August 18, 2017 • 44 mins
Historically black colleges and universities serve an important purpose in creating equal opportunity - and the majority of students on HBCU campuses identify as women. E&B unpack why this matters - especially for women of color.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, this is Emily and this is Bridget and you're
listening to stuff mom never told you. And today we're
talking about a topic that, if you know me, it's
something that's very near and dear to my heart, much
(00:25):
like all of our topics. Um. So many of you
know that I got my start in my career teaching
at a university here in Washington, d C. Called Howard
UM and Howard, if you don't know, is a very
well known historically black college. A lot of people when
I when I say this, they say, what's an HBCU
and HBCUs were in the news recently back in Debruary,
(00:46):
when Betsy devas the head of the Department of Education,
she called historically black college quote pioneers of school choice
not great wording. Twitter really had a field day with this,
And if you're wondering why that is, you know you
might be thinking, oh, school choice, that sounds great, just
sound good. It sounds a very positive, it's a very
it's a very um loving reimaginating of what the situation
(01:10):
actually is the reason why Twitter had a field day
with her comments is because her comments that HBCUs are
pioneers of school choice totally overlooks the fact that HBCUs
were founded because things like slavery and Jim Crow era
segregation basically meant that black students had zero choice, and
so HBCUs were founded to give students choice. So lifting
(01:31):
them up as pioneers of choice is not really the
best thing to do. It's a historical reimagining to sort
of back up her preference for now in today's era,
having more charter schools around for students to apparently have choice. Now,
we can't get into that issue today because it is
a thorny one. So put a bookmark in charter schools
(01:52):
later conversation. But um, I think today is a great
opportunity for us to under stand and unpack the historical
role of HBCUs, how they relate to gender, and their
relevance still today. Totally so HBCUs they are super relevant. UM,
(02:13):
A lot of people who a lot of non black
people who don't really have um an intimate similiarity with them.
A lot of times their first jury point into HBCUs
is a very very good show no longer on TV,
but was a big staple in my household called a
Different World, UM that took place in a fictional HBCU
in Virginia, which was a mixture of two real hbcusum,
(02:36):
Howard University in d C and Spellman University in Atlanta,
which is a women's college. Um. And a lot of
folks know, you know, that's their first foray into what
an HBCUs. There was a nineties spinoff, right it was.
It was a spinoff of the Cosby Show. Although fu
Bill Cosby right again, bookmark of that one for later definitely. Um,
(02:57):
but no, it's it's a good thing for I think
older Milan Nails like ourselves that we might have first
stumbled upon that, um, that terminology. But bridget what is
a historically black college and university exactly? So an HPCU
is pretty much exactly what it sounds like. They're the
only institutions in the US that were created for the
express purpose of educating black citizens, and they were really
(03:18):
established a few decades after the Civil War until around
nineteen sixty four. Many were started with the federal government's
Freedmen's Bureau with assistance from whites, primarily abolitionist missionaries and
northern philanthropists who either wanted to christianize blacks and turn
them into you know, very religious people or train them
for industrial enterprises. UM. And so you really see a
(03:39):
lot of HBCUs being connected with religion UM or some
sort of a philanthropic mission. And so today we have
around a hundred and seven HBCUs in the US and
the virgin Islands. UM. It's a it's a thing. It's
a burgeoning thing. UM. Probably the most well known UH
is Spellman, which is the women's college in Atlanta. It's
(04:00):
usually the number one in the rankings. UM. Other big
well known HBCUs or Howard University here in d C.
At Hampton University which is in Virginia, which is where
my brother went. UM North Carolina A and T University
in North Carolina. Awesome. And I think it's important to
note that while those colleges and universities were historically created
(04:22):
in an era when Black Americans were not were barred
were legally barred from entering higher institutions of higher education elsewhere,
today people of all races are attending historically black colleges
and universities as well. So, according to Pew the Pew
Center for Research, the percentage of HBCU students who were
(04:43):
either white, Hispanic Asian or Pacific Island or Native American
was seventeen percent in two thousand fifteen, up from in
nine eighty. Hispanic students in particular seem to be finding
a new appeal, I would say, in the historically black
college and universities, because they, in particular Hispanics have seen
(05:04):
their overall shares grow on HBCU campuses, increasing from one
point six to four point six two and fourteen. So
one of the things I loved UM and teaching at
Howard for so long was that people would always say,
you know, are you just is it just black folks
teaching black students? And there certainly are more black faculty
and more black students than other places I've taught, but
(05:26):
it's really just super diverse. So we had lots of
Latino students, lots of Caribbean students, lots of some white students, UM,
we had European exchange students. We had really such a
healthy mix of all different kinds of students who were
all from different cultures and brought those cultures into the classroom.
And this really kind of interesting, you know, patchwork of
class So it's great. I think there's a specific value
(05:49):
to that environment that attracts a lot of racial minorities
to these institutions, which I can totally understand as opposed
to the alternative p w I s which I learned
through research today. I was like, what the heck is
a p w I which is a predominantly white institution?
Is that right? Right? So isn't that like the world
(06:10):
or at least the United States that we live in?
And I feel like identifying that and sort of knowing
what that name really acronym stands for as a healthy
reminder that, oh, it's not the norm versus the minority.
There's also a term for p w E s, or
institutions of higher education that are dominated by white people exactly. UM.
And so I just for full disclosure, I did not
(06:32):
attend an HBCU. My my brother did. I applied to
some that I did not. UM, But some of the
reasons that folks do choose hbc u s over p
w I s are pretty much exactly what you think,
sort of Anecdotally, many students have reported that they want
to feel a sense of camaraderie with other black students
and other students of color, UM, and they want the
chance to feel really supported and understood by you know,
(06:55):
black professors, professors of color, um black administrators, because they
feel like they're going to be getting an experience that
they that they can really kind of connect with, and
so they're looking for that kind of connection. I mean,
think about college, it's such an identity forming time in
a young adults life. Um, for those of you who
did go to college, not everybody does that. My brother,
for instance, went straight into the military. But that age
(07:17):
brange of the average or the sort of typical college
student eighteen to what that's a really formative time in
your life to figure out who you are, what you
believe in, and who you who you want to become.
So I love this quote from an article on her
campus from Noel, a former student at Savannah State University,
(07:37):
which is an hbc where she says, quote, there's like
a sense of unity. Everyone is so friendly and we're
all able to kind of come together and share with
each other the fact that we all know what it's
like to be black. By attending an HBCU, I was
able to get an education that was so relevant to
my life as an African American student. Attending Peter buys
(08:00):
all my life. It always seemed like it was abnormal
to learn about my own culture and class, but my
HBCU normalized this and made me feel like I got
a more well rounded education. I love the being. That
quote really sums it all up, and her anecdotal just
you know, experience of what she felt is completely backed
(08:21):
up by their research, according to the Journal of Black Psychology. There,
they did a study all around black students who did
not grow up around other black people, and they felt
that they're far more likely to choose schools for race
related reasons over other reasons like financial or school ranking,
and that these reasons are totally totally become part of
their foundational concept of who they are. This is just
(08:42):
a summary of their findings. A total of a hundred
nine undergraduate students attending an HBCU completed questionnaires assessing their
race related reasons for choosing the university and their intention
to engage in race related activities, as well as individual
difference measures. Students with less contact with other blacks growing
up or more central racial identities were more likely to
(09:03):
cite race related reasons for HBCU college choice. Furthermore, lack
of contact and higher racial centrality predicted greater intention to
engage in behaviors to develop racial identity e g. Race
oriented clubs and personal reading. So basically, if you are
someone who is thirsting for a connection to black culture,
black life, black identity, that is going to be a
(09:25):
critical reason why you choose an HBCU, even when measured
up against things like how expensive the college is or
how well the college is ranked in the rankings. I
think all of us, at one point or another have
experienced what it feels like to be other in one
room or another. Imagine living your entire childhood feeling like
the only kid of a certain race or one of
(09:46):
very few in your whole community. Then to go on
to college and have the opportunity to really discover who
you are, not in a minority environment, but you know,
in a place where who you are is normalized. That's
such a value luable thing. And it reminds me actually
of um Barack Obama's book Dreams of My Father, which
is all about an identity quest. Okay, the whole book
(10:08):
is like a young Barack Obama recently graduated, figuring out
who he is by sort of exploring the lives of
his of his ancestors and I believe he was. I
believe he was commissioned to write that book while in
law school. So it just reminds me of like that
kind of identity quest that we're thirsting for at different
times in our lives. How important it must be for
(10:29):
Black Americans in particular to have an HBCU environment to
do that in Well, that's exactly right. So according to
the research, what you're saying is right on the money.
