Race and Class Matters at an Elite College

10 Meeting the Challenges of Diversity

10 Meeting the Challenges of Diversity L ike many elite colleges and universities, Amherst is going to great lengths and expense to identify and attract to campus talented students who are not affluent and white. Its efforts are directed at offering opportunities for social and economic mobility to these students, at providing some measure of social equity. Bringing a diverse group of students to campus also creates opportunities for all students to have their previous notions of race and class challenged, and their understandings deepened, through interactions with one another. Opportunities abound. What actually happens? In following 58 students, black and white, affluent and lower-income, through their first year at Amherst, I was able to get and, hopefully, give a sense of what they experienced, with a focus on these two questions: what were the specific challenges that arose for these students of different races and classes in being part of a diverse community, and what did students actually learn from the diversity around them? Severalmajorconclusionscanbedrawnfromthisstudy.Lower-income and/or black students faced many more challenges than affluent whites in becoming part of a predominantly affluent white academic community , but their reports on how the year had gone indicated that most had quite positive feelings about their experience on campus and had been able to deal effectively with the difficulties that confronted them. If we look at students’ self-reports at the end of their first year in regard to their academic, social, and psychological well-being and adjustment, students 170 / Chapter 10 from all four groups were remarkably similar in their favorable descriptions of their experience. As for the learning that occurred from diversity, the outcomes were variable . On the whole, important learning did take place, but some students gained much more from living in a diverse community than others. Some students got to know students of different races and classes well; others did not. In earlier chapters, findings were presented separately for the learning that occurred about race and class. When those figures are combined, 30% of students reported changes in the way they saw people of both different races and classes as a result of living in a diverse community, and an additional 32% reported having learned something about people of either other races or other classes from this experience.1 Of the remaining 38% of the students, just over half felt that they had gained something from the classroom comments of peers who differed from them in race and class. These findings are positive. That said, given the potential that existed for learning from one another, it seems fair to add that much potential went unrealized.2 Let us turn now to summarizing in more detail both the challenges students faced and the learning that took place. Challenges for Blacks Black students faced a variety of challenges that are likely faced by black students at other predominantly white campuses.3 Many of these issues were not pervasive but presented themselves on occasion: racial stereotyping, comments perceived to be racially offensive or “ignorant,” being made the targets of racial jokes (e.g., about affirmative action) that went too far and became insulting. The presence of such attitudes and behavior, however infrequent, produced a degree of distrust and wariness for many black students about the kinds of antiblack sentiments whites might harbor. As a minority, blacks were constantly in the position of having to break into groups of whites. This was something some black students were completely comfortable doing, but others had anxieties about whether they would face prejudice or rejection, and had to overcome stereotypes of whites as racist , rich, and unconcerned about blacks. When racial issues were under discussion in the classroom, eyes often turned toward blacks to provide “the black” perspective, as if a single black perspective existed. Black students were expected to educate whites. When some blacks formed close friendships with other blacks and ate together in the dining hall, whites took notice, and some were critical of blacks for self-segregating, while groups of whites socializing or eating together went unremarked upon. Many blacks felt that they carried the burden of being representatives of their race. Affirmative action has been questioned from many quarters on Meeting the Challenges of Diversity / 171 the grounds of merit and fairness, and whether diversity goals have given students with weaker academic records the places that would...