CUNY Diversity Plan Criticized for Discrimination

The City University of New York launched its Black Male Initiative program in 2005 in an effort to enhance the educational opportunities and employment success of a demographic in particular need of support: New York’s black male population. But recently, as legal questions have arisen regarding possible racial and gender discrimination, some have challenged the program and its motives.

The Initiative’s Task Force, which consists of CUNY affiliates with diverse educational backgrounds and interests, initially set out to gain a better understanding of the black male experience in higher education. According to Brenda Greene, Task Force member and executive director of the Center for Black Writers at CUNY, research revealed a population that largely was neither entering nor staying enrolled in college. The Task Force went on to conduct surveys on CUNY campuses to gauge student opinion and awareness about the issue of black male enrollment, and to solicit potential solutions from the students themselves.

“It is a well-established fact that institutions of higher education in the U.S. do not successfully recruit, retain, and graduate young African-American and Caribbean men,” the Initiative’s planning statement reads. “Myriad statistics discuss the disproportionately low percentages and numbers of young black men within higher education, public higher education, and even at CUNY.”

In the final report, the Task Force divided obstacles to black male college success into three categories: education, incarceration and arrest, and employment. In all three categories, black men were shown to be marginalized or oppressed in large part due to what the report referred to as “society’s generally negative perception of black males.” In response, the Task Force put forward a list of nine recommendations that included strengthening university leadership, reforming K-12 education, reducing incarceration rates, and improving employment opportunities.

Today, with grants from City Council, the Initiative has established programs on all 23 CUNY campuses. These programs offer a “holistic environment” to support black male students in all aspects of life and education, from counseling services to financial aid, Greene said.

The hope is to “retain students who had not been successful in their first effort to matriculate,” said Henry Vance Davis, dean for recruitment and diversity at CUNY.

But while Davis said the program has been “applauded by a number of educators around the country,” it has come under scrutiny from the New York Civil Rights Coalition. In 2006, the NYCRC filed two separate complaints that questioned the program’s legality based on alleged race and gender discrimination. In the past month, the U.S. Department of Education has taken up the issue to determine whether the program has violated federal laws such as the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Supporters maintain that the Initiative’s practices are fair. “The program is not excluding anyone,” Greene said, and there is “a moral imperative to address this problem [of black male education], because it is critical.”

“This is a concept that is in the best interest of society,” Davis said. “They can’t stop us from educating the people we need to move society forward.”

kate.lovely@columbiaspectator.com