(Name-mce) ListServ The Immigrant Factor

[Anselmo Villanueva]

For a better format, graphs and tables (data), and related stories, go to:

http://insidehighered.com/news/2007/02/01/black

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February 1, 2007

The Immigrant Factor

At a reunion of black alumni of Harvard University in 2003, Lani
Guinier set off a discussion on a sensitive subject: whether black
immigrants are the beneficiaries, perhaps undeserving, of affirmative
action.

Guinier, a Harvard law professor, was quoted in The Boston Globe at
the time as saying that most minority students at elite colleges were
"voluntary immigrants," not descended from slaves. "If you look around
Harvard College today, how many young people will you find who grew up
in urban environments and went to public high schools and public
junior high schools?" she said. "I don't think, in the name of
affirmative action, we should be admitting people because they look
like us, but then they don't identify with us."

The comments sparked much discussion among educators nationally about
whether Guinier's observations were accurate and — if so — what they
said about affirmative action. When The New York Times explored the
issue the next year, it noted that a major study of students at elite
colleges was finding that a disproportionate number of black students
were from immigrant families.

That study was released Wednesday with its publication in the American
Journal of Education (available to the journal's subscribers here),
and it seems likely to inspire more discussion of the issues Guinier
raised.

The study — by sociologists at Princeton University and the University
of Pennsylvania — used the National Longitudinal Survey of Freshmen to
look at the black students enrolled at 28 selective colleges and
universities. Of all black people aged 18 or 19 in the United States,
about 13 percent are first- or second-generation immigrants, but they
made up 27 percent of black students at the selective colleges
studied. The proportions of immigrants were higher at the private
colleges in the survey than at publics, and were highest among the
most competitive colleges in the group, hitting 41 percent of the
black students in the Ivy League.

In many respects (including their academic performance once enrolled),
the black students who are immigrants did not differ from those who
are African Americans. But the demographic analysis did note a number
of areas where the immigrant students are statistically different:

Parental roles: Immigrant students were more likely to be raised by
two parents (56.9 percent to 51.4 percent) and were more likely to
have a father present (61.2 percent to 55.6 percent).

Fathers' education: While the educational attainment of students'
mothers wasn't notably different, immigrants' fathers were much more
educated, as is consistent with immigrant populations generally. Among
black students, 70 percent of immigrants' fathers were college
graduates, compared to 55.2 percent of other black students. And 43.6
percent of the immigrant students' fathers had advanced degrees,
compared to 25.3 percent of native black students.

Religion: The immigrant students were more than twice as likely as the
other black students to be Roman Catholic (30.2 percent to 13.1
percent) and less likely to be Protestant. (Levels of religious
observance, however, were quite similar, and minimal.)
Schooling: The immigrant black students were more likely to have
attended private schools (41.7 percent compared to 27.3 percent for
other black students) and less likely to have been exposed to violence
in schools (55.3 percent to 63.1 percent).
Academics: The immigrant students had slightly higher grade-point
averages and took slightly more Advanced Placement courses, but they
had a statistically significant advantage on SAT average (1250 to
1193).

The study also provides information on where the immigrant students
are coming from. By world region, the Caribbean is the leader, with
43.1 percent of the black immigrants at selective colleges, followed
by Africa with 28.6 percent, and Latin America with 7.4 percent. By
country, the leaders are Jamaica (20.5 percent) and Nigeria (17.3
percent), both countries that the study's authors note are "former
British colonies where the educated classes speak English." They are
followed by Haiti, Trinidad and Ghana, with Haiti being the only
country where English is not widely spoken.

The study's authors — Douglas S. Massey, Margarita Mooney and Kimberly
C. Torres of Princeton University, and Camille Z. Charles of the
University of Pennsylvania — write that they believe the most
significant factor in understanding the success of black immigrant
students may be their fathers' higher educational attainment, which in
turn is likely to result in the students being enrolled in better
(frequently private) schools and less likely to be exposed to
violence. But the authors note repeatedly that this study — while
providing more demographic data than has previously been available —
leaves many questions unanswered.

The authors also acknowledge the way this subject relates to the
evolving debates over the purpose of affirmative action. They quote
President Johnson's 1965 speech that set out his rationale for
affirmative action: "You do not take a person who, for years, has been
hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line
of a race and then say, 'you are free to compete with all the others,'
and still justly believe that you have been completely fair."

They note that Asian and Hispanic students began to benefit from
affirmative action as "the moral justification for affirmative action
shifted subtly from restitution for a legacy of racism to the
representation of diversity for its own sake." As this shift took
place, they note, many of the Asian and Hispanic students enrolling in
competitive colleges were immigrants, but immigrants made up very
large shares of the Asian and Hispanic populations in the United
States over all. "Whereas the presence of second-generation Latinos
and Asians on college campuses to a large extent reflected the
demographic composition of their respective populations, black
immigrants were over-represented relative to their share in the
African-American population."

Anyone hoping that the new study will answer the question of whether
black immigrant students "deserve" to benefit from affirmative action
will be disappointed. Write the authors: "Ultimately, the data we have
presented cannot answer the question of whether the children of black
immigrants are worthy beneficiaries of affirmative action, for the
answer rests largely on a moral judgment about whether the policy is a
form of restitution for past racial injustice or a mechanism to ensure
that selective schools continue to reflect the racial and ethnic
diversity of a nation that is being transformed by immigration."

— Scott Jaschik