Historically black colleges, still relevant and still needed!
dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
Historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) are institutions of higher education in the United States that were established before 1964 with the intention of serving the black community. Most were founded to provided educational opportunities denied to black Americans during the Jim Crow era.
There are 105 HBCUs in the United States today. They range from public to private, two-year to four-year institutions, medical schools to community colleges. All are or were in the former slave states and territories of the U.S. except for Central State University (Ohio), Cheyney University of Pennsylvania, Lewis College of Business (Detroit, Michigan), Lincoln University (Pennsylvania), Wilberforce University (Ohio), and the now defunct Western University (Kansas). Some closed during the 20th century due to competition, the Great Depression and financial difficulties after operating for decades.
Of the 105 HBCU institutions in America today, 27 offer doctoral programs and 52 provide graduate degree programs at the Master's level. At the undergraduate level, 83 of the HBCUs offer a Bachelor's degree program and 38 of these schools offer associate degrees.
With its 15 HBCUs, Alabama has more schools of this kind than any other state. North Carolina has more four-year public universities than any of the other states with five. Some of the more notable colleges on the list are Louisiana's four-year private school Xavier University, Virginia State University, University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff, a division of Arkansas' best known university, Georgia's Morris Brown University and Howard University in Washington, D.C.
The portion of Bachelor degrees awarded to black students by HBCUs has steadily dropped from 35% in 1976 to 21.5% in 2001. From 1976 to 2001, total HBCU enrollment grew from 180,059 to 222,453, with most of this increase being attributable to the growth of female black enrollment from 88,379 to 117,766.
HBCU still play an out sized roll in the Black community. Today despite only about eighteen percent of black college students being enrolled at HBCUs, they award 23 percent of the bachelor’s degrees earned by African-Americans. HBCU produce a staggering, 35 percent of black lawyers, 50 percent of black engineers and 65 percent of black physicians.
Even more importantly than the raw numbers of black doctors, HBCU's produce doctors with a higher sense of a social mission. HBCUs Best in Training Doctors Serving the Poor:
African-American educators are basking in the findings of an unprecedented study that confirms what many have long believed: Historically black medical schools lead the nation in producing the highest percentage of physicians practicing in underserved communities.
Morehouse, Meharry and Howard Medical Schools ranked first, second and third in a study of 141 training institutions conducted from 1999 to 2001 by a group of George Washington University researchers led by Fitzhugh Mullan, M.D.
Published in the current issue of Annals of Internal Medicine and released late Monday, the study rated the schools in "social mission" categories - the percentages of graduates entering primary care practice, working in areas with shortages in health care providers and serving underrepresented minorities.
Harvard, widely regarded as the nation's most prestigious medical school, was 67th; John Hopkins was 122nd, and the University of Pennsylvania was 29th. Vanderbilt, a top-tier southern school, ranked next to last. No highly ranked school was included in the top 10.
Applauding the study as "a great effort," George Rust, M.D, director of the National Center for Primary Care at Morehouse, told BlackAmericaWeb.com Wednesday that it "refocuses our attention on training the physicians the country needs who also represent America's diversity."
Given the nation's acute shortage of physicians, Rust said, "its really important that we train students to serve communities where they're most needed, provide doctors who represent America's diversity and equip them in the specialties that are most needed as well."
That is why much overlooked by the media, such as White House initiatives by President Obama moves to bolster HBCUs in every budget since he took office are so important.
President Obama signed an executive order Friday strengthening the White House Initiative on Historically Black Colleges and Universities, a document first signed by President Carter 30 years ago to "overcome the effects of discriminatory treatment" and expand capacity at the institutions.
Obama's budget for fiscal year 2011 proposes $98 million in new money for HBCUs: an increase of $13 million, or 5 percent, in the Strengthening HBCUs program, part of the federal Title III program tailored to build the self-sufficiency of HBCUs, and support for $85 million in HBCU funding in the pending student aid bill.
With their relatively smaller endowments, the combination of a poor economy and (until recently) poor financial markets have placed many HBCU in serious financial jeopardy. Economy Hits Hard on Black Campuses.
“At some institutions, you might be going from eating brie to cheddar, while at H.B.C.U.’s, you might not have any cheese left,” said Marybeth Gasman, an expert on historically black colleges and universities, often shortened to H.B.C.U.’s, at the University of Pennsylvania.
