<p>While this issue is " everywhere", it is not to the same everywhere. And even if a college is diverse there may be little interaction between the groups. I hear this about Northwestern ( our tour guide commented on it!) and Wash U, for instance? Any brave souls want to share?</p>
<p>Noticeable racial tensions? What do you mean? That seems extreme. Sure, every year we hear of a campus that has some issue pop up (a few students behaving badly or a student secretly creating an issue to stir the pot), but where are their “noticeable” tensions…that sounds like something out of West Side Story University Edition. </p>
<p>And what was that NU tour guide talking about?</p>
<p>(Young people are known to hear of an incident or two and suddenly they’re claiming that that is a frequent occurrence.)</p>
<p>I sort of understand you question - it’s why my kids weren’t allowed to apply to schools south of the Mason-Dixon line! As a generic response I would say most people are comfortable with what they know and what they grew up with which creates a natural division amongst groups - it can be economic differences, religious differences, racial differences, sexual preference differences, even geographic differences. Yes, there are exceptions and that is what you look for - will there be any “talk” if groups intermingle, if individuals intermingle, etc. </p>
<p>One of my daughters groups (at Northwestern) was heavily Asian, she was often the only caucasian female in the group and this carried over to her living in NYC for the last two years. They go out to Asian clubs where she’s one of the very few caucasians amongst a few hundred, no one cares. At one of her best friends birthday party last year there were all Asians, her, and a black man. The two of them looked at each other and laughed, accepting the fact that they were the “token” minorities.</p>
<p>I may be wrong, but I think your desire is that intermingling will not be unusual or noticed in any way at the college. Am I close? </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>WOW. Talk about being prejudiced…</p>
<p>Sit in on a class and look at who is sitting next to who. Visit the dining hall and look at the students at the tables. Pull up the social media sites for student groups you are interested in and look at the photos. </p>
<p>My own dd applied to 2 schools in the south, and tbh, I wondered about racial tolerance at those schools. Sorry, but as a mom of a minority student, I though about how she would have been recieved in those locations.</p>
<p><a href=“http://diverseeducation.com/article/12376/”>http://diverseeducation.com/article/12376/</a></p>
<p>My observation has been the larger a school and the more diverse the student body, the more insular the groups become at that school. When you go to a smaller school, or one that has less diversity, you tend to interact with more people outside your ‘group’ if for no other reason than there lack of alternatives. I have never heard small liberal arts students talking about groups of students sticking to their race or being racial divides on campus but I have heard it often mentioned at state schools with larger student bodies. (Percentage of students from various races were similar at the schools I am thinking of with the difference being the total number of students.)</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>At a school with less diversity, wouldn’t whether you interact with outside-your-group people depend on whether you are a member of the plurality or majority group there or a member of a smaller group there? For example, a white student at University of Vermont may have less outside-his/her-group interaction than a white student at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, University of Hawaii, or University of Texas - El Paso.</p>
<p>@ucbalumnus Yes. I have discussed this with some friends of mine who attended Howard and they viewed the same thing. In their experience the minority groups (though different than at many other schools) integrated very well and were received by the various people in the campus community. </p>
<p>The question wasn’t which school provided the largest pools of people different than you that you may be able to interact with, the question was which schools had the least racial tensions. </p>
<p>Interesting thought Pinnum, thanks. </p>
<p>And yes, GMTplus7, it is a prejudice based on years of experience. We are Jewish and live in NY and the last thing I wanted my kids to experience in college were kids who had never met a Jew and still thought they had horns, were cheap, ran the world, etc. You can poo-poo it, but anti-semitism does still exist in this country and it was not something I wanted my kids to experience for the first time while in college. Of course there are exceptions in some southern schools but it was a helpful blanket statement and allowed for some family discussions on the issue of anti-semitism and racism. By the way, any school they were applying to had to have some sort of Jewish organization on campus (Hillel, Chabad), regardless of how active it was as this was a pretty good indication of the number of Jewish students on campus and the administrations attitude.</p>
<p>I’ve observed that schools with less entrenched histories of racial animosity and where the socio-economic gap between students is less pronounced and where the whole “URM” discussion is less intense, racial animosities are less intense. Most of those kinds of school I would argue are actually in the South: Large non-flagship state schools like East Carolina, Georgia State, UAB, Memphis, Houston, Univ. of Louisville. For Black students, the worst are selective schools whose identities have long been associated with exclusivity and privilege-- where the sense of “you don’t belong” still smolders. Top tier schools come first to mind: Michigan, Berkeley, Duke. </p>
<p>@amtc , I fear that you might be the one with the prejudice and narrow-mindedness you claim to fear in southerners. I grew up in small-town Alabama. My father was a Baptist minister. We had an active Jewish community in our town and I had/have many Jewish friends. My big sister in my high school sorority (yeah, we had those) was Jewish. Another of my closest high school friends was Jewish. Most of my Jewish friends went on to the University of Alabama. I had several Jewish friends in my sorority (one of the larger houses which was not a Jewish sorority, but which several Jewish girls chose to join). There were active SDT and ZBT chapters and a large HIllel organizaiton. This was in the early to mid '80s.</p>