According to Gallup, black graduates of historically black colleges and
universities are significantly more likely to have felt supported while
in college and to be thriving afterwards and their black
peers who graduated from p wise. According to the newest
(10:51):
data from an ongoing Gallop per Due University study, the survey,
which is the largest of its kind, collected data from
fifty college alumni over two years and an attempt to
measure their colleges are doing enough to help students well
being in life after they graduate UM and so really,
the study did a deep dive on these different elements
of success financial success, whether they felt supported, whether they
(11:12):
felt supported in college which is after college, and according
to this study, UM, they're they're feeling great. The difference
is real too. I mean, the numbers here are jarring.
While twenty nine percent of Black graduates who did not
attend in HBCU said they were quote thriving in financial
(11:33):
well being, fifty one percent of black HBCU graduates reported
doing so. So this is two years after college. I
don't know who was financially thriving two years after college
because it wasn't me but a girl, But of of
of Black Americans or Black students who went to HBCU
said they were compared to only thirty or you know,
(11:55):
almost thirty percent of students elsewhere. And I think a
lot of that we're going to unpack the further later.
But cost at HBCUs is a significant benefit as well.
If what I'm reading is correct, and and we're going
to unpack that further, it looks like, um, the tuition
rates for a top tier education are way lower in across,
(12:18):
not necessarily in every case, but are pretty affordable at
HBCUs for the quality of education you're getting. Yeah, I
think we should definitely dive more into that and some
of the reasons why these colleges can be so useful.
After we take a quick break and we're back, and
(12:40):
let's spend some time talking about why some folks are
choosing HBCUs Because a lot of people might be asking,
while it's twenty seventeen, are historically black colleges and universities
even so needed or relevant? And it's a fair thing
to ask, Bridget because the numbers have been declining. If
you look at the percentage of Black students attending college,
(13:00):
So in all of the Black Americans who were going
to a degree granting institution, of all of them, about
seventeen percent we're choosing HBCUs. By two thousand, that share,
that percentage had declined to percent and in the last
time that the Pew Research measured this fact, the number
(13:21):
was down to nine percent. So while it looks like
the percentage has definitely shifted over time, I want to
highlight that the number of people overall attending colleges and universities.
If you think about the flexibility of online degree granting
institutions and the kinds of flexible needs for the average
college student nowadays, it's possible that that percentage is shrinking
(13:44):
because more African American students are going to college overall. Yeah,
and think about the different opportunities that that black folkses
didn't have before. Right, So exactly if you have more opportunities,
more more chances to go to different kinds of school,
did you want to say school choice, more skilled choice, Bridge,
that's a topic. I'll talk a girl you don't even know.
(14:05):
I think Bridget just said she's pro school choice. Okay,
sorry I interrupted you, but I had to call that
was that was? And so it's it's cool to see
these numbers, even though they're declining overall. It's cool to
see that enrollment in hbc IS actually has risen. Right,
So the percentages have gone down, but that can be
(14:27):
a really misleading fact that's used to discredit the relevance
of HBCU. So don't let those percentages be used to
mislead you, because in reality, enrollment at HBCUs, including enrollment
from non black students, has risen overall. So the n
c e S figures have shown that in the fall
(14:47):
of two thousan fifteen, the combined total enrollment of all
HBCUs was two hundred thousand, compared with only two hundred
and thirty four thousand and nineteen eighty. There's also some
new findings that historically black colleges and universities have seen
a spike in enrollment due in part to the Black
Lives Matter movement and it increased public visibility around racial
(15:10):
tension in America. Totally. I mean that completely jives with
what I've seen sort of anecdotally. Um, particularly at Howard
they are like, if you know anything about Howard, you
know their students are super, super civically engaged. These are
the kinds of students when I talked there, that were
coming up to me at the end of class saying,
Professor Todd, will you sign our petition to get the
(15:30):
university to stop using Kimberly Clark brand toilet paper products
because they found private prisons. You know, stuff that I
just wasn't doing when I was a student. Oh, I know,
I missed being called that so much. Sometimes I'll call
you professor. Sometimes I say that in my head just
to make myself feel better. Um. But and honestly, you
remember this being in the news kind of recently. UM.
(15:51):
I think last year the actress Taraji p Henson, who
plays Cookie on Empire, she told came forward with the
story of her son, who I think was that U
C l A was pulled over and she felt like
it would have better racial profiling incident. And she said that,
you know, I don't pay thousands upon thousands of dollars,
said my son to this great school in l A
for him to get racially profile, And so she I
(16:12):
don't know if she ended up actually doing it, but
she said that she was going to pull him from
u C. L A and put him into Howard because
she thought Howard would be a safer place for him.
And so I cannot speak for whether or not he
would have a less of a chance having some sort
of negative police interaction driving around the streets of d
C versus u C. L A. But that was certainly
how she felt. So certainly, this, this, this more visibility
(16:33):
of the movement for black lives has made HBC's you know,
push them into the forth front in a way like
they have never been, especially from a parents perspective. I
think it, you know, I think the police brutality, the
visibility around police brutality, which has been an issue for
much longer than uh the mainstream media has made it
an issue or made it a priority. Um, But I
(16:55):
think the more we see what's happening, it's totally rational
for parents to be concerned and to seek out the
kind of camaraderie that comes with a more diverse community
on campus. And this is true. The numbers bear this
out as well. In an article on PBS from October
twos sixteen, they said that HBCUs we're reporting double digit
(17:17):
bumps in freshman enrollment at Virginia State Nice they had
an increase of about thirty percent in one year. In
Central State University, one of two HBCUs in Ohio had increase.
North Carolina Shaw, the South's oldest HBCU, which went from
four to freshmen last year to six hundred this fall,
(17:38):
and increase of forty nine. So the numbers are up
for Shore. So you know, we might not we might
have more choices than we did in Jim Crow era
America when HBCUs were necessary a necessary part of making
opportunities for higher education available to African Americans. But that
(17:58):
doesn't mean that they don't serve a really critical purpose
in today's America to completely. So, obviously, a lot of
folks are still finding hbc is relevant, and I think
one of the biggest reasons that they are are finding
them so relevant is cost. H b c US graduate
more low income students than there than p w I s.
According to a study from Education Trust that looked at
(18:20):
m p w I S, which is HBCUs, roughly half
of the nation's HBCUs have a freshman class where three
quarters of the students are from low income backgrounds, while
just one of the six hundred and seventies six non
HBU studied service high serve as higher percent of low
income students, which is really something. I mean, if you
are a student who needs help paying for school, can't
(18:42):
just you know, write a check to pay for things,
that might be a reason why an HBCU might be
something to look at. Absolutely and I love that because HBCUs,
like Xavier, which we read about in the New York
Times here, have accomplished providing extremely good numbers in terms
of producing graduates, specifically black graduates in the stem fields,
(19:07):
whether it's doctors or physicists or biologists. They've done all
of this. They've become one of the top four institutions
graduating black pharmacists, for instance, the third of the nation
in terms of graduating black graduates who go on to
earn doctorates and science and engineering. They're basically killing it
with STEM without a hefty price tag that is typically
(19:30):
associated with going to a high performing uh STEM school.
So this is fascinating because their tuition is nineteen eight
hundred dollars a year, considerably less than that of many
private colleges and flagship public universities. Even they've done all
of this without expansive high tech facilities because its entire
(19:53):
science program is actually housed in a single complex, which
blows my mind. I love that, and I also love
the they aren't you know, you might be thinking, well,
they're getting the kids who have been groomed to go
to college their whole lives. That's actually not true. Um,
Most of Xavier students are the first in their families
to attend college, and more than half of them come
from lower income homes. They really accomplished this, this really
(20:13):
incredible feat of turning out the next generation of black physicists,
you know, doctors, um. And really you know, six pc
of all black positions and half of all black engineers
graduate from HBCU. So HBCUs are really foundational and building
this you know black middle class. Yeah, especially when it
comes to the STEM fields, which we now are so
important for class mobility. Right now, in this historical moment
(20:36):
of our economy totally. Um. I was really excited at Howard.
One of my students, UM was going to dental school
and I wrote him his recommendation to get into Howard
Central School. And I always said, when you become the dentist,
you've got to give me all freed tour for life, right,
hook you up with some something fancy. I'm gonna have
you know, solid gold teams Grill can we can we
(20:59):
call him? I would like that. Actually, I think we
can fit sm and Dow. Why there we go? Yeah,
I see it already, all right, So I want to
really dive into how HBCUs interact with or intersect one
might say, with gender. But I think we should maybe
take a quick break, and because there's a lot more
(21:21):
to talk about where that comes from. Thanks for listening.
We'll be right back after this quick break. And we're back,
and we have loved talking about all the ways in
which HBCUs are wonderful and are killing it and are
just great. But this is stuff Mom never told you,
(21:45):
and it wouldn't really be our podcast if we weren't
getting slightly enraged on occasion. So here we are. We
got to talk about gender on historically black colleges and
university's campuses because like most things around intersectionality, the intersection
of race and gender and how that plays out at
(22:06):
HBCUs is quite complicated, very complicated. So one thing to
know is that on most campuses of HBCUs there's more
women than men. Um sixty one point five percent of
HBCU students identified as female. But that doesn't mean that
this is all a rosy picture and there's not gender issues.