Institutions that produce not only a staggering, 35 percent of black lawyers, 50 percent of black engineers and 65 percent of black physicians, but also those with a greater sense of social justice, can't be allowed to fail. Even as many people feel America is moving to a so called "post racial America", the mission of serving the poor, who are disproportionately people of color can't be overlooked or forgotten. HBCU fulfill a mission in America that many "elite" Universities in America have neglected or outright abandoned.
With TeaBirchers now in control of many state houses vowing to trim budgets including state financial aid, and with joblessness and outright economic depression rampant in so much of the black community. Defending and expanding the mission and opportunities that HBCUs represent is a mission that all good progressive can rally around at the local level. In what could be an opening salvo Mississippi our "good friend" Haley Barbour not too long ago proposed "combining and contracting" the states three historically black public universities (Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour proposes consolidation of Black Colleges, faces opposition), this battle must be fought at the local level.
With their unique combination of education, history, and social mission historically black colleges and universities play a vital roll in the American fabric. If education is the key to the future HBCU are one of this nations most cherished ones. Take time to learn about HBCUs, rally around them at the state level, and help to protect this historic and much needed piece of Americana. Hillary Clinton has made increased funding for HBCUs a core part of her campaign, and a key part of her education platform Trump on the other hand has a sorbid history of exploiting those who are looking for a higher education
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News round up by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
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As diversity in higher education becomes increasingly measured and studied, we were curious about just which schools have the most diverse student bodies. Which schools have a balanced student body and which schools are all pretty much just one race?
Using data from the Department of Education and from Priceonomics customer BestColleges.com, we looked at the makeup of each school’s student body by race/ethnicity.
We classified the level of diversity using the Herfindahl–Hirschman Index (HHI), a calculation that measures diversity in a variety of settings—such as the competitiveness of a business market or the biological makeup of an ecosystem. In the past, we've used this methodology to assess the diversity levels of American cities.
The index ranges from 1 (the least diverse: a population of all one type) to 1/N (the most diverse), where N is the number of different categories being analyzed. A student body that is entirely White would have an HHI of 1. A student body that is equally made up of people from five different racial groups would have an HHI of 0.2.
To quantify the ethnic/racial diversity on college campuses, we used five racial/ethnic categories identified in the government’s College Scorecard data: White, Black, Hispanic, Asian, and Other. (The Other category includes anyone who identified as more than one race/ethnicity or a race/ethnicity not included in the list, and anyone who did not provide their race/ethnicity.) We excluded any colleges that were not geared towards undergraduates, had fewer than 500 students, or for which the College Scorecard did not have data on the racial composition of their student body.
We then created an index for all schools. A lower index number reflects a more diverse student body.
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The #BankBlack national trend in which African Americans are responding to calls for depositing funds into Black-owned financial institutions has gained momentum, but is it more than just a hashtag? Ebony: A Movement to Put Black Banks in the Black.
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It started with an emotional cry from rapper Killer Mike in the wake of the police shooting deaths of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile:
“We need one million people in Atlanta to take $100 out of their existing accounts, put $100 into a Citizens Trust [Bank] account…take that $100 million and promise $15,000 to $18,000 loans for Black businesses or small homes,” the MC said on Atlanta’s Hot 107.9.
But this time, people listened and not only did they listen, they started a nationwide trend in which African American owned banks are seeing significant increases in new accounts, which they say is the beginning of a new type of Black economic power movement encapsulated by simple social media hashtags like #BankBlack and #MoveYourMoney.
Killer Mike singled out the Atlanta-based Citizens Trust, an institution he publically supported earlier this year through various events, but the rallying cry is positively affecting many other Black banks nationwide. It is also apparently deriving energy from the Black Lives Matter movement and from people who wish to have a tangible, long-lasting impact outside of demonstrations and marches.
Banks like Seaway Bank & Trust in Chicago, Commonwealth National Bank in Mobile, Ala., City National Bank in Newark, N.J. and Boston-based OneUnited Bank all say they are benefiting from the movement. Partly driven by Killer Mike’s call and also by the calls of other celebrities, including Solange Knowles and Jesse Williams, the point is for African Americans to be more aware of who holds their dollars.
The result with Citizens Trust alone has been 8,000 new applications in the space of a week and as many as 2,300 new accounts and growing, according to the bank’s president and CEO, Cynthia Day.
