Wait, are you telling me that a survey of a bunch of white males (which are still the overwhelming majority of college presidents) think that there are few racial issues on campus?
Knock me over with a feather.
A friend of mine who gives me some of my best material works at a SUNY. Apparently the president of the SUNY campus she works at claimed never to have met a female faculty member in engineering or a female engineer who had experienced sexism. I believe what she says. So a university president who never knew a female engineer who had experienced sexism is probably the president of a university without gender or race issues. Nice for him. But apparently his office is on the top floor of a high rise. So maybe racism and sexism don’t climb that high.
Or it’s a President who has never met any female stem professors at all?
When you have a landscape where real racism is hard enough to find that people in Albany have to fabricate it, a college in Maine has to look.into a microscope to find the offensiveness of a mini hat, and whole new bend-over-backwards categories have to be invented (cultural appropriation and white privilege) , they might have a point.
If you think racism needs to be fabricated then you’ve never even been friends with a non-white person.
A good friend of mine is a professor at ASU. She is white and her husband is black. She tweeted a picture of her family a few months ago and got scores of comments calling her a “n****** lover” and calling her kids oreos (and those were the less offensive names).
About a year ago, I went engagement ring shopping with a (black, male) friend to help him pick out a ring for his girlfriend. We got plenty of looks and attention that was certainly not there when I did the same thing with two other people (white males).
And we live in what I consider to be a pretty diverse area.
They looked at u? OMG.
Nobody’s saying it doesn’t exist at all…they are saying its not 1962 anymore. As.Chris Rock said at the Oscars, when a $20 million per movie actor’s big complaint is not getting nominated, we’ve come a long way.
There are too many fabricated incidents of racism on campus, sometimes perpetuated by over-enthusiastic students or even non-campus people. This obfuscates any real incidents that might occur and does a real disservice to campus communities. When you add the PC and micro-aggression culture on most campuses it is no surprise that the students feel the way that they do. In addition, social and traditional media spread word of these incidents quickly and before thorough investigation . I just think we have lowered the bar too much and people judge far too soon.
I doubt many senior executive leaders (like a U president) has a good idea of what is actually happening in the day to day lives of their employees and student customers. The disconnect comes when the executive responds rationally and the students react emotionally. It is a very hard balance to achieve and leads to the point of the article, that college presidents are mostly whites and are out of touch.
What the article failed to say is that in 1995, only about 13% of doctorates in education were granted to non-whites (about 18% in 2013). If you extrapolate and assume the average president received his/her doctorate in 1985 or so, minority university presidents are actually over-represented as a percentage of people with doctoral degrees in education. (only about 10% of doctoral degrees overall were granted to non-whites in 1995).
So once again, we run into the problem of an insufficient number of qualified minorities as a percentage of the population, which is not easily fixed, but is also not discrimination in the executive suite.
I was annoyed by this article, which ginned up a comparison based on very different surveys with different questions. The college presidents were asked about the quality of race relations on their specific campus and on campuses in general nationally. The vast majority rated their own campus good (65%) or excellent (20%). However, the vast majority rated the state of race relations on campuses nationwide as fair (65%) or poor (10%), with no one rating the national climate as excellent.
So, effectively, they were being asked, “Are you doing a good job? Is your institution better than average?” And – surprise! surprise! – they overwhelmingly answered “Yes!”
Meanwhile, students were not being asked to rate the quality of race relations on their campuses. They were asked “Have you witnessed discrimination at your college?” (without specifying what type of discrimination), and about 58% said they had. Other students were asked “Have you experienced discrimination in college?” and about 45.6% said they had. That 45.6% was asked what kind of discrimination they had experienced; about 45% said gender/sexual identity and 40.6% said race, mostly (80%+) in the form of comments. That’s certainly an issue, but in historical perspective it’s hardly inconsistent with saying that race relations on a specific campus are generally good (but not excellent).
MODERATOR’S NOTE: Please refrain from mentioning politics. I had to delete two posts.
JHS has an excellent point–most poll results are dependent on the actual wording of the question. Many times the questions are formulated to elicit a specific response.
mooop, I’m not sure if you’re intentionally being dense about what I said or if you’re really ignorant about what I’m saying. If the latter, consider yourself supremely lucky that you’ve never gotten the judgmental glances.
Oh, I’ve gotten plenty of judgmental glances. I was in the U.S. military overseas for a few years. Got plenty of judgmental glances, and sometimes they did things even worse than that. Got my share in the U.S. too. I would think most people have gotten them one time or another. If the worst part of your day was a judgmental glance, you had a pretty good day.
I did NOT mean to trivialize the abuse your ASU friend got however, and I apologize if you thought I was scoffing at that. THAT really is racist and horrible, and it is an indication that the problem isn’t 100% solved. My point was that such problems still exist, but they are not the epidemic they once were. Such incidents are thankfully the exception and not the rule…though there is no shortage of people whose livelihoods and world views depend on perpetuating the idea that they ARE the rule.
I have spent a lot of time in Europe and dealing with Europeans, and the ones who haven’t spent much time in the US often think it really IS still 1962 in this country, Some people posting here remind me of those people…inflating both the frequency and severity of the racist acts that do occur. So something that happens once a year is suddenly a constant problem, and a little hat becomes a burning cross.
While the PC-police overreactions may be like crying wolf when there is none, there really is plenty of evidence in recent news that a substantial percentage of the population hold or supports racist attitudes, even if they may not always express them obviously and openly (though anonymous surveys reveal substantial support for racist attitudes; in some cases, even non-anonymous surveys reveal substantial support for racist attitudes).
Sounds like a job for the Thought Police.
No we are not we dont have separate water fountains, etc if that is what you mean. But if you think racial problems are not an epidemic think again. Imagine if everyday your are reminded of your blackness, in EVERY aspect of your life and daily routine. I live in an high median income area, yet, we are constantly followed to our street, then the cop turns off, I am routinely overlooked when waiting in line, even though its clear I was next to be served, especially when I stick out like a sore thumb, I am followed in the stores, my husband when he travels constantly has passengers jump in front of him when flying because he couldnt possibly be going to first class, women grab their purses even when he is dressed in a suit, and the list goes on…these are just a few of the things that we have to put up with on a daily basis, which I could give more examples but there is not enough space and time. There is no greater fear than when your son is going out with his friends and you always wonder if he will make it back safely, and not the normal teenage worry stuff. At an early age I had to stress to my kids dont ever buy anything at a convenience store without having them bag it, otherwise you might be accused of stealing. And I know that I have it better than a lot of folks. Please read the article below. Its about a white teacher dropping off black students and what ensues.
This is part of what I was referencing when I was talking about the “looks.”
Thank you for articulating it much better than I ever could.
Party, you’re proving my point. Listen to your own comments. If someone assuming.you can’t be flying first class makes it onto your list of Top 50 Problems In My Life, you’re in good shape. And you’re committing the mistake of assuming every slight is rooted in race. I’ll let you in on a little secret…white people are rude and insultig to other white people ALL THE TIME. And In fact most of them go WAY out of their way to NOT be rude to other races.
@moooop , you are seriously embarrassing yourself. Listen to yourself, why don’t you? You are mocking and trivializing some heartfelt descriptions made in good faith about being constantly reminded that you don’t belong and aren’t accepted, which take a lot of power from the fact that lurking behind them are nontrivial possibilities of much more serious consequences. And if anyone is making a mistake about the relationship of slights and race, my money is on you.