“For Black students at higher education institutions—especially at predominantly white institutions—a lack of representation and lack of diversity among their peers exacerbates the sense of loneliness,” Pamela Dankins writes.
College presidents between 1948 to 1968 had to deal with different segments of society that were at complete odds with one another.
On the one hand, they oversaw schools where students were increasingly protesting segregation. But they also had to deal with segregationist politicians who controlled state funding for their institutions.
As an organizer for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee during the 1960s, Bob Moses traveled to the most dangerous parts of Mississippi to help African Americans end segregation and secure the right to vote. But it would be tutoring students in math 20 years later at his daughter’s racially mixed middle school in Massachusetts that would lead to his life’s work—The Algebra Project.
I conclude that the decisions to force Black students to share top honors with white students result from a psychological discomfort known as “white fragility.” This is a state of stress experienced by some white people when they are presented with information about people of color that challenges their sense of entitlement. I maintain that when students of color are named top students in their graduating class, as Shepard was in 2016, white society may begin to fear that students of color are encroaching upon their social turf.
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