Quite the opposite. Actually, the way that gender issues play
(22:29):
out on HBCU campuses can be pretty toxic. So I'm
not saying this because I want to um paint the
picture that high profile incidents of sexual assault on campuses
means that they're happening, but there's I'm not trying to
paint a portrait. I just think it needs to be
lifted that a lot of HBCU students go there because
they are looking for a certain kind of positive experience.
(22:51):
They're looking for a particular and specific experience around their
culture and identity, and they get to campus and find
that because of gender issues and because of gen to intersections,
that do not get that experience, and by they we're
talking pretty pretty focused here on black women. So living
again at that intersection of race and gender, being a
(23:12):
black woman here again is an especially challenging thing because
instead of that safe space that is afforded to black
men on HBCUs, which is part of the reason people
go to HBCUs, women have faced this very challenging dichotomy
one that racial identity, that camaraderie one might even call
(23:35):
its sisterhood or brotherhood with those of your sort of
minority race becoming sort of a majority is one thing.
But what happens when uh, sexual assault is running rampant
on campus, as I might add, is happening on almost
every campus nationwide, Like there are very few opportunities and
we should We definitely have plans in the works to
(23:57):
talk more about sexual assault on campus UM, but at
hbc U S it's especially complex. It is especially complex,
and I think that this is illustrated so so well
in this BuzzFeed deep dive that's really a must read
um that was published back in January of two thousand
and sixteen by Anita Bade Joe Um and really it
(24:19):
points out the ways that on one college campus or
to college campuses more House and and Spellman in Atlanta.
This is all kind of playing out in these really
toxic ways. But basically, the women at Spellman College have
been complaining about the men of more House College, which
is there, uh they have a brother sister school relationship
(24:40):
but official but unofficial but understood. They've been complaining about
sexual assaults happening by the students that they're quote brothers school. Um.
And really, these these complaints have been going on heard right,
it's so trouble. Illegal assaults have been going unprosecuted and
(25:03):
oftentimes end up not just being like not not only
is the administration silencing its victims, but I think that
the headline here says it so well. The headline of
Buzzbeeds article is quote, our hands are tied because of
this damn brother sisterhood thing. So Spellman College says, oh,
it happened on more Houses campus, we can't do anything
about it, which to me is not okay, not valid
(25:25):
from the start. And then in some of the cases
unpacked in this really chilling expose a trigger warning. By
the way, we should probably have said a while ago.
But this is where it gets even more. I think
triggering after dealing with a rape someone here named just
by her first name, Melanie, who's profiled at the start
(25:47):
of this article. She was told that an independent investigator
based in Massachusetts, which is far away is away from
where this all went down in Atlanta, who without ever
meeting her in person, had come to the conclusion that
she had not, in fact been raped, despite the fact
that both parties agreed Melanie had said quote no repeatedly.
(26:11):
Later she learned that the college also classified her reported
rape as a case of simple battery. And so this
is a small example of a macro level problem that's
gone unheard, undealt with, unresolved From the administration standpoint, this
all sort of came to a head when Vice President
or former Vice President Joe Biden was on his It's
(26:32):
on Us tour. It's on Us is the institution of
the effort started under the Obama administration to engage men
in the conversation around consent and preventing sexual assault and rape.
He came to speak on the campuses of more House
and Spellmen together, and this was to an audience of
women who many of whom are survivors of assault who
(26:53):
reported their assaults but have been left to wrestle quote
not only with a campus adjudication process that felt didn't
serve them justice, but also with a deep guilt for
having turned in one of their more House brothers. And
that's a really good example of how the intersection of
race really makes this such a tricky issue. Um So,
(27:13):
after Biden spoke, a more House student reportedly circulated this
really disgusting, viral kind of foulk contract that he called
quote a whole contract and so it's like a handwritten thing.
You can find it on Twitter. He wrote, I, you
know the insert name here, allow Graves residents, you know,
insert male name here in room blah blah blah to
(27:37):
perform any and all sexual behavior on me from the
time I walk in. Then you put the time till
the time I leave and visitation is over. By signing this,
I will not spread misleading truths and or ignorant laws.
If found in violation of this consent form, I blank
will be indicted and prosecuted accordingly, as well as be
(27:57):
exposed on campus as a lying bitch. You see bitch?
Sure in this context, I mean that's their words, image
and integrity. It's value highly at more House, especially Graves Hall.
By signing this I name here and I name here
are keeping both um And that's really I mean, did
he learn nothing at that this was my brother or son,
(28:22):
I would be I would, I would just wonder where
it all went wrong. And so you can really see
I think what that what that contract really raises is
the way that perhaps a lot of more House students
feel as though women who report sexual assauce, report rapes
call out troubling, toxic behavior on the part of men.
They feel as though they are violating the integrity of
(28:44):
the more House spellman sort of ecosystem that they're that
they're bucking that tradition. And you can really see the
ways that that holding onto that tradition can be a
kind of a kind of way of shrugging off really harmful,
dangerous behavior on the part of these men. Well, it
also presumes that these women are lying totally. So you're
(29:06):
a liar. You're dragging some elite male reputation through the dirt.
How dare you when we're here to lift each other up.
That's really the thing, right, It's like you gotta be there.
You gotta have each other's backs, uh, in a world
that doesn't have our backs collectively based on race. You're
going to drag me through the mud because of what
you think was a rape. I get that defensiveness. It's horrifying.
(29:29):
The rationale is disgusting and warped, but it totally doesn't
understand obviously, what consent us all about. And um and
I don't know, I just putting black women in that
position of feeling like reporting a rape means ruining the
reputation of the next potential Barack Obama, And I think,
(29:50):
I mean that's why I have personally felt that before.
I think a lot of black women have spoken up
about feeling that way that you know, we live in
a society where black men, black people in general, but
black men are you know, it's kind of set up
to fail in society. Wants to see them go down
in society. You know, it's set up to treat them badly,
And so you don't want to feel like another person
(30:13):
adding onto that, so I can definitely understand that, but
that's no reason to not report an assault, not report rape,
not call out some really harmful toxic behavior. Yeah, And
adding on to that, it's it's this notion that you're
living in a world that already assumes black men are
are violently for this, like black male raping the white woman,
saying that has historically been around. You don't want to
(30:35):
perpetuate that. But that's you know, that's not a reason
to not report what's happened to really, So just some
stats about, um, what's going down with the sexual assaults
on campuses HBCUs versus p wise. So there actually are
less instances of sexual assault reported on HBCUs when compared
to pwise. But that's that is actually kind of misleading
because black women, I think, for a lot of the
(30:57):
reasons we were just unpacking, are less likely to report
actual thoughts than their white counterparts. In general. Um, yeah,
only seventeen percent of black women report instances of sexual
assault to the police, as opposed to forty four percent
of white women. So either there is a significant difference
in who's being raped, or more likely, there's a significant
(31:18):
difference between who feels comfortable or privileged enough to go
to the police and be taken seriously or entitled to
a police officer who's going to take their their um
their crime seriously. And this is an issue that specifically
at Spellman and more House goes back decades, Spellman student
(31:39):
reported being gang raped by four more House students, which
spawned some tough talk at more House. Again, a lot
of talk here, not a lot of action that we've
seen about the unacceptability of abusing women. Yet at the
same time, there was also vocal, overwhelming support on campus
for the men, including one suggest shin from a chapel
(32:01):
dean during a worship service that quote, women bring abuse
upon themselves because of their attitudes and their dress. That's
so disgusting and regressive and toxic. I mean, I can't
even imagine if my if if a dean sort in
front of my student body and said that, I would
have probably burst into tears. But I would have been
(32:22):
so angry. I would have been, I mean, storm out.
That's but who I mean, who knows he's in a
position of power there. That's that's sort of the leadership.
That's a reflection of the leadership at more House completely,
and obviously this was so we can only hope that
things have changed there. Um, anyone who knows someone or
goes to more House please tell us how things have changed. Hopefully,
(32:43):
But this is an issue that seems to be lasting
at Spellman and more House in particular, and the same
challenges are faced by lots of different students on HBCU campuses. Yeah,
and I just think that you really going back to
this idea that it's Spellman, black women are really expected
to support quote unquote their brothers quote unquote, even if
(33:04):
they're toxic, abusive, whatever. Um. This is another quote from
the BuzzFeed article. At Spellman, students must ballist balance the
empowerment that comes from being on a campus full of
young black women with the expectation that they nevertheless must
align themselves with the interest of their brothers next door.
