[lbo-talk] MAINLY IMMIGRANTS OR BIRACIAL

joanna bujes jbujes at covad.net
Tue Jun 29 14:43:56 PDT 2004


What bothers me most about this is that the central complaint is that the entry to "the country's inner circles of power, wealth and influence" are closed to African-Americans.

The notion that this country has an "inner circle of power, wealth, and influence" is simply skipped over.

Joanna

R wrote:


>what do list members make of this?
>
>R
>
>
>cited in Undernews from Sam Smith's Progressive Review site:
>
>HARVARD'S BLACKS ARE MAINLY IMMIGRANTS OR BIRACIAL
>
>NY TIMES - While about 8 percent, or about 530, of Harvard's undergraduates
>were black, Lani Guinier, a Harvard law professor, and Henry Louis Gates
>Jr., the chairman of Harvard's African and African-American studies
>department, pointed out that the majority of them--perhaps as many as
>two-thirds--were West Indian and African immigrants or their children, or to
>a lesser extent, children of biracial couples.
>
>They said that only about a third of the students were from families in
>which all four grandparents were born in this country, descendants of
>slaves. Many argue that it was students like these, disadvantaged by the
>legacy of Jim Crow laws, segregation and decades of racism, poverty and
>inferior schools, who were intended as principal beneficiaries of
>affirmative action in university admissions. What concerned the two
>professors, they said, was that in the high-stakes world of admissions to
>the most selective colleges--and with it, entry into the country's inner
>circles of power, wealth and influence--African-American students whose
>families have been in America for generations were being left behind.
>http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/24/education/24AFFI.final.html?ei=5007&en=92df04e0957d73d3&ex=1403409600&partner=USERLAND&pagewanted=all
>
>
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>
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>
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