<p>Interesting article in the Daily Princetonian:</p>
<pre><code>"Blacks at Ivy League schools are over three times more likely to be immigrants than blacks in America's general population, a study published in February's American Journal of Education and coauthored by Princeton researchers suggests."
</code></pre>
<p>The link is below:</p>
<p>It's an interesting study. Personally, I would lean towards the theory that international black applicants have other attractive qualities to admissions officers that leads to them comprising a large proportion of black students. Admittedly, it is the nicest theory, but it also makes the most sense to me. I suspect that international black applicants are likely to be wealthier and better prepared educationally than "native" black applicants, and these advantages would assumedly lead to more easily admissable numbers. I think it is also possible that international black applicants are more comfortable with/used to the idea of attending selective universities, again by virtue of better economic standing, and so perhaps more of them apply. I suppose the cynical side of me would say that this also makes a nice way to boost diversity numbers while still admitting a highly competitive group of kids. DISCLAIMER: These are just my musings! I'm not trying to pass this off as absolute truth. </p>
<p>Personally, I strongly doubt that admissions officers are actively, consciously choosing international blacks over domestic blacks. I just find that very hard to believe, and would definitely have to see some sort of evidence to that end before I would consider that possibility. I could believe that the theory that there is some sort of subconcious preference for international blacks could be true (afterall, the subconscious is hard to control...), but I would be surprised if this subconscious preference alone allowed for the kind of disparity that this study found.</p>
<p>"the cynical side of me would say that this also makes a nice way to boost diversity numbers while still admitting a highly competitive group of kids."</p>
<p>Cynical or not, it sounds very plausible to me.</p>
<p>In addition to what the posters above said: just from reading posts on CC, I've run across a lot of immigrant blacks who have checked the box "African-American". This could be another reason for the discrepancy in admissions.</p>
<p>What else would they check? Children of African immigrants are "African" American but maube not the same as native African American.</p>
<p>At my Ivy, I find that at least a third but probably closer to a half of the Black students are African. Many of these students seem to be uppermiddle or upperclass in Africa and had access to some good schooling, including British prep schools, so they became competitve in admissions.</p>
<p>While that kind of diversity is nice, it doesn't help African-American students to have to compete with some of these kids.</p>
<p>Interesting chocoman.</p>
<p>Just my opinion but if a student does not have the acceptable SAT scores of an institution, they really don't belong there, be them black, white, green, purple. It isn't right to admit folks and then have to go to extraordinary lengths to provide help for them because they can't keep up. </p>
<p>The important thing is to work with minorities and the disadvantaged from the time they are young so they can compete academically with everyone else. All the new charter schools are trying to do just this by providing year round progams, early intervention, working with parents,etc. and these programs are really working. EVERYONE would like to see more black students in colleges, all colleges, not just top colleges.</p>
<p>A few months ago, after breaking my leg very badly, I spent five days in an inpatient rehab place where the entire nursing staff -- LPNs, aides, everybody -- consisted of recent immigrants from west Africa. </p>
<p>This sounds weird, but it wasn't. They were all good at their jobs. They all spoke excellent English (as one aide told me, since there are many different local languages in west Africa, everybody also speaks English so that they can communicate with each other). And they were all very pleased to have ended up in an area of Maryland where their children could go to excellent schools because they valued education for their children very highly. </p>
<p>One aide told me that he could not understand why his son, a high school student, wanted to play three sports at school -- one in each season -- but that he was willing to allow it -- provided that his son's grades did not drop from their current straight As. If the kid started to get Bs, that would be the end of the sports.</p>
<p>This is not a typical African-American attitude (or, for that matter, a typical white American attitude). It is, though, the sort of attitude toward education that you see in other immigrant groups who value education very highly.</p>
<p>If African immigrant kids are showing up in disproportionate numbers in elite colleges, I suspect it's because they and their families are giving education the kind of emphasis that results in kids ending up at elite colleges. In other words, they're earning it.</p>
<p>I agree with backhandgrip & Marian: </p>
<p>I am the child of a Nigerian and African American my Nigerian relatives have much better elementary and high school education than my American relative and thus are better prepared for higher education. There is also a friendly family competition, you really want to do as well has your siblings/cousins, now it is carrying over to our children who are college age. It is really cool because we uplift each other and share lots of educational info.</p>
<p>It is really all about educational equity from preK through grade 12. Also, most immigrants are hungry for education no matter where they are from an impart this hunger to their children and grandchildren. In general Americans are not that hungry irrespective of ethnicity. Additionally, there is a level of self confidence that African immigrants pass on, which given the messages African Americans get on a daily basis generationally is just not available or healthy. Iam rambling...so I hope this makes sense.</p>
