Adam Harris's new book, 'The State Must Provide,' highlights the implications of underfunding colleges that serve Black students.
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Indeed, colleges that educate large shares of low-income students and students of color tend to be less well-funded than those that educate white and wealthier students. Harris: When I was at Alabama A&M [a Historically Black College in Huntsville, Ala.] I had seen that the University of Alabama in Huntsville [where 72% of students receiving federal financial aid are white] had its new building and its pristine campus, and also learned that they had a larger endowment than Alabama A&M even though they had been open 75 years less time than Alabama A&M had.
MarketWatch: The book obviously goes back pretty far into American history and chronicles clearly all the ways that the government has inequitably funded colleges that educate mostly Black students. I’m wondering if in your mind, for lack of a better word, there’s an original sin, or some point where you feel like this pattern really started.
Harris: One of the things that I write in the book is that discrimination is a contortion — it bends and twists to fit within the confines that it’s given. Oklahoma is not the only example. In Arkansas [when the first Black student enrolls] they have all of his classes in the basement, away from white students, at separate times. States fought tooth and nail as a way to maintain their segregated laws and hold on to that culture of segregation.
“‘Resource stratification at these institutions, but also discrimination that’s baked into these institutions, is propulsive, and that won’t go away by itself.’” MarketWatch: The book tells the story not just of these schools and cases, but of higher education more broadly. What are the legacies of this that we see today in higher education?
Resource stratification at these institutions, but also discrimination that’s baked into these institutions, is propulsive, and that won’t go away by itself. States have sort of gotten complacent in their understanding that the federal government won’t enforce the laws it has on its books in terms of forcing states to eliminate those vestiges of discrimination in our higher education systems.
Yes, there may have been some leadership issues in some places at certain times, but you really have to look at the ways that discrimination manifests over time. And when it’s left to languish, the students end up suffering on the back end. MarketWatch: When people talk about higher education, they talk about it as something that’s really an engine for social and economic mobility, and I’m wondering, what do you think your book says about that?
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