<p>the only reason that they put “historically black” is because historically predominantly black students have attended. </p>
<p>But most of those colleges are attended by African Americans, not necessarily Africans.</p>
<p>yeah, that’s what i meant tyler. Those schools would have a lot of African Americans but not neceesarily a lot of Africans… and Africans and African Americans are two different groups of people.</p>
<p>We have a fair number of Africans in our community colleges here in California. I have met students from Eritrea and Sudan. However, in general there are probably not enough to constitute a “community”. It’s not clear that they have any more in common with each other than they do with students from other countries around the world. I think this is a difficult criteria to meet. A Nigerian is going to pretty much be out there on his own. If I were him I would try to choose a school that seems to be accepting of different kinds of people.</p>
<p>My daughter just started at Amherst this month as a first year student. At the BSU luncheon during orientation, it was announced that there were enough students to now start an African and Caribbean Student Association. But, to say Africans is just too broad. As one of the young men I met at Amherst told me (he was from Tanzania), Africa is a continent. He even within his own country, people are divided by tribes. But, of course, coming to the US, everyone dark is thrown into the same group. There were students from various countries that had vastly different histories, languages, cultures, etc. So, you need to find out what countries in Africa you’re looking for. I met students at Amherst from South Africa, Ghana, Zimbabewe, and a couple of other countries.</p>
<p>Although many argue that Africa is a continent and African is too broad a grouping, other societies dealing with ethinc origin also end up grouping many individuals of different areas together as well. For example, Asian Student Associations, Desi Clubs, and Hispanic Clubs all group people from many different places. It would be very hard to create individual groups for each and every country or even region (unless there was an abnormally large presence of one nationality-like Ethiopians in Maine). Personally, I find that although many of these countries are different, the people can still find more in common with one another than if they were placed in a Black student group or something of that effect.</p>