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The Ghostbusters star was the target of a recent attack of racist and offensive comments on Twitter that left Jones with "tears and a very sad heart."
The tweets caught the attention of Twitter chief executive Jack Dorsey, who sent Jones, 48, a message asking her to get in touch with him.
"Hi Leslie, following, please DM me when you have a moment," he wrote.
According to Buzzfeed News, Twitter also permanently suspended conservative writer and Breitbart.com tech editor Milo Yiannopoulos, who they said led a harassment campaign against the Saturday Night Live actress.
Twitter also released a statement in which they said they were investigating ways to improve their process of reviewing abusive behavior on the social media site and will continue to work on their policies.
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A small black child holds a “F*ck Donald Trump!” poster as sirens ring out and a police helicopter patrols overhead. The rapper YG appears, both middle fingers raised, and emphatically raps “F_ck Donald Trump / F_ck Donald Trump”over and over again.
The imagery in the video for this year’s “FDT (F*ck Donald Trump)” by YG and Nipsey Hussle was striking, and the explicitly anti-Trump lyrics in a hip-hop song were even more so. After decades of rap songs extolling Trump’s name — praising his wealth, his TV show and his luxury hotel chain — “FDT” felt like the first of its kind.
Except that it wasn’t. In a 1993 song, The Coup, a group from Oakland, California, rapped, “Break yourself Trump, it's collection day / Break yourself DuPont, it's collection day / You stole the shit from my great granddaddy anyway.”Although not as explicit as YG’s lyric, The Coup’s message for Trump was clearly negative — they and their fellow revolutionaries were coming for Trump’s money, and it was rightfully theirs.
Hip-hop has long been a political genre; artists often draw from and critique those in power. “Hip-hop has earned a creative license to offer a critical narrative of celebrity and political figures, and unlike other genres of popular music, hip-hop has always made it a priority,” said S. Craig Watkins, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin and the author of “Hip Hop Matters: Politics, Pop Culture, and the Struggle for the Soul of a Movement.” Now that Trump's public persona has shifted from business mogul to politician, and includes controversial statements on race, immigration and Muslims, I wondered whether the hip-hop discourse surrounding him was changing too.
So I asked the lyrics annotation site Genius to send me every reference to Trump that appears in its database of songs. To put his cultural position in context, I also requested the data on all the 2016 candidates — Democratic and Republican — who made it to the Iowa caucuses.1The data set was rife with Trump, whose prominence and longevity as a figure in hip-hop is staggering: He and his brand have been referenced in 266 songs dating back to 1989; in one year alone (2013), there were 33 references.2
But perhaps even more surprising is that Hillary Clinton and the Clinton family3have their own long, voluminous history of hip-hop references. They’ve been mentioned in 92 songs since 1993. And the other candidates? Seventeen songs, combined.
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Mike Hill, a black Republican state representative in Florida, grew steadily more disheartened as he watched television clips of his party’s overwhelmingly white national convention lecturing African-Americans about the police and race relations.
There was Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former mayor of New York, nearly shouting Monday night that the police only wanted to help people, regardless of race. A sea of white convention delegates, cheering wildly as two black speakers ridiculed the Black Lives Matter movement and unconditionally praised law enforcement officers. And a series of speakers pushing Donald J. Trump’s law-and-order message and arguing, as he has, that the United States had lost its way.
“When a lot of white Republicans get together and bring up race, even telling black people how they should see police and the world, it evokes the worst kind of emotion,” said Mr. Hill, who supports Mr. Trump but decided to skip the convention. “We have so few black Republicans to begin with. Talking about race won’t bring us more.”
For many black Republicans, the party’s convention has veered unexpectedly and unhappily toward lecturing and moralizing on issues of race, an off-putting posture at a time when Mr. Trump is staggeringly unpopular with minority voters. He drew support from zero percent of African-Americans in recent NBC News/Wall Street Journal polls in Ohio and Pennsylvania, and he is struggling badly with Hispanics, partly because of his harsh language about Mexicans and immigrants.
These Republicans said they had preferred the political messages to black voters at recent conventions, where the focus was less on public safety and crime than on economic opportunity, job creation, support for small businesses and school choice — all issues, they said, that held appeal.
In Cleveland, however, Mr. Trump and Republican Party leaders are focused on appealing to white voters, particularly white men who are critical to their electoral strategy in the Midwest and the South.
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