One thing about Spellman that has to be made clear
is that it's a woman's college, but it is not
(33:25):
a feminist college. And this is a quote from the
an associate director of a women's research organization on campus
at Spellman. And I think that is so troubling, like
as a woman, as a black woman, thinking that you're
going to get this, this community of black women to
support you, and then getting the campus and finding oh, actually,
your well being is far less important than the well
(33:47):
being of our our elite, the elite black men that
we are that we are trying to turn out and
in fact, this is internalized in a lot of Spellman
students too. I found it really troubling to hear that
the Spellman two thousand fifteen Valedictorians said when describing the
archetypical Spellman woman to BuzzFeed News, she said, she's middle class,
(34:11):
she's Southern, she has good manners, she's heterosexual, She's not
deviant in any way. You know, this sort of regressive,
hyper religious undertones of what it means to be a
good proper woman is alive and well in a lot
of these campuses. Yeah. I mean, if you take that further,
I have to know that Spellman has a bit of
an an unofficial dress code for official events. Um pants
(34:36):
are you can wear pants, but it's frowned upon pearls
are you know, encouraged And I think, you know, when
I read this quote of the of the typical Spellman woman,
this is I feel like, I feel like I know
this girl. I know this woman. I know the southern,
you know, refined, middle class, wearing pearls, heterosexual, very important,
(34:59):
and no deviant behavior of any kind. And you're just
you know, I mean, I know this woman. I tried
to be this way for a while, but I'm not.
I'm none of those things that way. Yeah no, but
this is Coco from Deer White People. It is this
is totally Coco ak Calandria from Deer White People, which
(35:19):
kept coming to mind as we discuss these different archetypical
identities of being black on campus. Um I would love
to unpack Dear White People at some point too, because man,
I love that movie. First of all, it was amazing.
I saw the movie and the show me too. I'm obsessed.
You should all go watch it, so listen. I'm not
trying to paint HBCUs with hotbeds of campus sexual assaults.
(35:41):
I just think it's very telling that black women who
attend HBCUs they come looking for community and safety and
they realize that's not what they've gotten, oftentimes too late.
I found this quote from the BuzzFeed article to be
really telling. I think that that's that's the travesty, that
you have black women and men applying and going to
HBCUs believing they're going to be safe, but they're really
only honestly thinking about racism. And this is a quote
(36:03):
from Aisha Sentence, who was a visiting scholar from the
University of Pennsylvania and a filmmaker who's documentary No focused
on black female rape survivors and even to extended beyond
the experience of students at HBCUs. That same dynamic between
men women and black men and black women seems to
(36:25):
be replicating itself on the administrative level, because there really
aren't very many female HBCU presidents, which is troubling because
if we had more women in charge. Quite frankly, I
think that might lead to a better representation of the
issues that women on HBCUs are facing. But more House
College President John Wilson has been dogged by rumors and
(36:48):
calls for his termination for more than two years, yet
he remains in place with cursory affirmations of support from
board and alumni officers without any detail about how he's
earned it. But women, on the other hand, in HBCU
presidencies have not received the same opportunity to get it
wrong and to learn how to get it right again.
We're up against that sort of glass cliff of you
(37:11):
can't mess up at work the same way. UH. Male
in the same position is given UH the opportunity to
redeem himself. Women, on the other hand, are told to
get out. Now. This isn't to say that women don't
earn the right to be fired, as is written by
Crystal uh Di Gregory and Jared Carter Sr. On HBCU
buzz on medium dot com. But really it's not saying
(37:35):
that women haven't earned the right to be fired or
haven't have earned the right to be judged with fewer
or soften metrics of success against their male counterparts. It
is to say that HBCUs are in no position collectively
to brand women as executive failures worthy of quick removal,
while men can stick it out for a more appropriate
time and approach. So this problem, this gender problem that
(38:00):
is playing out when it comes to campus sexual assault,
is replicating itself when it comes to leadership, and obviously
women in leadership across industries and across colleges run into
the similar problems. But I think it would behoove a
brave HBCU to really take an active role in recruiting
and developing more female leadership to make a safer environment
(38:24):
for the female students on campus. Totally, I mean, I
couldn't agree more. I also found it really interesting that
there's only two women studies programs at all of the
HBC is in the United States of Bellman and bit
at college, and yeah, it just shows the ways that
this toxic gender stuff can really be a top down thing,
and it's not. It doesn't. I agree, it doesn't necessarily
(38:44):
start with the students. It can start at the higher
levels of the administration. And unfortunately, as we talk about
higher levels of administration, sadly we must indeed utter his
name on this podcast once more. Donald Trump has something
to do with HBCUs nowadays, doesn't he? Bridget First of all,
you may have seen that really weird picture. It was
(39:06):
a photo shoot where Kelly and Conway is sitting on
the couch with her shoes off, with her feet underneath her,
her body really strange, had a bigger deal out of her.
I felt bad for her, but that's a different episode.
Like maybe we shouldn't judge her so much in this photo.
But I mean it was awkward, like it was respect
the office kind of awkward, but not like, yeah, I didn't,
(39:28):
please don't call her her like dirty slurs sitting that
way with the shorts. Of course, of course, of course,
it just was like the picture was awkward. I'll put
it that. I think the picture was awkward before she
was even in it. If she wasn't even in it,
I feel like that whole that from that picture, that
whole day sy heard why did this happen? Bridget helped
me understand this. One of the things Donald Trump when
he first got into office, he was very very vocal
(39:51):
about the fact that he thought, you know, the Obama
administration really failed hpc USE and all of this, and
he vowed to turn it all around. He said, I'm
gonna do things dif really this is appalling. So so
we gather as all these HBCU presidents in the room,
they're told they're going to be able to, you know,
have the president's here, and the president cares so much
about this issue. In YadA YadA, YadA, they all basically
(40:11):
reported they didn't really get to talk that much. That
they said at most, you know, two minutes to the president.
And what's interesting is that after all that m grand
standing about how he was going to be better for
HBCUs than President Obama was, his America First Budget actually
slices the federal education spending for HBCUs by thirteen point
five per cent, and it also claims to maintain quote
(40:33):
unquote funding for minority institutions and HBCUs at around four
million dollars, but that's the exact same amount that the
previous administrations initially budgeted. So he made this whole big
show about how he was going to, you know, do
right by HBCUs and then and be better than than
the Obama administration was, but then totally didn't. And so
(40:54):
these HBCU leaders were vocally like pretty disappointed by this,
of course, and it seems so like such a press
ploy to just have him in the White House early on.
Come together, Let's bring people of African American backgrounds together
into the White House early on to show our support.
(41:14):
And it was just a discussing example of just trying
to take credit for intentions that I don't even think
we're well intentioned, you know what I mean, Like they
weren't coming from a good place to begin with, and
then furthermore to sort of drag Obama on HBCUs is
not quite accurate either, because the New America Foundation actually
estimates that, due to the Obama administration's additional discretionary spending
(41:38):
that was added to the HBCU figure, that the actual
sum was around five hundred and seventy seven million, which
is fifteen more than what Donald Trump is coming in at.
So he's not even matching what Obama did. He's actually
giving hbc USE a pay cut. After they came to
the White House at his invitation to express the need
for more support because there are ready operating on less
(42:01):
than what they need. And to add to that, those
very same leaders that he used basically for a photo
of a lot of them. After that meeting, they came
out and said, we feel like we got used. We
feel like we were used for a photo op, and
we're disappointed with this. And to sort of drive home
how how disingenuous I feel like his comments on HBCUs were.
He then went on to suggest that funding for HBCUs
(42:24):
might even be unconstitutional. He said, according to this article
on ny mag, Trump suggested that such funding was not
constitutional on the account of allocated benefits quote on the
basis of race, ethnicity, or gender. So after this big
production of I'm gonna be so great for hbc USE,
I'm gonna be better than Obama was, he went on
to be like, wait, do we even need to fund
you guys? I feel it was so obviously somebody in
(42:47):
the communications offices idea to have this photo happen, and
then Kelly and Conway, the head of comes accidentally ruined
the entire news cycle. And then he went back and
let his true colors shine through by saying like, actually,
let's not fund them at all in the casual, off
hand way that this man legislates or presidents. I don't
(43:10):
know what the verb is, but whatever it is, that
they're not doing it so well. Because just from a
pure communication standpoint, even if we're able to for a
moment suspend the moral and ethical and like racism qualms
that are all tied up in that, that's just a
bad press strategy all around. Yeah. Yeah, it seems like
(43:34):
that's what we get from this administration. Just bad optics,
bad press, bad tweets. Maybe he'll tweet his way out
of it. Yes, but let's not talk about Donald Trump anymore.
It gets me too angry, as you can probably tell,
gets my blood boiling. So, sminty listeners, we want to
hear from you. Did any of y'all go to HBCUs
Why if you did not go to an HBCU, why
(43:54):
not do you work at one? Um? Let us know.
You want to know your thoughts on HBCUs. Do you
think they're relevant, have they needed, why or why not?
