Styles Change, But the Problems Remain

At this weekend's minority alumni reunion, Edward Dawson '81 remembered the time that President Derek C. Bok fled from student activists in a squad car. A discussion about the University's investments in South Africa had turned into an angry crowd, and Bok felt threatened. "Students were so vociferous," Dawson said.

Dawson also remembers "rallies, demonstrations and intense discussions with visitors." One night, students sat talking to General Motors representatives for "hours and hours" about the company's investment in South Africa, he said.

In 1989, the protests look different. When the Minority Students Association raised the issue of minority faculty hiring last year, they published a report. And at a recent Harvard-Radcliffe Black Students Association (BSA) rally, administrators greeted the ralliers and asked them to come back again soon.

Styles change. But several Black students at the alumni gathering said in interviews that the deeper problems facing minority students have changed little since their years at Harvard. Overt and covert racism and the dearth of minority faculty were and are the major problems faced by Black students, said members of the Classes of 1981-1987 who were in Cambridge this weekend. The difference, according to the alumni, is Black undergraduates' growing focus on these issues.

One example of Black students' new efforts is the minority reunion itself. In 1985, the BSA, the Association of Black Radcliffe Women and the Afro-American Cultural Center planned the first minority alumni weekend. It took nearly a year to plan, says Anne C. Bailey '86, one of the organizers, "but by the time the weekend rolled around there was a lot of administration support." The reunion is now held every other year.

This year's returnees attended speeches and panels on subjects like "The Resurgence of Racism on College Campuses," "Teaching our History," and "The Declining Presence of Black Males on Campus," all topics that have recently come into the news. But the issues the panels discussed were not new, graduates said.

"People perceive the problems to be different, but they aren't" said Steven Clark '81.

Some things have also changed for the worse. Several alumni expressed concern about the shrinking number of Harvard students from who come from lower-income Black families and attributed alterations in the Harvard Black community to this shift.

Although they attended Harvard during a span of 10 years, all of the returning alumni said they encountered racism in one form or another.

Kevin Henderson '83 talked about examples of overt racism. In 1980, the year he moved into Winthrop House, the Black population in the house doubled, he said. "They knew we were coming," he said, and in response some people put racist posters up in his room.

Around the same time, racial violence across the country increased. Although racial incidents at universities did not receive national attention until 1986, Henderson says the BSA served as a forum for discussing and reacting to racism that existed in the early 1980s as well.

On the Harvard campus, threats were made against the then-president of the BSA, Henderson said. And Bailey, who came to Harvard in 1982, says that by that time, most Black students had friends at other schools where there were also threats of violence.

Threats of violence were only the tip of the iceberg. The Crimson caused controversy in 1981 when it published an editorial about a prison riot in Arizona. Although none of the rioters were Black, a picture of two Black Harvard students with bars superimposed over their faces appeared next to the editorial, said Clark. When the students threatened to sue, The Crimson settled the matter by printing a retraction and agreeing to capitalize the word "Black."

Throughout the decade, Black students have also faced less explicit racism. They may find their credentials questioned, Clark said, by students who believe minority students are accepted to Harvard only because of their race. "They never question the athletes or the legacies," he said.

And those Black students who chose to study Black history and literature found that fellow students doubted both their competence and the legitimacy of the field.

Judith Jackson '87 said she was discouraged from taking courses in Afro-American Studies because the courses were "not challenging enough."

"That's both racist and patronizing," Jackson said, "They're making value judgements about the discipline."

And how did she respond? "I took Afro-Am courses anyway," she said.

Like Clark, Jackson said she noticed discrepancies in the way minorities and other distinguishable groups were treated. Her first-year boyfriend was a basketball player, she said. And he often ate at the Union at special times with the team. She compared these team dinners with complaints that Black students "segregate themselves" by sitting together in the dining halls.

Noting that minorities but not athletes are criticized for sitting together, Jackson said people should attack neither them nor anyone else for eating with whom they choose. "I said that we should be able to sit together just like anybody else," she said. "People who want to sit together can sit together."

Jackson said she had some problems with covert racism in her first rooming group. Since she came from a primarily white high school, Jackson said, "I was probably more accustomed to being with [my roommates] than they were to being with me."

She blames the problems her rooming group had on the first-year stress of being placed in a room with strangers, but feels these normal problems were accentuated by her race.

In contrast, Felicia D. Green '83 said she did not have any problems getting along with white students. Her friendships with white students turned out to be a problem in itself however, she said. "I was told I should fraternize with my own kind" by some other Black students, she said.

