Historically Black colleges are recruiting Latinos. According to an AP report earlier this month covered by both CNN.com and USAtoday.com

A great move for historically Black colleges since:
a. the country is moving towards becoming a greater mixture of colors, to embrace that fact is to embrace a more realistic sample of the population,
b. the creation of a more united minority front is just what the colored population of this country needs (especially in terms of voting and economic power) and,
c. learning how to understand Black culture (all Black people are not drug dealers), and Latino culture (all Latinas aren’t sluts who liked to be called “Mami”), will only lead to a greater understanding and respect of each.

And who knows, maybe both Latinos and Blacks will realize the fate of one minority group in the United States is the fate of them all? Maybe they’ll do something about it?

But is it a great move for Latinos?

Who has more to gain here? Latino students or historically Black colleges? And are we welcome by the student body of historically Black colleges? (As welcome as historically white colleges were initially of minorities?) USAtoday.com reports that a student, James Travis, who is Black, said having other students of other races on a historically black campus bothers him “a little bit” because it challenges the college’s mission. He adds:

“It’s supposed to maintain the historically black tradition,” said the 21-year-old student from the Atlanta suburb of College Park. “I’ll have to see how it goes before I see if I want to change the situation or not.”

Not mentioned in either article is how will Latinos handle being in Black classrooms? (We’re used to being in predominately white college classrooms already.) And what are the “real” incentives in attending a historically Black college? According to CNN.com, Nelson Santiago, a Puerto Rican recruiter for the historically Black Howard University, there are about 170 Latinos out of 11,500 students.

It doesn’t sound like the incentives are there.

Well, how about Morehouse College? There are about 15 Latinos out of 2,800 students there.

Is this the recreation of an educational system designed to make its “minority” students feel isolated from the rest of the student body? Haven’t we been through that already?

The reality is, how many Latino mothers will let their principes attend a college classroom that is over 85% black? The role of Latino families and their influence in choices dealing with education, for better and for worse, has been well documented. And there is no problem with letting any Latino attend a classroom that is over 85% white. And what about their princesas? Oh no! Simply put, Latinos have been dealing with the question of color since the moment the first “Black” person arrived from Africa and made it with an indigenous girl and created a new darker color. That combined with the white man doing it with that indigenous girl’s sister and creating a new lighter color forever changed the psyche of the indigenous person. Which spurred the creation of dozens of racial epithets in Spanish that are as widely used today as ever; and the creation of a race and class system that plays a role in the life of every Latino. A race and class system that is evident everyday in the pressure Latin American chicas, of marrying age, face trying “lighten” the color of their families.

Good idea or not? There are so many factors involved in choosing the right college, location, professors, credibility, cost, student body, student life, etc. Ultimately it is, and should be, the choice of the student. Check back in ten years.

Image Via / Palgrave Macmillan
Neither Enemies Nor Friends is 2006 collection edited by Anani Dzidzienyo and Suzanne Oboler and published by Palgrave Macmillan.