<p>You seem to have some rather archaic and incorrect opinions of Southern colleges that in no way bear out in The Real World. I don’t remember any instances of anti-semitism at all, on my campus or any other southern campus. I certainly don’t recall any anti-semitism in my hometown, where several Jewish families were among the more prominent members of the community. My hometown, pop. 30,000-40,000 is not even one you would have heard of, and is far from “progressive” socially. I am certain that it was not out of the norm with regard to it’s approach to Jewish/Gentile relations. </p>
<p>It’s sad to me when members of a particular group are so narrow in thought that they see only their own prejudices reflected in others. That can be the seed to plant prejudice where it didn’t exist before.</p>
<p>I just realized that my son’s current GF is Jewish, too. I have not even thought about there being a divide or issue there until you just questioned my prejudices (as a Southern woman). I don’t think of the GF as “Jewish”. She’s just a cute, smart girl from school. Until this moment, it had not occurred to me that she and her parents might be prejudiced against me. Now, see how that works? Dangerous game you play, targeting prejudice where none exists.</p>
<p>“For Black students, the worst are selective schools whose identities have long been associated with exclusivity and privilege-- where the sense of “you don’t belong” still smolders. Top tier schools come first to mind: Michigan, Berkeley, Duke.”</p>
<p>Are you refering to the University of California, Berkeley (Cal)? Of all the top tier public schools in the country, Cal is probably the most non-white friendly school of them all. Of course, you did specify the experience/perception of black students which is a subset of non-white. It is ironic that of all the schools 50+ that I have visited, Cal was the only school that had a perceptible anti-white feel to it. Odd how we can all see the same thing yet see things so differently.</p>
<br>
<br>
<p>Wow…you need to join the 21st century.</p>
<p>Yes, schools below the M-D line do have Hillels and they do have happy Jewish students. </p>
<p>My kids’ southern undergrad has a temple right on campus grounds (not OFF campus…ON campus…ON campus property)… and active Hillel.</p>
<p>Listen, I understand how things used to be. I’m Catholic and there was a time when southern folks had never met a Catholic…and they thought some odd things about us, too. Those things have changed - and certainly have changed at the larger, better ranking schools that are attracting kids from all-over.</p>
<p>@amtc</p>
<p>“it’s why my kids weren’t allowed to apply to schools south of the Mason-Dixon line!”</p>
<p>That is real sad. On another CC thread, there was a heated argument about anti-Semitism at Vassar of all places. I’ve not ever heard of anti-Semitism at any colleges south of the M-D Line (which would include schools like Georgetown, Johns Hopkins, U of Md, etc.). Kids are supposed to be exposed to new things in college, not to be surrounded by the same people they grew up with, IMHO.</p>
<p>@OldCat I can not disagree more. I have three different experiences of Duke, by proxy, all coming from a fairly wide spread of class years: </p>
<p>(1) I have a group of about six Duke alums that I am friends with, all of whom are black. I lived with one of them for two years. They love the school and really enjoyed their time at the school–never feeling out of place. They return for class reunions in Durham. They are all accomplished professionals with advanced degrees from Princeton, NYU-Sterns, Duke (law), and others.</p>
<p>(2) A friend of mine from high school attended Duke as a Native American and loved the school–never feeling out of place.</p>
<p>(3) My (Asian) girlfriend is a Duke Law grad and loved her time at the school–never feeling out of place–as is the case with all of the people I know from her class.</p>
<p>A black kid from my area made it only one semester at a college in Montana (not UM) despite being an athlete. N-word, pushed, spit on, beat up, the whole deal. </p>
<p>An Egyptian student at a different college near Wash U has encountered his share but not quite as extreme. He and his roommate (different minority) rarely go out. I guess it’s good that I am surprised by the behavior.</p>
<p>Cal Berkeley yes. Again, I am just speaking anecdotally and don’t have a close association with the university but I have visited and do know Blacks who’ve gone there. Imagine being an 18 Black kid just trying to be a college kid and being thrust into the center of such a contentious debate on diversity, inclusion, affirmative action. This article and the comments capture the flavor of the environment well I think: </p>
<p><a href=“Berkeley, UC system, look at improving campus climate”>http://www.dailycal.org/2014/05/08/berkeley-uc-system-look-improving-campus-climate/</a> </p>
<p>The flip side of this that I do think is positive, is that now that fewer Black students are able to get into Berkeley or want to go if the do get in, they are now clustering and doing well at other UC campuses (say UC Riverside) or taking advantage of lucrative out-of-state private school acceptances, rather than battling it out in the hyper-competitive and non-support environment at Berkeley.</p>
<p>Oh bother. Plenty of people won’t send their kids to school in California because the state is all fruits and nuts, Colorado because they are all potheads, the entire Midwest because it is nothing more than flyover country, the Northeast because they are all Waspy snobs, Texas because they believe themselves to be a nation state unto themselves, and the Southeast because of all the reasons the Jewish poster said and a lot more.</p>
<p>Everybody has biases yet nobody likes it when they think the stereotype is pointed at them. Most have a bias towards their own region. I have a lot of experience in four of those areas I describe above and used them to make a point. There is too much finger waggling 'round here.</p>
<p>I just threw Duke out as an example. Not saying it’s the worst of the worst, but is characteristic of that type of environment where Black students are thrust into a elite world where the socio-economic gaps are likely to be wide. Also the school has only been integrated for 50 years so it doesn’t even have the kind of long standing support systems that northern elite schools have had. My sense too is that the white upper income kids from the NE that gravitate to Duke have had little to no interaction with many Blacks, which generates all kinds of tension on college campuses. </p>