In last week’s oral arguments before the Supreme Court in the Fisher v. University of Texas case, Justice Antonin Scalia stunned many when he seemed to suggest that black students should go to “lesser” schools.
[Related: The Common Black College Application: What You Need to Know]
Widely assailed for what some saw as racist rhetoric, including Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, who was quoted as saying “the only difference between the ideas endorsed by Scalia and Trump is that Scalia has a robe and a lifetime appointment.†Scalia’s comments apparently alluded to historically black colleges.
It is somewhat ironic that the Supreme Court Justice would utter his comments the day before President Obama would sign the Every Student Succeeds Act into law. Calling it a civil rights law, the president authorized the latest iteration of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, originally signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson. The law’s intent was to create equal educational opportunity–particularly for students who had been denied it.
But despite the progress made under the Obama administration, there remains gross inequity in education that falls stubbornly along racial lines. And that’s why we still need affirmative action at schools like the University of Texas, and we still need HBCUs.
New York Times writer and reporter Nikole Hannah-Jones wrote so powerfully about the work of Xavier College, an HBCU that sends more black students to medical school than any other school in the nation. In her piece, she describes how Xavier admitted a student who graduated second in his class, yet struggled at Xavier because of how poorly his Chicago high school had prepared him. The piece explains in detail how Xavier took a bright, motivated, but under-prepared student, and supported him until he succeeded–which for this student meant being accepted to medical school.
Is Xavier a “lesser†school?
The only thing “lesser†here is the educational preparation the vast majority of black students receive in this country. That needs to change now, and if ESSA can be implemented thoughtfully and with the best interests of the country in mind, then the day will soon come when  all students in the U.S.–regardless of zip code or neighborhood or school district–will receive a world-class education that prepares them for college or the workplace without remediation.
Here’s more about the value of historically black colleges—from Earl G. Graves Sr., a graduate of Morgan State University, founder of Black Enterprise, and its chairman and publisher. –RWG
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Black Enterprise, Publishers Page, November 2015
Earlier this month, I could not help being moved to tears by the overwhelming experience of participating in the ribbon-cutting ceremony and tour of the $72 million Morgan Business Center, home of the brand-new Earl G. Graves School of Business and Management at Morgan State University in Baltimore, Maryland.
The state-of-the-art facility, completed under the administration of MSU President David Wilson, fe
atures a Center for Innovation, computer labs, digitally-enabled classrooms, a real-time capital markets stock trading center, seminar rooms, and a 299-person-capacity auditorium that includes an 80-person lecture hall. This building also houses a demonstration kitchen and a block of 10 functional hotel rooms for the business school’s hospitality management program. (I and other Graves family members enjoyed the honor of being the very first guests in these rooms.) The Graves School of Business, originally named in 2005, houses nine undergraduate majors, including entrepreneurship, finance, information systems, and management, as well as four master’s level programs and courses for doctorates in business administration.The Graves School is fully accredited by The Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business International, an accreditation that less than 5% of business programs in the world have received. In short, it is equipped not only to be a great HBCU business school, but a great business school, period. The Morgan Business Center would be a treasured jewel on virtually any college campus in America.
It is impossible for me to translate the massive emotional impact of everything I saw during my tour of this sparkling facility into mere words. In order to appreciate it, you have to consider my journey. In 1953–62 years ago–I arrived from Brooklyn as an 18-year-old freshman to then-Morgan State College–with nothing more than a duffel bag and $15 in my pocket. To witness the opening of this amazing new facility, accompanied by children and grandchildren (including my namesakes and Black Enterprise CEO Earl Graves Jr., and his son Earl Graves III), is a miraculous manifestation of my faith in and loyalty to not only Morgan, but all HBCUs. I am as proud of the progress and evolution of my beloved alma mater as I am of the evolution from the single-magazine publishing company I founded in 1970 to the digitally-focused, multi-platform national events and media company it is today.
There are those, including too many black people, who are quick to advance the idea that HBCUs are no longer necessary. Simply put, they are dead wrong. As they have for decades, HBCUs continue to outperform majority institutions in producing black graduates in a range of key professions, despite less financial resources and other support. For example, Xavier University in New Orleans, an HBCU with just a few thousand students, leads the nation in black graduates who complete medical school.
Today, HBCUs are rising to the challenge of providing desperately needed talent for the pipeline into the technologies; in Silicon Valley and beyond, that are driving global industry and upon which America’s economic competitiveness depends. That talent was showcased at the inaugural Black Enterprise TechConneXt Summit in Santa Clara, California, in October, where students from five HBCUs–Spelman, Johnson C. Smith, Howard, Southern, and Morgan–competed in our BE Smart hackathon (don’t ask me to explain it!) to design a money management app for college students. The demand for diverse talent needed to fill critical technology jobs and drive innovation cannot be satisfied without HBCUs.
HBCUs–and the students they educate–are deserving of our nation’s support. HBCUs are still the solution to the challenge of preparing the black professionals and business leaders America needs to remain globally competitive. Schools like my alma mater, Morgan State University, continue to rise to the challenge. My family and I could not be more grateful to be part of that rich legacy.