The Greater Metropolitan Denver Ministerial Alliance met recently to discuss the situation of black students at the University of Colorado. I was happy to see this happen; their silence in the face of past stories of abuse, physical violence on the black student community at CU was mystifying. They agreed to work towards increasing the numbers of black students admitted to CU, as well as improving the school’s relationship with minority students.
My children attended CU; like other blacks, they were harassed, ostracized and maligned by the majority whites. I was surprised by CU’s inability or unwillingness to critique itself. The university made no attempt to ameliorate the deplorable conditions for black students.
Few people know the facts about CU’s admission of black kids. The highest enrollment was 1.77 percent in 1999; now it’s 400 blacks out of a 24,600 student body, or 1.5 percent, and just 1.2 percent of the graduate student body. By comparison, 3.8 percent of Colorado is black, according to the U.S. Census.
At similar public schools in Florida, Texas, and California, affirmative action policy was replaced by admission of the top 10 percent from each high school. Colorado’s statistics reveal we’re still shackled to old paradigms and prejudices. Admission authorities know exactly what they’re doing. From the large number of black athletes at the school, one concludes they’re preferred to black scholars. If half the effort to attract black athletes was expended recruiting black scholars, we wouldn’t be in the present dilemma. The implication of too few black undergraduates students is that we have few good black teachers, engineers, pharmacists, lawyers and nurses. Black patients often ask me for referral to black doctors; sadly, we only have a handful. For years, the CU medical school has had very few black students; in addition, most postdoctoral programs have few black trainees. Don’t go looking for black surgeons, cardiologists, gynecologists or psychiatrists; they’re an endangered species.
The philosophical and practical remedies for CU must begin with the university genuinely feeling it is part of the community it serves – a community that must include children of color. Through community outreach, university authorities must descend from their ivory tower to actually work with high schools to prepare children for admission to CU and other schools. Community College of Denver has formed partnerships with Denver Public Schools to help bridge minority kids’ academic problems. This year CU-Denver began engaging several DPS schools. This, in addition to the Blue Ribbon panel to examine race matters at CU, means that Colorado’s flagship school intends to play a more active role in minority education.
Like athletic departments, they must scout, and always plan, not for a couple of years, but for decades to come. This entails involvement in elementary, middle and high schools in the process of selecting, promoting and encouraging future collegians. I have often suggested CU and other schools support black honor students; they often find themselves buffeted by indifference towards academics.
By heaping all the blame on CU alone, black leaders do the community a disservice. We can’t afford the silence that has blanketed our land for decades; it makes everyone believe that all is well. It’s not. The activity of black leaders must be visible, vocal and continuous. Some very simple and imminently doable steps include: rejecting all forms of abuse and discrimination of black students in Boulder; supporting academic leaders in our community, such as the new principal at Denver’s Montbello High School, Antwan Wilson; and getting parents to play a more active role in their kids’ schools.
They must not wait until schools are drowning in trouble and the morass of petty bureaucracy. Let’s go to them before then, to offer solace and support. And in doing so, let’s involve children’s families. As we turn our gaze to the future, we hope a new chapter has been opened by a university willing to engage; a black leadership that’s now on board; and a new president, Hank Brown, who seems wiser and more broad-minded than his predecessors.
Pius Kamau of Aurora is a thoracic and general surgeon. He was born and raised in Kenya and immigrated to the U.S. in 1971. His column appears on alternate Thursdays.