You can tag us on Instagram at stuff mom Ever
Told You? You can tweet at us at mom Stuff Podcast,
or you can email us at mom Stuff at how
stuff works dot com
Hey, this is Emily and this is Bridget and you're
listening to stuff mom never told you. And today we're
talking about a topic that, if you know me, it's
something that's very near and dear to my heart, much
(00:25):
like all of our topics. Um. So many of you
know that I got my start in my career teaching
at a university here in Washington, d C. Called Howard
UM and Howard, if you don't know, is a very
well known historically black college. A lot of people when
I when I say this, they say, what's an HBCU
and HBCUs were in the news recently back in Debruary,
(00:46):
when Betsy devas the head of the Department of Education,
she called historically black college quote pioneers of school choice
not great wording. Twitter really had a field day with this,
And if you're wondering why that is, you know you
might be thinking, oh, school choice, that sounds great, just
sound good. It sounds a very positive, it's a very
it's a very um loving reimaginating of what the situation
(01:10):
actually is the reason why Twitter had a field day
with her comments is because her comments that HBCUs are
pioneers of school choice totally overlooks the fact that HBCUs
were founded because things like slavery and Jim Crow era
segregation basically meant that black students had zero choice, and
so HBCUs were founded to give students choice. So lifting
(01:31):
them up as pioneers of choice is not really the
best thing to do. It's a historical reimagining to sort
of back up her preference for now in today's era,
having more charter schools around for students to apparently have choice. Now,
we can't get into that issue today because it is
a thorny one. So put a bookmark in charter schools
(01:52):
later conversation. But um, I think today is a great
opportunity for us to under stand and unpack the historical
role of HBCUs, how they relate to gender, and their
relevance still today. Totally so HBCUs they are super relevant. UM,
(02:13):
A lot of people who a lot of non black
people who don't really have um an intimate similiarity with them.
A lot of times their first jury point into HBCUs
is a very very good show no longer on TV,
but was a big staple in my household called a
Different World, UM that took place in a fictional HBCU
in Virginia, which was a mixture of two real hbcusum,
(02:36):
Howard University in d C and Spellman University in Atlanta,
which is a women's college. Um. And a lot of
folks know, you know, that's their first foray into what
an HBCUs. There was a nineties spinoff, right it was.
It was a spinoff of the Cosby Show. Although fu
Bill Cosby right again, bookmark of that one for later definitely. Um,
(02:57):
but no, it's it's a good thing for I think
older Milan Nails like ourselves that we might have first
stumbled upon that, um, that terminology. But bridget what is
a historically black college and university exactly? So an HPCU
is pretty much exactly what it sounds like. They're the
only institutions in the US that were created for the
express purpose of educating black citizens, and they were really
(03:18):
established a few decades after the Civil War until around
nineteen sixty four. Many were started with the federal government's
Freedmen's Bureau with assistance from whites, primarily abolitionist missionaries and
northern philanthropists who either wanted to christianize blacks and turn
them into you know, very religious people or train them
for industrial enterprises. UM. And so you really see a
(03:39):
lot of HBCUs being connected with religion UM or some
sort of a philanthropic mission. And so today we have
around a hundred and seven HBCUs in the US and
the virgin Islands. UM. It's a it's a thing. It's
a burgeoning thing. UM. Probably the most well known UH
is Spellman, which is the women's college in Atlanta. It's
(04:00):
usually the number one in the rankings. UM. Other big
well known HBCUs or Howard University here in d C.
At Hampton University which is in Virginia, which is where
my brother went. UM North Carolina A and T University
in North Carolina. Awesome. And I think it's important to
note that while those colleges and universities were historically created
(04:22):
in an era when Black Americans were not were barred
were legally barred from entering higher institutions of higher education elsewhere,
today people of all races are attending historically black colleges
and universities as well. So, according to Pew the Pew
Center for Research, the percentage of HBCU students who were
(04:43):
either white, Hispanic Asian or Pacific Island or Native American
was seventeen percent in two thousand fifteen, up from in
nine eighty. Hispanic students in particular seem to be finding
a new appeal, I would say, in the historically black
college and universities, because they, in particular Hispanics have seen
(05:04):
their overall shares grow on HBCU campuses, increasing from one
point six to four point six two and fourteen. So
one of the things I loved UM and teaching at
Howard for so long was that people would always say,
you know, are you just is it just black folks
teaching black students? And there certainly are more black faculty
and more black students than other places I've taught, but
(05:26):
it's really just super diverse. So we had lots of
Latino students, lots of Caribbean students, lots of some white students, UM,
we had European exchange students. We had really such a
healthy mix of all different kinds of students who were
all from different cultures and brought those cultures into the classroom.
And this really kind of interesting, you know, patchwork of
class So it's great. I think there's a specific value
(05:49):
to that environment that attracts a lot of racial minorities
to these institutions, which I can totally understand as opposed
to the alternative p w I s which I learned
through research today. I was like, what the heck is
a p w I which is a predominantly white institution?
Is that right? Right? So isn't that like the world
(06:10):
or at least the United States that we live in?
And I feel like identifying that and sort of knowing
what that name really acronym stands for as a healthy
reminder that, oh, it's not the norm versus the minority.
There's also a term for p w E s, or
institutions of higher education that are dominated by white people exactly. UM.
And so I just for full disclosure, I did not
(06:32):
attend an HBCU. My my brother did. I applied to
some that I did not. UM, But some of the
reasons that folks do choose hbc u s over p
w I s are pretty much exactly what you think,
sort of Anecdotally, many students have reported that they want
to feel a sense of camaraderie with other black students
and other students of color, UM, and they want the
chance to feel really supported and understood by you know,
(06:55):
black professors, professors of color, um black administrators, because they
feel like they're going to be getting an experience that
they that they can really kind of connect with, and
so they're looking for that kind of connection. I mean,
think about college, it's such an identity forming time in
a young adults life. Um, for those of you who
did go to college, not everybody does that. My brother,
for instance, went straight into the military. But that age
(07:17):
brange of the average or the sort of typical college
student eighteen to what that's a really formative time in
your life to figure out who you are, what you
believe in, and who you who you want to become.
So I love this quote from an article on her
campus from Noel, a former student at Savannah State University,
(07:37):
which is an hbc where she says, quote, there's like
a sense of unity. Everyone is so friendly and we're
all able to kind of come together and share with
each other the fact that we all know what it's
like to be black. By attending an HBCU, I was
able to get an education that was so relevant to
my life as an African American student. Attending Peter buys
(08:00):
all my life. It always seemed like it was abnormal
to learn about my own culture and class, but my
HBCU normalized this and made me feel like I got
a more well rounded education. I love the being. That
quote really sums it all up, and her anecdotal just
you know, experience of what she felt is completely backed
(08:21):
up by their research, according to the Journal of Black Psychology. There,
they did a study all around black students who did
not grow up around other black people, and they felt
that they're far more likely to choose schools for race
related reasons over other reasons like financial or school ranking,
and that these reasons are totally totally become part of
their foundational concept of who they are. This is just
(08:42):
a summary of their findings. A total of a hundred
nine undergraduate students attending an HBCU completed questionnaires assessing their
race related reasons for choosing the university and their intention
to engage in race related activities, as well as individual
difference measures. Students with less contact with other blacks growing
up or more central racial identities were more likely to
(09:03):
cite race related reasons for HBCU college choice. Furthermore, lack
of contact and higher racial centrality predicted greater intention to
engage in behaviors to develop racial identity e g. Race
oriented clubs and personal reading. So basically, if you are
someone who is thirsting for a connection to black culture,
black life, black identity, that is going to be a
(09:25):
critical reason why you choose an HBCU, even when measured
up against things like how expensive the college is or
how well the college is ranked in the rankings. I
think all of us, at one point or another have
experienced what it feels like to be other in one
room or another. Imagine living your entire childhood feeling like
the only kid of a certain race or one of
(09:46):
very few in your whole community. Then to go on
to college and have the opportunity to really discover who
you are, not in a minority environment, but you know,
in a place where who you are is normalized. That's
such a value luable thing. And it reminds me actually
of um Barack Obama's book Dreams of My Father, which
is all about an identity quest. Okay, the whole book
(10:08):
is like a young Barack Obama recently graduated, figuring out
who he is by sort of exploring the lives of
his of his ancestors and I believe he was. I
believe he was commissioned to write that book while in
law school. So it just reminds me of like that
kind of identity quest that we're thirsting for at different
times in our lives. How important it must be for
(10:29):
Black Americans in particular to have an HBCU environment to
do that in Well, that's exactly right. So according to
the research, what you're saying is right on the money.
According to Gallup, black graduates of historically black colleges and
universities are significantly more likely to have felt supported while
in college and to be thriving afterwards and their black
peers who graduated from p wise. According to the newest
(10:51):
data from an ongoing Gallop per Due University study, the survey,
which is the largest of its kind, collected data from
fifty college alumni over two years and an attempt to
measure their colleges are doing enough to help students well
being in life after they graduate UM and so really,
the study did a deep dive on these different elements
of success financial success, whether they felt supported, whether they
(11:12):
felt supported in college which is after college, and according
to this study, UM, they're they're feeling great. The difference
is real too. I mean, the numbers here are jarring.
