More than a quarter - and in some cases nearly half - of black students at selective American colleges and universities are first- or second-generation immigrants, according to a new study appearing in the February issue of the American Journal of Education. Some sociologists say the data throw into question the criteria and purpose behind many education-related affirmative action programs as well as the way diversity is often presented at American universities.
Camille Charles, assistant professor of sociology at the University of Pennsylvania and an associate director of the school's Center for Africana Studies; Douglas Massey, professor of sociology at Princeton; and Margarita Mooney and Kimberly C. Torres, postdoctoral fellows at Princeton's Office of Population Research, authored the study, titled "Black Immigrants and Black Natives Attending Selective Colleges and Universities in the United States."
"If you're a purist, then you'll think that (this discovery) is not in the spirit of affirmative action. But if you're a diversity purist, and your idea is to expose everybody to as many different kinds of people as possible, then you'll think this is great," Charles told the Chronicle of Higher Education in an article appearing this week.
The report is based on data from a larger project, the National Longitudinal Survey of Freshmen, which is sponsored by the Mellon Foundation and led by researchers at Princeton. The survey looked at 1,051 black freshmen enrolled at 28 selective colleges in 1999. Of those, 27 percent were first- or second-generation immigrants, largely from the Caribbean or Ghana -more than twice the national average of 13 percent for all black Americans aged 18 to 19.
The number climbed sharply when the schools in question were narrowed to the most selective. At the four Ivy League schools included in the survey (Penn, Princeton, Yale and Columbia), 41 percent of black students were first- or second-generation immigrants.
The study's authors noted that once immigrant black students are enrolled in college, their performances do not differ from those whose families have a longer history in the United States. They did, however, find that immigrant blacks have distinct advantages over non-immigrants in gaining acceptance to selective colleges and universities, including statistically higher SAT scores, higher attendance of private schools and a better likelihood that one or both parents graduated from college. "Immigrants (also) generally are going to have a heightened concern for upward mobility," Charles told the Chronicle.
Professor of Education Kenneth Wong said the difference in parents' college attendance is of particular significance. "If you have generations and generations without educational access, such as the descendents of slaves, then they are put at a severe disadvantage. Their whole social support networks are going to be very different," he said. "If their parents are college graduates, it's likely the parents want their children to exceed expectations. They can have that higher education and create opportunities," he said.
Wong said the clearest implications of the report lie in the public policy arena, and he recommended reforming primary education to create advantageous environments from which non-immigrant blacks can have far better access to college.
"We usually just look at African Americans as a category of student ... We just check the box as African-American or black," Wong said. "The same applies to other racial or ethnic groups - Asian, we just check the box. Latino, we just check the box. Only in recent years have we begun to differentiate the increasing diversity of broader society and the college population."