<p>I agree with the above posters. I notice that in my area, a good percentage of the high-achieveing blacks in the private high schools are of African and Caribbean parentage. I'm not sure why that is, but it seems those parents are very focused on education, and push their children to excel.</p>
<p>There are a few threads on this now on CC. I'm still not sure why the authors of this study count a student as an immigrant if they were born and grew up in the US but their parents were born in Africa or the Caribbean. If the same methodology were used for white students, then someone who was born in the US but whose parents were born in Poland, France, Norway, wherever would be counted as an immigrant or international. The number of "international" students would then increase significantly. I don't dispute that the numbers of Caribbean and African origin blacks is high, but I think most of them are US citizens born of immigrant parents.</p>
<p>if colleges claim that urm preferences are for diversity and not a cover for affirmative action, it matters little where one is born. In fact one could argue that a urm immigrant will provide even greater diversity.</p>
<p>I think the point that the authors are trying to make is that on many “elite” college campuses the majority of black students are either first generation born children of recent immigrant parents or are recent immigrants to the U.S.(having been born out side of the U.S.) and not blacks with multi-generational roots in the U.S. (or in other words, the descendants of slaves in the U.S.).</p>
<p>While some may ask what difference this makes, because they are all black, while on the surface this is true, but the experiences have had vastly different for each group of people. Even if a black person immigrated from the carribean or africa 40 years ago in the late 1960's at the height of the civil rights era, their experience in the U.S. is going to be different from a black person living in the U.S. at the height of Jim Crow laws, segregation, or a black person in the U.S. whose experience has been one where they attended school in a one room school shack during part of the year becasue they had to go into the fields and work the harvest (very real for the same group of kids living in the U.S. during this time period). These 2 people will pass on vastly different frames of reference on to their children. </p>
<p>Mary Waters and R.G. Rumbaut both who have done extensive research on this very subject state:</p>
<p>For the children of black immigrants in the United States, they face a choice as to whether they will identify as black Americans or whether they will maintain an ethnic identity reflecting their parents' national origins. First-generation black immigrants to the United States have tended to distance themselves from American blacks, stressing their national origins and ethnic identities as Jamaican or Haitian or Trinidadian, but they also face overwhelming pressures in the United States to identify only as "blacks"(Waters).</p>
<p>Many Caribbean immigrants possess a wide variety of transferable skills which they the use once coming to the U.S. Some arrive with advanced educations and professional qualifications to take relatively well-paying jobs, which put them ahead of Native American blacks (e.g., Jamaican nurses). For their parents the concept of working hard, having a good work ethic and a strict discipline to succeed are they keys to upward mobility. In a continued quest toward upward economic mobility and to live the ”American dream” of having a middle class (defined as having at least one parent with a college degree or a professional or business position) status and the accompanying lifestyle which includes home ownership and a good education for their kids, students, whose parents have achieve the middle class status and doing well, are more likely to send their children to either a parochial or magnet schools and not the substandard neighborhood high schools(Waters). </p>
<p>the biggest dilemma facing children of black immigrants is the negative opinions voiced by their parents about American blacks as a result of the tension between foreign born and American-born blacks. This tension has helped to create a legacy of mutual stereotypes as immigrants see themselves as hard-working, ambitious, militant about their racial identities but not oversensitive or obsessed with race, and committed to education and family. They see black Americans as lazy, disorganized, obsessed with racial slights and barriers, with a disorganized and laissez faire attitude toward family life and child raising. American blacks describe the immigrants as arrogant, selfish, exploited in the workplace, oblivious to racial tensions and politics in the United States, and unfriendly and unwilling to have relations with black Americans. The first generation believes that their status as foreign-born blacks is higher than American blacks, and they tend to accentuate their identities as immigrants (Rumbaut)</p>
<p>""the cynical side of me would say that this also makes a nice way to boost diversity numbers while still admitting a highly competitive group of kids."</p>
<p>Cynical or not, it sounds very plausible to me.</p>
<p>It not only boosts diversity numbers, but actually provides diversity. I would be among the first to suggest that it would be a good thing for the prime customers (white, well-heeled U.S. students) to experience a larger number of low-income students of whatever race at prestige institutuions. But many of them have also never met Black students who come from well-to-do families, who are well-spoken, and carry their own sense of entitlement with them. It is a real eye-opener for the prime customers.</p>
<p>Similarly, having well-to-do Black students (wherever they come from) is a good thing for African-American students from poorer backgrounds to experience, to understand that there is more to the Black experience than what they know. It is similarly important for them to experience Black students who have grown up outside of this culture.</p>
