to racial attitudes and practices over the past several decades. Certainly, their brochures and other public-relations materials would lead to this conclusion, as do the messages on their websites and social-media platforms. But the intensity and frequency of demonstrations conducted by students of color at campuses across the nation during the last few months do not reconcile with the sense of racial harmony that the institutions have attempted to convey. Further, faculty and administrators of color have offered their own testimonies of marginalization and exclusion that echo the students’ expressions of dissatisfaction.

Read the story here.

Related content:

• How Racial Divisions at Colleges Start in a Segregated Society (EBONY)
• White Privilege Undermines Diversity in Higher Education (Diverse Issues in Higher Education)
• Concerned Student 1950 protesters march through University of Missouri campus (Columbia Daily Tribune)
• Students Demand More Minority Advisers and Counselors (Inside Higher Ed)
• New Big Ten Initiative Play, Baltimore, Confronts Race on Campus (Inside Higher Ed)
• Sustaining a Fight Against Racism (The Chronicle of Higher Education - requires paid subscription)

Virginia parents are outraged after 'white guilt' affirmative action video is shown to high school students

By Alexandra Klausner, The Daily Mail

A Virginia community is reeling after students at a high school were made to watch a video about racial inequality during Black History Month.

Read the here.

State Senator Stands Up for High Schoolers Racially Harassed at Texas A&M

By Sheryl Estrada, DiversityInc.

A group of approximately 60 Black and Latino high school juniors from Uplift Hampton Preparatory School in Dallas toured the Texas A&M University’s College Station campus last week. They were subjected to racial slurs from white college students, who also shouted “Go back where you came from.”

Read the story here.

Related content:

• One A&M student gone after racist confrontation with Dallas teens, but school won’t say more (The Dallas Morning News)
• U.S. Attorney’s Office To Investigate Civil Rights Complaints At Boston Latin School (The Guardian)
• What’s the Best Way to Lead After a Racial Incident on Campus? (The Chronicle of Higher Education - requires paid subscription)
• After Black High Schoolers Harassed, A&M Apologizes (Texas Tribune)
• Texas A&M apologizes after minorities told to ‘go back where you came from’(The Washington Post)
• A&M says it has identified some of the students involved in racial harassment of high schoolers; sends thousands of letters of apology (Dallas Morning News)
• Texas A&M Investigating After Black High Schoolers Harassed on Campus (Texas Tribune)
• Texas A&M investigates alleged racial abuse of black high schoolers on visit (The Guardian)

The surprising relationship between intelligence and racism

A new study designed to examine the relationship between verbal intelligence and attitudes on race and racial policies offers some surprising results.

By Husna Haq, The Christian Science Monitor

Are smart people less racist than their less-intelligent peers?

That was the question asked in a new study that examined the relationship between verbal intelligence and attitudes on race and racial policies.

Read the story here.

Do White College Students Believe Stereotypes About Minorities?

Researchers found that they bought into the trope that Asian Americans are more competent, and blacks and Latinos need to “work harder.”

Asian American students are “cold but competent.” Latinos and blacks “need to work harder to move up.”

At least, that’s how their white peers at the country’s elite colleges and universities see them, according to a new study by Baylor University researchers. The study uses data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Freshmen, a survey of 898 participants from 27 prestigious American universities in which respondents rated their opinions of Asian, black, and Latino Americans based on work ethic, intelligence, and perseverance.

Read the story here.

Young whites view race with rose-tinted glasses

Ahead of Supreme Court decision on affirmative action, research shows millennials are split by race on the practice.

By Sean McElwee & Jesse Rhodes, Al Jazeera America

The United States Supreme Court’s decision to review the constitutionality of the University of Texas at Austin’s affirmative action program has brought renewed debate about the practice. While social science largely supports the proposition that affirmative action is beneficial to African-American and Latino applicants, many Americans feel that policies to remedy racial inequality or to ensure diversity are unnecessary. In 2003, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor famously put an expiration date on racism, expressing a hope that 25 years from then, affirmative action would no longer be necessary.

NBC/WSJ poll: Attitudes on race

msnbc.com
Posted: Monday, January 18, 2010 12:00 PM
Filed Under: Barack Obama, Polls
From NBC's Mark Murray

A year into the presidency of the nation's first African-American president, a majority of Americans (63%) say that race relations in this country have stayed the same, according to a new NBC/MSNBC/WSJ poll. Only 20% believe they've gotten better, and 15% believe they've gotten worse.
That's a change from our Jan. 2009 NBC/WSJ poll, when a plurality (45%) said Barack Obama's election improved race relations, when 39% said it didn't change things, and when 13% said it made race relations worse.
"Everything is back to where it was -- if you're white or African American or Hispanic," said Democratic pollster Peter D. Hart, who conducted the survey with Republican pollster Bill McInturff. "The euphoria has disappeared."
The full NBC/WSJ poll will be released tomorrow night beginning at 6:30 pm ET. But these numbers on race are being unveiled now, pegged to today's Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, as well as tonight's MSNBC special program "Obama's America -- 2010 and beyond," hosted by MSNBC's Chris Matthews. ..

On affirmative action, 49% believe that it is needed to counteract past discrimination against minorities, versus 43% who think affirmative action programs have gone too far. ...

Full story: http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2010/01/18/2176748.aspx