While chatting with a young woman in the church parking lot one evening last week, I asked about her daughter. "She's a senior in high school this year," the woman replied. Then she added with a sardonic laugh: "After that, she's off to FAMU. I pray it's still there."I, too, am prayerful that Florida A&M will still be on the highest hill in Tallahassee for eons to come. Many of our black students need a place where they can pursue higher education in a historic ethnic setting. Such institutions instill self-confidence born of pride in heritage. They instruct blacks that they are one among many other achievers of their identity, not ethnic academic exceptions, as many have come to believe in many public high schools.
I applaud black students who qualify for admission to Ivy League schools. Still, I believe that many who have known only minority status in the classroom need a majority experience to claim a resilient sense of personal self-worth. So like the woman I met after church, I am a FAMU loyalist, though definitely not a blind loyalist.
Continue reading: Stebbins Jefferson
The PB Post has one decent columnist/reporter and Stebbins is it. Maybe she needs to teach Bill Maxwell a thing or two.
ReplyDeleteMany of our black students need a place where they can pursue higher education in a historic ethnic setting. Such institutions instill self-confidence born of pride in heritage.
ReplyDeleteShould a white American say this, would it be considered racist?
No more than having a Brigham Young, a predominately morman university, or Brandies, a predominately Jewish university, or Washington State an overwhelmingly white university.
ReplyDeleteHBCUs are open to all people. Have always been.
4:54, we don't care what a white American would, could or might say. End of story.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous 5:05 PM said...
ReplyDelete"4:54, we don't care what a white American would, could or might say. End of story."
Speak for yourself! I work at FAMU and support FAMU, and I care what Americans of all kinds, especially tax-paying Floridians, might say, since FAMU's continued existence depends on their financial support of FAMU as a public institution.
I'd like the taxpayers of Florida to recognize that we at FAMU are not a bunch of black racists. Comments like the one by Anonymous don't help make that point.
And it is a point that needs to be made, over and over again, to compensate for the intemperate remarks of a few.
You better care what people think, because they pay taxes that fund the university.
ReplyDeleteThe 1.8 million black floridians also pay taxes.
ReplyDeleteFAMU is a state supported school NOT a private university. Like all schools in the state it should reflect the diversity of the state; it should be 13% black NOT the 97% that it currently is!
ReplyDeleteName any Florida university, outside of FAMU, that is 13% black? Certainly not UF, not FSU, not USF, not FIU.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous 2:53 said...
ReplyDelete"Name any Florida university, outside of FAMU, that is 13% black? Certainly not UF, not FSU, not USF, not FIU."
By 2004 figures, FSU had 12% black students, but your statement makes it sound like Florida's state universities are somehow falling down in minority enrollment. They seem to be doing pretty well actually.
The fact that Florida universities are beginning to reflect better the state's racial composition does not have any meaningful bearing on whether FAMU should remain 94% black enrollment.
FAMU has to justify that enrollment for other reasons than attacking the enrollments of other universities.
(Data from Black Issues in Higher Education, June 3, 2004, vol. 21, no. 8)