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well-funded schools that can afford computers. Blacks in massive numbers go
to inner-city and rural schools that can barely afford to purchase textbooks..
.Even
if
a particular [black] school can afford computer facilities, there
will
be
far more students competing for computer time in overcrowded and under–
funded inner-city schools than will be the case in suburban institutions... .This
inevitably means that black students in the ghetto schools will fall behind...."
Integration is the only practical way out of segregation
because, as Cross puts
it, "The preferred schools (and) colleges...are usually those with strong
links to the white-controlled world of business, finance, and law. Because
of prior segregation and racial subordination, these advantaged places of
schooling and living are presently occupied almost exclusively by whites.
Unless blacks have equal access in space and time to all the physical play–
ing fields of competition, equal opportunity rules will be of little avail
even
to the most
dedicated, hardworking, and gifted black students."
That's
why the Cornell black student
really
matriculated at Cornell–
not to be "white," but to learn alongside her fellow Americans, of all
colors, at an elite institution.
I predict that
if
we were plain-spoken with students; that
if
we treated
them as
individuals
rather than as representatives of tribes, we would have a
head start in creating truly world-class higher education institutions. We
should, at least,
try.
It
is the kind of Civil Rights movement for the twenty–
first century. With history and the lessons of racial discord behind us, we
can and should move forward-into the new millennium. Forward with
integration, interaction, and cooperation, not backwards to segregation,
separatism, and conflict. We should affirmatively answer Martin Luther
King, Jr.'s question, "Where do we go from here-Chaos or
Community?" with, "to community, of course." Of course.
Peter Wood:
Now we'll hear from Nat Glazer.
Nathan Glazer:
Not long ago, in a conference of the Comparative and
International Education Society, an international organization of schol–
ars and educators, its president, William Curnrnings of SUNY-Buffalo,
proposed as the title for a session on multiculturalism "Historical
Cultures vs. Multi-Cultures." This was to me an interesting and new ter–
minology for thinking about the conflict over culture in the curriculum.
Normally we talk about the target of multiculturalism as the "tradition–
al curriculum" or the "canon." "Historical cultures" has a somewhat
different resonance and reminds us of just what is at stake in the conflict
over multiculturalism, and why it arouses so much anxiety and anger.
The term "multiculturalism" has become an all-purpose epithet to
denounce everything we may not like in poststructuralism, deconstruction,