Both Green and Jackson rejected that logic. "You don't accept that one group of people can never be your friends," Green said. "You have to make the effort and it has to be sincere."

Jackson said she was involved in minority groups as well as other activities. "I think that I wouldn't have passed up the opportunity to do both," she said.

But for all of the graduates, the BSA was a place to discuss Black life on campus. And several alumni, particularly those from the earlier years, emphasized that the BSA also provided them with a sense of community.

Dawson was struck by the closeness of the minority community in his Harvard years. "When I got here as a freshman in 1977, the things that stuck out most for me were the cohesiveness of the minority community at that time," he said. "It was a very supportive environment."

And "As I moved on," Dawson said, "I began to fill the role that others had filled for me."

But there is less unity among Black students today, Clark said. "When I was a [freshperson in 1977], there seemed to be a greater sense of unity among the Black students," he says. Stressing that he is "not an isolationist," he noted, however, that the campus is more fragmented now. "The Black students don't seem to be connected," he said.

Dawson and other alumni attributed the change in part to the fact that more of today's minority students come from suburban and middle- or upper-middle-class families.

Jackson, who identified herself as upper-middle class, also commented on this trend toward higher-income Black students. "Oh, sure, and that's why Harvard admitted me. They didn't have to take a risk on me...We're the least risky of the candidates that they admit," she said.

Dawson said one explanation for the trend towards upper-income families is that there are fewer social pressures on a student from that environment. "It's a lot easier to find the suburban upper-middle-class minority student," he explained.

Coming to Harvard is "less of a reach" for middle-income students, Dawson added, because they--unlike students from poorer families--are more likely to be informed that colleges will give need-based scholarships.

Furthermore, lower-income students who did come to Harvard faced additional pressures. Green said she came from a background that made coming through Harvard difficult. Her father attended school through eighth grade, and her mother dropped out to marry him. Her sister went to Kentucky State and earned a Masters degree, but Green was the first in her family to go to a prestigious Ivy League school and to attend law school.

"I would not have put my finger on it at the time," she said, but her background gave her unique problems to face. Coming to Harvard she was for the first time faced with peers who could afford "expensive clothing and going out to eat."

Black students also lack role models because of a longstanding dearth of minority faculty members. Black student protestors in 1969 demanded more Black faculty members, and students protested the same problem as recently as yesterday. The problem is a national one, in part because a disproportionately small number of Black students enter Ph.D. programs.

But alumni argued that Harvard could help solve the problem by encouraging more Black undergraduates to go into higher education and by making more of an effort to hire Blacks for junior and senior faculty posts.

Bailey questioned the lack of pre-education tutors in the houses, especially because there are pre-med, pre-law, and pre-business tutors. "You're not going to get that faculty if you're not promoting it from the student body right here," she said.

Many attribute the lack of Black junior faculty members to search committee members' failure to look beyond traditionally white schools for young academics. These critics say that white professors ask colleagues at other schools, who are generally white also, for recommendations, and do not look elsewhere. The problem of minority hiring is self-perpetuating.

Green said that Harvard is not to blame for the problem. "To scream about why there aren't professors is foolish," she said.

Nonetheless, she and Dawson said that Harvard should take the lead in minority hiring. "Harvard has a valuable role to play in training minorities for the future," he said.

Since there are few faculty role models, Black alumni have a responsibility to reach out to undergraduates, Green said. "By the time you are in a position to offer advice, "you're sufficiently old that you've forgotten what it's like to be an undergraduate," said Green. Undergraduates "don't have the courage or initiative to up and call," she said.

Black college graduates also have a responsibility to go out and actively encourage children, Green said, especially inner-city minority children.

"When the kid asks what do I do instead of drugs, you need to have a positive answer," she said. "Nobody thinks to say what resources can we offer to poor inner-city kids."

All children need attention and advice if they are to succeed later, she said. "The training takes because the kid is told early on 'this is what you have to do.'"

Harvard's Black alumni often feel a special sense of leadership duties. "There is a tradition at Harvard that you have a special responsibility," Clark said.

Extra responsibilities, extra problems with roommates, extra needs to prove their abilities--are they enough to make Black students who have come through Harvard wish they had gone elsewhere?

Bailey said that Black life at Harvard should not be construed as entirely negative. "There were positive issues," she said, pointing to the success of the alumni conference.

"Having been away from Harvard, I look back at my years here fondly," said Dawson.

And Green said, "To me Harvard was a true university in that it gave me a universe."