While twenty nine percent of Black graduates who did not
attend in HBCU said they were quote thriving in financial
(11:33):
well being, fifty one percent of black HBCU graduates reported
doing so. So this is two years after college. I
don't know who was financially thriving two years after college
because it wasn't me but a girl, But of of
of Black Americans or Black students who went to HBCU
said they were compared to only thirty or you know,
(11:55):
almost thirty percent of students elsewhere. And I think a
lot of that we're going to unpack the further later.
But cost at HBCUs is a significant benefit as well.
If what I'm reading is correct, and and we're going
to unpack that further, it looks like, um, the tuition
rates for a top tier education are way lower in across,
(12:18):
not necessarily in every case, but are pretty affordable at
HBCUs for the quality of education you're getting. Yeah, I
think we should definitely dive more into that and some
of the reasons why these colleges can be so useful.
After we take a quick break and we're back, and
(12:40):
let's spend some time talking about why some folks are
choosing HBCUs Because a lot of people might be asking,
while it's twenty seventeen, are historically black colleges and universities
even so needed or relevant? And it's a fair thing
to ask, Bridget because the numbers have been declining. If
you look at the percentage of Black students attending college,
(13:00):
So in all of the Black Americans who were going
to a degree granting institution, of all of them, about
seventeen percent we're choosing HBCUs. By two thousand, that share,
that percentage had declined to percent and in the last
time that the Pew Research measured this fact, the number
(13:21):
was down to nine percent. So while it looks like
the percentage has definitely shifted over time, I want to
highlight that the number of people overall attending colleges and universities.
If you think about the flexibility of online degree granting
institutions and the kinds of flexible needs for the average
college student nowadays, it's possible that that percentage is shrinking
(13:44):
because more African American students are going to college overall. Yeah,
and think about the different opportunities that that black folkses
didn't have before. Right, So exactly if you have more opportunities,
more more chances to go to different kinds of school,
did you want to say school choice, more skilled choice, Bridge,
that's a topic. I'll talk a girl you don't even know.
(14:05):
I think Bridget just said she's pro school choice. Okay,
sorry I interrupted you, but I had to call that
was that was? And so it's it's cool to see
these numbers, even though they're declining overall. It's cool to
see that enrollment in hbc IS actually has risen. Right,
So the percentages have gone down, but that can be
(14:27):
a really misleading fact that's used to discredit the relevance
of HBCU. So don't let those percentages be used to
mislead you, because in reality, enrollment at HBCUs, including enrollment
from non black students, has risen overall. So the n
c e S figures have shown that in the fall
(14:47):
of two thousan fifteen, the combined total enrollment of all
HBCUs was two hundred thousand, compared with only two hundred
and thirty four thousand and nineteen eighty. There's also some
new findings that historically black colleges and universities have seen
a spike in enrollment due in part to the Black
Lives Matter movement and it increased public visibility around racial
(15:10):
tension in America. Totally. I mean that completely jives with
what I've seen sort of anecdotally. Um, particularly at Howard
they are like, if you know anything about Howard, you
know their students are super, super civically engaged. These are
the kinds of students when I talked there, that were
coming up to me at the end of class saying,
Professor Todd, will you sign our petition to get the
(15:30):
university to stop using Kimberly Clark brand toilet paper products
because they found private prisons. You know, stuff that I
just wasn't doing when I was a student. Oh, I know,
I missed being called that so much. Sometimes I'll call
you professor. Sometimes I say that in my head just
to make myself feel better. Um. But and honestly, you
remember this being in the news kind of recently. UM.
(15:51):
I think last year the actress Taraji p Henson, who
plays Cookie on Empire, she told came forward with the
story of her son, who I think was that U
C l A was pulled over and she felt like
it would have better racial profiling incident. And she said that,
you know, I don't pay thousands upon thousands of dollars,
said my son to this great school in l A
for him to get racially profile, And so she I
(16:12):
don't know if she ended up actually doing it, but
she said that she was going to pull him from
u C. L A and put him into Howard because
she thought Howard would be a safer place for him.
And so I cannot speak for whether or not he
would have a less of a chance having some sort
of negative police interaction driving around the streets of d
C versus u C. L A. But that was certainly
how she felt. So certainly, this, this, this more visibility
(16:33):
of the movement for black lives has made HBC's you know,
push them into the forth front in a way like
they have never been, especially from a parents perspective. I
think it, you know, I think the police brutality, the
visibility around police brutality, which has been an issue for
much longer than uh the mainstream media has made it
an issue or made it a priority. Um, But I
(16:55):
think the more we see what's happening, it's totally rational
for parents to be concerned and to seek out the
kind of camaraderie that comes with a more diverse community
on campus. And this is true. The numbers bear this
out as well. In an article on PBS from October
twos sixteen, they said that HBCUs we're reporting double digit
(17:17):
bumps in freshman enrollment at Virginia State Nice they had
an increase of about thirty percent in one year. In
Central State University, one of two HBCUs in Ohio had increase.
North Carolina Shaw, the South's oldest HBCU, which went from
four to freshmen last year to six hundred this fall,
(17:38):
and increase of forty nine. So the numbers are up
for Shore. So you know, we might not we might
have more choices than we did in Jim Crow era
America when HBCUs were necessary a necessary part of making
opportunities for higher education available to African Americans. But that
(17:58):
doesn't mean that they don't serve a really critical purpose
in today's America to completely. So, obviously, a lot of
folks are still finding hbc is relevant, and I think
one of the biggest reasons that they are are finding
them so relevant is cost. H b c US graduate
more low income students than there than p w I s.
According to a study from Education Trust that looked at
(18:20):
m p w I S, which is HBCUs, roughly half
of the nation's HBCUs have a freshman class where three
quarters of the students are from low income backgrounds, while
just one of the six hundred and seventies six non
HBU studied service high serve as higher percent of low
income students, which is really something. I mean, if you
are a student who needs help paying for school, can't
(18:42):
just you know, write a check to pay for things,
that might be a reason why an HBCU might be
something to look at. Absolutely and I love that because HBCUs,
like Xavier, which we read about in the New York
Times here, have accomplished providing extremely good numbers in terms
of producing graduates, specifically black graduates in the stem fields,
(19:07):
whether it's doctors or physicists or biologists. They've done all
of this. They've become one of the top four institutions
graduating black pharmacists, for instance, the third of the nation
in terms of graduating black graduates who go on to
earn doctorates and science and engineering. They're basically killing it
with STEM without a hefty price tag that is typically
(19:30):
associated with going to a high performing uh STEM school.
So this is fascinating because their tuition is nineteen eight
hundred dollars a year, considerably less than that of many
private colleges and flagship public universities. Even they've done all
of this without expansive high tech facilities because its entire
(19:53):
science program is actually housed in a single complex, which
blows my mind. I love that, and I also love
the they aren't you know, you might be thinking, well,
they're getting the kids who have been groomed to go
to college their whole lives. That's actually not true. Um,
Most of Xavier students are the first in their families
to attend college, and more than half of them come
from lower income homes. They really accomplished this, this really
(20:13):
incredible feat of turning out the next generation of black physicists,
you know, doctors, um. And really you know, six pc
of all black positions and half of all black engineers
graduate from HBCU. So HBCUs are really foundational and building
this you know black middle class. Yeah, especially when it
comes to the STEM fields, which we now are so
important for class mobility. Right now, in this historical moment
(20:36):
of our economy totally. Um. I was really excited at Howard.
One of my students, UM was going to dental school
and I wrote him his recommendation to get into Howard
Central School. And I always said, when you become the dentist,
you've got to give me all freed tour for life, right,
hook you up with some something fancy. I'm gonna have
you know, solid gold teams Grill can we can we
(20:59):
call him? I would like that. Actually, I think we
can fit sm and Dow. Why there we go? Yeah,
I see it already, all right, So I want to
really dive into how HBCUs interact with or intersect one
might say, with gender. But I think we should maybe
take a quick break, and because there's a lot more
(21:21):
to talk about where that comes from. Thanks for listening.
We'll be right back after this quick break. And we're back,
and we have loved talking about all the ways in
which HBCUs are wonderful and are killing it and are
just great. But this is stuff Mom never told you,
(21:45):
and it wouldn't really be our podcast if we weren't
getting slightly enraged on occasion. So here we are. We
got to talk about gender on historically black colleges and
university's campuses because like most things around intersectionality, the intersection
of race and gender and how that plays out at
(22:06):
HBCUs is quite complicated, very complicated. So one thing to
know is that on most campuses of HBCUs there's more
women than men. Um sixty one point five percent of
HBCU students identified as female. But that doesn't mean that
this is all a rosy picture and there's not gender issues.
