370
PARTISAN REVIEW
c.
Vann Woodward:
Does the fact that you have only one black stu–
dent mean that the other black students are taking black history or that
they're not taking any history?
Wilson Moses: I
taught a black history course last semester, and
I
had
fifty students. There were six blacks in the classroom, and one of them
was me.
C. Vann Woodward:
And all the rest were white?
Wilson Moses:
All the rest were white.
Jean Elshtain:
What are they taking?
Wilson Moses:
The number of black students on campuses is going
down, according to the
Chronicle.
There just aren't as many students out
there. That gets back to Mr. Schlesinger's point that we've got problems
here that have to do with the ability of people to send their kids to
college. At Boston University we have an increasing number of foreign
students because they can pay and the American kids can't.
Abigail Thernstrom: I
don't think it's the absence of financial support
that explains the drop in black college attendance. Black
WOrllell
are
going to college in increasing numbers. Black males are the problem.
Sondra Farganis:
Allow me to see if
I
can pull together for myself the
two positions that William presented because I've been troubled, as you
have, over whether America is all of a piece. And in some sense the dis–
cussion today has troubled me even more. I had occasion to go back and
read a piece by Brigitte and Peter Berger that first appeared in
The Nell'
Repllblic
in 1971 and was published in their book
Facillg lip to Moderllity,
on the blueing of America, and I was struck by its relevance. The piece
argues that the radicalism of the sixties will be something that we won't
really have to worry about because there are a lot of working-class stu–
dents who want to come into the university and want nothing to do
with what they consider political nonsense. My experience in working
with adult students, which is the largest growing population of students
in the country, is that the blueing of America will resolve political cor–
rectness because the majority of the people coming into universities now
are really not interested either in literary culture or in the epistemological
arguments that are at the root of political correctness. When I was at
Vassar, the debates over PC affected us every day. They were a threat to
