Algernon Austin presents an excellent, concise, and wonderfully read scholarly examination of the complicated landscape of race, class and popular perception. Besides the prison industrial complex, black strides in education, poverty rates, crime and other indices contradict claims that blacks are “moving backward.”--Jeffrey O. G. Ogbar, Director, Institute for African American Studies, University of Connecticut and author of Black Power: Radical Politics and African American Identity (The Johns Hopkins University Press), 2004 and Hip-Hop Revolution: The Culture and Politics of Rap (University Press of Kansas), 2007.
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- Douglas S. Massey, Margarita Mooney, Kimberly C. Torres and Camille Z. Charles, “Black Immigrants and Black Natives Attending Selective Colleges and Universities in the United States,” American Journal of Education, February 2007, 243-271.
Massey et al. found that in 1999, first- and second-generation immigrants made up 13 percent of black 18-19 year olds, but they represented 27 percent of blacks in elite colleges. Immigrants are found among blacks in elite colleges at twice their rate in the general population, so they are overrepresented. But they are not yet the majority of blacks in elite colleges. The researchers found that more than 70 percent of blacks in selective colleges are “native” blacks.
While the elite college enrollment average for black immigrants is 27 percent of black students, there is variation by the selectivity of the school. Generally, the more elite the college is the higher the share of black immigrants is among the black students. The Massey et al. analysis found that the share is 41 percent for Ivy League institutions but 23 percent for selective public universities.
Massey et al. examined selective colleges. These institutions are elite because most college students do not attend them. My statistics were for the entire nation, not just for elite college attendees. I do not know what share black immigrants make up of all blacks earning degrees. Black immigrant over-representation declines the less elite the school among elite schools. If this relationship were to hold for non-elite schools then nationally immigrants would make up considerably less than 27 percent of black college graduates. Only when someone conducts the analysis on a national sample would we have a good estimate.
Why are black immigrants over-represented at elite colleges? Massey et al. do not provide any clear answers. The socioeconomic and academic profile of native and immigrant blacks in elite colleges are very similar. Once in school, both groups perform equally well or equally poorly. This means that both groups under-perform relative to whites.
There are two hypotheses that can be derived from the Massey et al. analysis about why black immigrants are over-represented. Black immigrants may simply be over-represented among the black students qualified for elite colleges. They may make up approximately 27 percent of qualified blacks and therefore make up 27 percent of blacks in elite colleges. Black immigrants are more likely to be middle class than black natives. Middle-class students tend to have higher achievement than poorer students. So, this might explain why black immigrants are over-represented among the qualified students.
One difference between black natives and immigrants is that black immigrants are more likely to have attended private high schools. Elite colleges probably do have some bias in favor of private high schools in their recruiting and admissions practices. This bias would lead to an over-representation of black immigrants. It is possible for both the qualifications and private school factors to be at play simultaneously.
Researchers need to explore these explanations for the over-representation of black immigrants in elite colleges. If a private-school bias is at work, elite schools should be aware of this and work to correct their recruiting and admission polices.
Rather than have this issue be another one to foment tension between black “natives” and black immigrants, both groups should recognize that they under-perform equally relative to whites. It would make most sense for everyone to work together to improve all black student achievement in elite schools.
Elite schools are important, but we should not ignore the majority of black college students in non-elite schools. I purposely wanted to highlight the growth of blacks attaining associate’s degrees because these students are mostly likely to represent poor and working-class blacks struggling to get ahead. Find out more about average blacks students in “The Truth about Black Students.”
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--Algernon Austin, Ph.D.
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