Quite the opposite. Actually, the way that gender issues play
(22:29):
out on HBCU campuses can be pretty toxic. So I'm
not saying this because I want to um paint the
picture that high profile incidents of sexual assault on campuses
means that they're happening, but there's I'm not trying to
paint a portrait. I just think it needs to be
lifted that a lot of HBCU students go there because
they are looking for a certain kind of positive experience.
(22:51):
They're looking for a particular and specific experience around their
culture and identity, and they get to campus and find
that because of gender issues and because of gen to intersections,
that do not get that experience, and by they we're
talking pretty pretty focused here on black women. So living
again at that intersection of race and gender, being a
(23:12):
black woman here again is an especially challenging thing because
instead of that safe space that is afforded to black
men on HBCUs, which is part of the reason people
go to HBCUs, women have faced this very challenging dichotomy
one that racial identity, that camaraderie one might even call
(23:35):
its sisterhood or brotherhood with those of your sort of
minority race becoming sort of a majority is one thing.
But what happens when uh, sexual assault is running rampant
on campus, as I might add, is happening on almost
every campus nationwide, Like there are very few opportunities and
we should We definitely have plans in the works to
(23:57):
talk more about sexual assault on campus UM, but at
hbc U S it's especially complex. It is especially complex,
and I think that this is illustrated so so well
in this BuzzFeed deep dive that's really a must read
um that was published back in January of two thousand
and sixteen by Anita Bade Joe Um and really it
(24:19):
points out the ways that on one college campus or
to college campuses more House and and Spellman in Atlanta.
This is all kind of playing out in these really
toxic ways. But basically, the women at Spellman College have
been complaining about the men of more House College, which
is there, uh they have a brother sister school relationship
(24:40):
but official but unofficial but understood. They've been complaining about
sexual assaults happening by the students that they're quote brothers school. Um.
And really, these these complaints have been going on heard right,
it's so trouble. Illegal assaults have been going unprosecuted and
(25:03):
oftentimes end up not just being like not not only
is the administration silencing its victims, but I think that
the headline here says it so well. The headline of
Buzzbeeds article is quote, our hands are tied because of
this damn brother sisterhood thing. So Spellman College says, oh,
it happened on more Houses campus, we can't do anything
about it, which to me is not okay, not valid
(25:25):
from the start. And then in some of the cases
unpacked in this really chilling expose a trigger warning. By
the way, we should probably have said a while ago.
But this is where it gets even more. I think
triggering after dealing with a rape someone here named just
by her first name, Melanie, who's profiled at the start
(25:47):
of this article. She was told that an independent investigator
based in Massachusetts, which is far away is away from
where this all went down in Atlanta, who without ever
meeting her in person, had come to the conclusion that
she had not, in fact been raped, despite the fact
that both parties agreed Melanie had said quote no repeatedly.
(26:11):
Later she learned that the college also classified her reported
rape as a case of simple battery. And so this
is a small example of a macro level problem that's
gone unheard, undealt with, unresolved From the administration standpoint, this
all sort of came to a head when Vice President
or former Vice President Joe Biden was on his It's
(26:32):
on Us tour. It's on Us is the institution of
the effort started under the Obama administration to engage men
in the conversation around consent and preventing sexual assault and rape.
He came to speak on the campuses of more House
and Spellmen together, and this was to an audience of
women who many of whom are survivors of assault who
(26:53):
reported their assaults but have been left to wrestle quote
not only with a campus adjudication process that felt didn't
serve them justice, but also with a deep guilt for
having turned in one of their more House brothers. And
that's a really good example of how the intersection of
race really makes this such a tricky issue. Um So,
(27:13):
after Biden spoke, a more House student reportedly circulated this
really disgusting, viral kind of foulk contract that he called
quote a whole contract and so it's like a handwritten thing.
You can find it on Twitter. He wrote, I, you
know the insert name here, allow Graves residents, you know,
insert male name here in room blah blah blah to
(27:37):
perform any and all sexual behavior on me from the
time I walk in. Then you put the time till
the time I leave and visitation is over. By signing this,
I will not spread misleading truths and or ignorant laws.
If found in violation of this consent form, I blank
will be indicted and prosecuted accordingly, as well as be
(27:57):
exposed on campus as a lying bitch. You see bitch?
Sure in this context, I mean that's their words, image
and integrity. It's value highly at more House, especially Graves Hall.
By signing this I name here and I name here
are keeping both um And that's really I mean, did
he learn nothing at that this was my brother or son,
(28:22):
I would be I would, I would just wonder where
it all went wrong. And so you can really see
I think what that what that contract really raises is
the way that perhaps a lot of more House students
feel as though women who report sexual assauce, report rapes
call out troubling, toxic behavior on the part of men.
They feel as though they are violating the integrity of
(28:44):
the more House spellman sort of ecosystem that they're that
they're bucking that tradition. And you can really see the
ways that that holding onto that tradition can be a
kind of a kind of way of shrugging off really harmful,
dangerous behavior on the part of these men. Well, it
also presumes that these women are lying totally. So you're
(29:06):
a liar. You're dragging some elite male reputation through the dirt.
How dare you when we're here to lift each other up.
That's really the thing, right, It's like you gotta be there.
You gotta have each other's backs, uh, in a world
that doesn't have our backs collectively based on race. You're
going to drag me through the mud because of what
you think was a rape. I get that defensiveness. It's horrifying.
(29:29):
The rationale is disgusting and warped, but it totally doesn't
understand obviously, what consent us all about. And um and
I don't know, I just putting black women in that
position of feeling like reporting a rape means ruining the
reputation of the next potential Barack Obama, And I think,
(29:50):
I mean that's why I have personally felt that before.
I think a lot of black women have spoken up
about feeling that way that you know, we live in
a society where black men, black people in general, but
black men are you know, it's kind of set up
to fail in society. Wants to see them go down
in society. You know, it's set up to treat them badly,
And so you don't want to feel like another person
(30:13):
adding onto that, so I can definitely understand that, but
that's no reason to not report an assault, not report rape,
not call out some really harmful toxic behavior. Yeah, And
adding on to that, it's it's this notion that you're
living in a world that already assumes black men are
are violently for this, like black male raping the white woman,
saying that has historically been around. You don't want to
(30:35):
perpetuate that. But that's you know, that's not a reason
to not report what's happened to really, So just some
stats about, um, what's going down with the sexual assaults
on campuses HBCUs versus p wise. So there actually are
less instances of sexual assault reported on HBCUs when compared
to pwise. But that's that is actually kind of misleading
because black women, I think, for a lot of the
(30:57):
reasons we were just unpacking, are less likely to report
actual thoughts than their white counterparts. In general. Um, yeah,
only seventeen percent of black women report instances of sexual
assault to the police, as opposed to forty four percent
of white women. So either there is a significant difference
in who's being raped, or more likely, there's a significant
(31:18):
difference between who feels comfortable or privileged enough to go
to the police and be taken seriously or entitled to
a police officer who's going to take their their um
their crime seriously. And this is an issue that specifically
at Spellman and more House goes back decades, Spellman student
(31:39):
reported being gang raped by four more House students, which
spawned some tough talk at more House. Again, a lot
of talk here, not a lot of action that we've
seen about the unacceptability of abusing women. Yet at the
same time, there was also vocal, overwhelming support on campus
for the men, including one suggest shin from a chapel
(32:01):
dean during a worship service that quote, women bring abuse
upon themselves because of their attitudes and their dress. That's
so disgusting and regressive and toxic. I mean, I can't
even imagine if my if if a dean sort in
front of my student body and said that, I would
have probably burst into tears. But I would have been
(32:22):
so angry. I would have been, I mean, storm out.
That's but who I mean, who knows he's in a
position of power there. That's that's sort of the leadership.
That's a reflection of the leadership at more House completely,
and obviously this was so we can only hope that
things have changed there. Um, anyone who knows someone or
goes to more House please tell us how things have changed. Hopefully,
(32:43):
But this is an issue that seems to be lasting
at Spellman and more House in particular, and the same
challenges are faced by lots of different students on HBCU campuses. Yeah,
and I just think that you really going back to
this idea that it's Spellman, black women are really expected
to support quote unquote their brothers quote unquote, even if
(33:04):
they're toxic, abusive, whatever. Um. This is another quote from
the BuzzFeed article. At Spellman, students must ballist balance the
empowerment that comes from being on a campus full of
young black women with the expectation that they nevertheless must
align themselves with the interest of their brothers next door.