<p>In other words, having wealthier, non-American-born Black students is a win-win all around. (But they are no substitute for having the experience of poorer American-born ones represented.) But having poor students of whatever race attend is expensive to a private prestige college. For the financial aid necessary to get one poor one to attend, they could provide "need-based" aid to 5-6 in the top quintile, and keep them from accepting "merit aid" awards at the Vanderbilts of the world.</p>
<p>Princeton has percentagewise fewer Black students today, of whatever background, than they did in 1972. When it comes to poorer ones, well less than half.</p>
<p>I found this thread interesting b/c of it's support for the notion that immigrant African students - - even if middle class and well prepared for college - - add to an institution's diversity. On other threads, posters complain that few of the black students are from poor backgrounds and, therefore, add little to "the mix."</p>
<p>Personally, I'm a bit of a cynic, I agree w/ Advant (post #2) think that admission of affluent int'l black students boost diversity while admitting kids w/ stimilar stats, $ and prep bkground to the affluent White student body. </p>
<p>I also agree w/ sub-conscious pref for int'l black students. We tend to view the foreign as exotic. Think of the thousands of $$ parents spend every year to send their kids on commun service projs abroad, as opposed to doing service work closer to home - - and for free. Somehow, digging ditches, hauling cinder block and housing w/o running warter are not just worthwhile, but worth paying for so long as the vol is in digging or hauling abroad. Not surprising that int'l students - - regardless of color - - have more cache than home grown kids.</p>
<p>Finally, I am constrained to admit that my kids, like many of their White peers, are a bit complacent, they lack the drive of kids who have had to struggle. The Prep and ABC kids who entered Ds' schs were uniformly dilligent, viewing educat as the route from poverty (much as my parents did). I guess that's the downside of a relative "soft" life.</p>
<p>As a child of Caribbean parents who went to an Ivy college, I can speak from the point of view of the students. I was raised in Harlem and went to a Harlem high school. When the buzz on the crosstown bus spread that we should all say we had not done the homework, whether it was the reading in English or the Math equations or the Chemistry assignment, I ignored such silly talk. There was less pressure on me to conform to silly, negative behavior, because I was not ostracized from the in-crowd for raising my hand in school and saying I'd done my homework. I behaved more according to the norms in my home than the norms in the in-crowds of cool kids. Unfortunately, that was not the case of a few of the next generation of children in our family, so we had to push them to study, instead of hanging with the cool kids. Being popular and being part of the in-crowd are much more imortant to native kids who've lived in an area all their lives than to new kids of immigrants moving in. I see it now with new immigrants, regardless of their race or backgrounds.</p>
<p>By the way, immigrant kids are often poorer than native-born children, but their immigrant parents spend a much larger percentage of the family's income on education. That is also true in my multi-generational immigrant family. It seems that with each new generation, a few of the families spend a smaller percenatge of their overall income on their children's education.</p>
<p>So let's talk to the kids and ask them what's happening. </p>
<p>The other factor is folks back home follow the immigrant kids' progress and expect them to do well. City kids face the problem of having neighbors who don't even know what schools they attend. I leave books and learning materials in the lobby, by the mailbox and in the laundry room of my apartment building, and it's always interesting to see which kids pick them up, and read.</p>
<p>I agree with mini that international black students certainly add diversity, in a unique and important way. I said "cynical", but that really wasn't the right word--it implies that I don't find international diversity important, which is decidedly untrue. I believe that we as a country most certainly need a greater understanding of our world neighbors, and to that end international diversity at colleges is quite important. </p>
<p>This survey is very interesting to me, because I find the so-called acheivement gap between races maddening and I desire a solution, yet education taps into so many complicated factors (wealth or lack thereof, race relations, differing social values, entrenched stereotypes on ALL sides...), that solutions are extremely flawed. Someone upthread mentioned charter schools, so I'll use them as an example. A charter school can offer motivated kids/families a much stronger education than their local school might have...but a charter school can't help kids who are afraid that showing academic interest will ostracize them from their current peer group, as IvyL details, nor can it help kids whose parents are very uninvolved--be it because of substance problems or because they work 3 minimum wage jobs to stay afloat. Every solution is at best imperfect.</p>
<p>Abena, you are quite incorrect.</p>
<p>The significance of term "African-American" is cultural rather than geographical. A caucasian North Africa, like an Algerian for exmple, or an Afrikanner from Capetown, nor a Yoruba from Nigeria, nor contemporary immigrant from the Caribbean islands are not African-Americans. African-American denotes the culture, ethnicity and history of the descandants of enslaved Americans who were subject to the de jure and de facto repression of Jim Crow segregation in the United States. Yes, there was slavery in the Caribbean, but the focus of the historic events is the condition of the former bondsmen in the United States.</p>
<p>Article from Harvard Crimson:</p>
<p>Many Blacks at Ivies Not From U.S.</p>