Remnants of colonization continue to seethe through campuses and the education presented in higher education till this day, although colonization of the Americas happened many years ago. The issue is that there have been little to no attempts to truly break down what residue has been left, because this residue negatively impacts Indigenous and black students . Colonization of the university comes in many different forms-statues of Confederate officers, tone-deaf and racist names of sports teams associated with schools, improper support for marginalized students, and how poverty and racism stemming from colonization has systematically prevented people of color from pursuing education and kept white people at the top. Here, this horrible phenomenon will be broken down and explained.
The influence of power and race in the classroom must be acknowledged. As of September 2021, 71 percent of college professors are white, but only 37 percent of college students are black and only 1 percent are indigineous. With this disparity in race, a power difference is inevitable within the classroom, especially in BIPOC minority schools.
Sharon Stein, a professor at the University of British Columbia, stated, “Decolonization is not a single event or prescribed blueprint, but a complex and contested process of unlearning and undoing centuries of colonial ideas, desires, and infrastructures”. This quote simply describes that decolonization can not come from forced diversity or small attempts to have more POC representation. The entire basis in which white supremacy has been part of higher education must be broken apart. Those who benefit from white supremacy in the context of education must learn and take apart how they have benefitted and use their power to help people of color in the restructuring of higher education. When the basis of education in colonized countries is looked at, it is found that any amount of education was built for the white majority. The whole structure of education and how it was taught was centered around one audience-the white man.
The Morrill Land Grants act of 1862 would allocate land for education institution, and the second Morrill act of 1890 would provide different land to create Black educational institutions to promote segregation but also give black people a chance(Museus, Ledesma, Parker, 2015). The Black institutions did provide education for black people of that time, however, funding towards African American schools was quite lacking compared to the many more white schools that were created. The class gap that higher education promoted was only being fed, and education that had always been catered to the rich simply created poor schools for the poor and marginalized. Similarly to how women were treated when they attempted to receive education, black people were scorned at and mocked for wanting to learn. Many states banned teaching former enslaved people literacy, so black Americans of the time were forced to create their own educational institutions-known today as HBCUs.
Throughout time, as colleges started accepting a minimal amount of black people into their institutions, universities still put forth rules in their colleges that separated races and hurt minorities. For example, the head of Harvard university from 1909-1933, A. Lawrence Lowell, wanted to keep out black and Jewish students-as a result, he prohibited black students from entering certain parts of the institution. To keep the image of “diversity”, rather than keeping a segregationist system, Lowell edited the school’s application process to look at the family history and background of students-a system designed to keep out people of color. This system sought out white men who had rich and privileged families, rather than black people who, due to the intentional setbacks against them, were neither rich nor privileged. Many other institutions of higher education also adopted this practice, a system designed to keep out black and indigenous people from universities.
As more time passed, systems of affirmative action were put in place to combat these horrible but hidden rules. Yet, many leaders in the education industry (mainly white men) protested it, claiming that it was “unequal” and that it was putting black people on a pedestal. The effects of systemic racism continued to keep black people poorer and lower-class than white people, and laws concerning tuition and support for black students have barely changed with the times since they were created. For example, the Pell Grant, created to support low-income students, has barely changed with tuition prices that have more than doubled since the grant’s creation in 1972. The Health Care and Education Reconciliation act of 2010 limited the amount of money awarded to each recipient, and only allowed that amount to adjust to inflation until 2017. Still, the Pell Grant is extremely important to black families who are seeking higher education-especially considering the fact that black families carry much less wealth in proportion to white families in America. The issue here is that even with a small amount of money going to low-income families, getting into elite institutions is still much harder for black students. With rich (and white) students, college-prep programs and tutoring are much more accessible, making it easier for them to get into colleges-a mirror to the early and mid 20th century, where mainly rich and white students were accepted into good institutions.
Now, in 2021, black and Indigenous students continue to suffer from the effects of colonization, systemic racism, and slavery. The university has never truly been decolonized, and forcing diversity or adding a week of the school year to “showcase black and Indigenous history” does not erase the hundreds of years of segregation that have set back students of color. We, as a society, need to realize that black and Indigenous history is American history, racism is not gone, and higher education still benefits the white student. There are many more problems with the university that haven’t been talked about, and only when those problems are addressed and solved, can we see a future where people of color in America are liberated.
Sources:
James, Frances. “Why We Need to Talk about the Decolonization of Higher Education.” QS, Publisher Name QS – Quacquarelli Symonds Publisher Logo, 1 Mar. 2021, https://www.qs.com/why-we-need-to-talk-about-the-decolonization-of-higher-education/.
Lee, J.M. and Keys, S.W. (2013). Land-grant But Unequal: State One-to-One Match Funding for 1890 Land-grant Universities. (APLU Office of
Access and Success publication no. 3000-PB1). Washington, DC: Association of Public and Land-grant Universities.
Libassi, CJ. “The Neglected College Race Gap: Racial Disparities Among College Completers.” Center for American Progress, 28 Mar. 2019, https://www.americanprogress.org/article/neglected-college-race-gap-racial-disparities-among-college-completers/.
Museus, Samuel D., et al. “Racism and Racial Equity in Higher Education.” Columbia, 13 Nov. 2015, https://fas.columbia.edu/files/fas/content/ASHE%20Higher%20Education%20Report.%20Nov2015%2C%20Vol.%2042%20Issue%201%2C%20p49-71.%2023p.%20.pdf.
“Pell Grant Funding and History.” New America, https://www.newamerica.org/education-policy/topics/higher-education-funding-and-financial-aid/federal-student-aid/federal-pell-grants/pell-grant-funding/#:~:text=Congress%20changed%20the%20mandatory%20funding,Education%20Reconciliation%20Act%20of%202010.&text=Beginning%20in%202018%2C%20grants%20will,available%20for%20the%20supplemental%20grant.