One thing about Spellman that has to be made clear
is that it's a woman's college, but it is not
(33:25):
a feminist college. And this is a quote from the
an associate director of a women's research organization on campus
at Spellman. And I think that is so troubling, like
as a woman, as a black woman, thinking that you're
going to get this, this community of black women to
support you, and then getting the campus and finding oh, actually,
your well being is far less important than the well
(33:47):
being of our our elite, the elite black men that
we are that we are trying to turn out and
in fact, this is internalized in a lot of Spellman
students too. I found it really troubling to hear that
the Spellman two thousand fifteen Valedictorians said when describing the
archetypical Spellman woman to BuzzFeed News, she said, she's middle class,
(34:11):
she's Southern, she has good manners, she's heterosexual, She's not
deviant in any way. You know, this sort of regressive,
hyper religious undertones of what it means to be a
good proper woman is alive and well in a lot
of these campuses. Yeah. I mean, if you take that further,
I have to know that Spellman has a bit of
an an unofficial dress code for official events. Um pants
(34:36):
are you can wear pants, but it's frowned upon pearls
are you know, encouraged And I think, you know, when
I read this quote of the of the typical Spellman woman,
this is I feel like, I feel like I know
this girl. I know this woman. I know the southern,
you know, refined, middle class, wearing pearls, heterosexual, very important,
(34:59):
and no deviant behavior of any kind. And you're just
you know, I mean, I know this woman. I tried
to be this way for a while, but I'm not.
I'm none of those things that way. Yeah no, but
this is Coco from Deer White People. It is this
is totally Coco ak Calandria from Deer White People, which
(35:19):
kept coming to mind as we discuss these different archetypical
identities of being black on campus. Um I would love
to unpack Dear White People at some point too, because man,
I love that movie. First of all, it was amazing.
I saw the movie and the show me too. I'm obsessed.
You should all go watch it, so listen. I'm not
trying to paint HBCUs with hotbeds of campus sexual assaults.
(35:41):
I just think it's very telling that black women who
attend HBCUs they come looking for community and safety and
they realize that's not what they've gotten, oftentimes too late.
I found this quote from the BuzzFeed article to be
really telling. I think that that's that's the travesty, that
you have black women and men applying and going to
HBCUs believing they're going to be safe, but they're really
only honestly thinking about racism. And this is a quote
(36:03):
from Aisha Sentence, who was a visiting scholar from the
University of Pennsylvania and a filmmaker who's documentary No focused
on black female rape survivors and even to extended beyond
the experience of students at HBCUs. That same dynamic between
men women and black men and black women seems to
(36:25):
be replicating itself on the administrative level, because there really
aren't very many female HBCU presidents, which is troubling because
if we had more women in charge. Quite frankly, I
think that might lead to a better representation of the
issues that women on HBCUs are facing. But more House
College President John Wilson has been dogged by rumors and
(36:48):
calls for his termination for more than two years, yet
he remains in place with cursory affirmations of support from
board and alumni officers without any detail about how he's
earned it. But women, on the other hand, in HBCU
presidencies have not received the same opportunity to get it
wrong and to learn how to get it right again.
We're up against that sort of glass cliff of you
(37:11):
can't mess up at work the same way. UH. Male
in the same position is given UH the opportunity to
redeem himself. Women, on the other hand, are told to
get out. Now. This isn't to say that women don't
earn the right to be fired, as is written by
Crystal uh Di Gregory and Jared Carter Sr. On HBCU
buzz on medium dot com. But really it's not saying
(37:35):
that women haven't earned the right to be fired or
haven't have earned the right to be judged with fewer
or soften metrics of success against their male counterparts. It
is to say that HBCUs are in no position collectively
to brand women as executive failures worthy of quick removal,
while men can stick it out for a more appropriate
time and approach. So this problem, this gender problem that
(38:00):
is playing out when it comes to campus sexual assault,
is replicating itself when it comes to leadership, and obviously
women in leadership across industries and across colleges run into
the similar problems. But I think it would behoove a
brave HBCU to really take an active role in recruiting
and developing more female leadership to make a safer environment
(38:24):
for the female students on campus. Totally, I mean, I
couldn't agree more. I also found it really interesting that
there's only two women studies programs at all of the
HBC is in the United States of Bellman and bit
at college, and yeah, it just shows the ways that
this toxic gender stuff can really be a top down thing,
and it's not. It doesn't. I agree, it doesn't necessarily
(38:44):
start with the students. It can start at the higher
levels of the administration. And unfortunately, as we talk about
higher levels of administration, sadly we must indeed utter his
name on this podcast once more. Donald Trump has something
to do with HBCUs nowadays, doesn't he? Bridget First of all,
you may have seen that really weird picture. It was
(39:06):
a photo shoot where Kelly and Conway is sitting on
the couch with her shoes off, with her feet underneath her,
her body really strange, had a bigger deal out of her.
I felt bad for her, but that's a different episode.
Like maybe we shouldn't judge her so much in this photo.
But I mean it was awkward, like it was respect
the office kind of awkward, but not like, yeah, I didn't,
(39:28):
please don't call her her like dirty slurs sitting that
way with the shorts. Of course, of course, of course,
it just was like the picture was awkward. I'll put
it that. I think the picture was awkward before she
was even in it. If she wasn't even in it,
I feel like that whole that from that picture, that
whole day sy heard why did this happen? Bridget helped
me understand this. One of the things Donald Trump when
he first got into office, he was very very vocal
(39:51):
about the fact that he thought, you know, the Obama
administration really failed hpc USE and all of this, and
he vowed to turn it all around. He said, I'm
gonna do things dif really this is appalling. So so
we gather as all these HBCU presidents in the room,
they're told they're going to be able to, you know,
have the president's here, and the president cares so much
about this issue. In YadA YadA, YadA, they all basically
(40:11):
reported they didn't really get to talk that much. That
they said at most, you know, two minutes to the president.
And what's interesting is that after all that m grand
standing about how he was going to be better for
HBCUs than President Obama was, his America First Budget actually
slices the federal education spending for HBCUs by thirteen point
five per cent, and it also claims to maintain quote
(40:33):
unquote funding for minority institutions and HBCUs at around four
million dollars, but that's the exact same amount that the
previous administrations initially budgeted. So he made this whole big
show about how he was going to, you know, do
right by HBCUs and then and be better than than
the Obama administration was, but then totally didn't. And so
(40:54):
these HBCU leaders were vocally like pretty disappointed by this,
of course, and it seems so like such a press
ploy to just have him in the White House early on.
Come together, Let's bring people of African American backgrounds together
into the White House early on to show our support.
(41:14):
And it was just a discussing example of just trying
to take credit for intentions that I don't even think
we're well intentioned, you know what I mean, Like they
weren't coming from a good place to begin with, and
then furthermore to sort of drag Obama on HBCUs is
not quite accurate either, because the New America Foundation actually
estimates that, due to the Obama administration's additional discretionary spending
(41:38):
that was added to the HBCU figure, that the actual
sum was around five hundred and seventy seven million, which
is fifteen more than what Donald Trump is coming in at.
So he's not even matching what Obama did. He's actually
giving hbc USE a pay cut. After they came to
the White House at his invitation to express the need
for more support because there are ready operating on less
(42:01):
than what they need. And to add to that, those
very same leaders that he used basically for a photo
of a lot of them. After that meeting, they came
out and said, we feel like we got used. We
feel like we were used for a photo op, and
we're disappointed with this. And to sort of drive home
how how disingenuous I feel like his comments on HBCUs were.
He then went on to suggest that funding for HBCUs
(42:24):
might even be unconstitutional. He said, according to this article
on ny mag, Trump suggested that such funding was not
constitutional on the account of allocated benefits quote on the
basis of race, ethnicity, or gender. So after this big
production of I'm gonna be so great for hbc USE,
I'm gonna be better than Obama was, he went on
to be like, wait, do we even need to fund
you guys? I feel it was so obviously somebody in
(42:47):
the communications offices idea to have this photo happen, and
then Kelly and Conway, the head of comes accidentally ruined
the entire news cycle. And then he went back and
let his true colors shine through by saying like, actually,
let's not fund them at all in the casual, off
hand way that this man legislates or presidents. I don't
(43:10):
know what the verb is, but whatever it is, that
they're not doing it so well. Because just from a
pure communication standpoint, even if we're able to for a
moment suspend the moral and ethical and like racism qualms
that are all tied up in that, that's just a
bad press strategy all around. Yeah. Yeah, it seems like
(43:34):
that's what we get from this administration. Just bad optics,
bad press, bad tweets. Maybe he'll tweet his way out
of it. Yes, but let's not talk about Donald Trump anymore.
It gets me too angry, as you can probably tell,
gets my blood boiling. So, sminty listeners, we want to
hear from you. Did any of y'all go to HBCUs
Why if you did not go to an HBCU, why
(43:54):
not do you work at one? Um? Let us know.
You want to know your thoughts on HBCUs. Do you
think they're relevant, have they needed, why or why not?
You can tag us on Instagram at stuff mom Ever
Told You? You can tweet at us at mom Stuff Podcast,
or you can email us at mom Stuff at how
stuff works dot com
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