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2004-06-30 - 6:49 p.m.

My now ex-girlfriend (a Greek/Jamaican Harvard grad) emailed me a Boston Globe article about black students at top schools. S.K. Smith wrote about it the same day. If I had more coding skills I�d add a link to sksmith.diaryland.com and the Globe article itself. But suffice it to say that some Harvard profs were concerned that many of the increasing numbers of black students at elite colleges were descendents of recent (presumably post-1965) Caribbean or African immigrants. They questioned whether affirmative action and policies for inclusive admission were effectively redressing historic American racial injustice.

May I initially say that all this leaves a vague bad taste in my mouth. Saying that top schools aren't taking the �right� black students suggests that those who aren't the �right� students aren't really black somehow. Pretty damn offensive.

As for addressing African-American societal disadvantage, I think that, ultimately, the current situation doesn't really matter. Kids growing up as �descendents� (I like that term, which a student used to describe American blacks) will see people in places of power who look like them. I doubt they will probe into family backgrounds as a way of dissociating themselves from those who have made it. Alithea once said how she had found the presence of a black weathergirl reassuring in a way. I bet Colin Powell can inspire too.

Furthermore, if African-American children encounter people from entirely different cultures where everyone looks like them, there will be more understanding of what is possible. If people in Trinidad or Jamaica (also descendants of slaves, lets not forget) created a society that facilitates success and if immigrants from these places tend to reject traditional American ideas of black=failure/white=success, this might suggest to a kid growing up that there is nothing inherent about blackness that leads to failure or dysfunction.

You know?

� 2004 Geoff Gladstone

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