Immigrants Top U.S. Blacks for College Spots

At Elite Schools, Proportion From Africa, Caribbean Nearly Doubles That of U.S. Population

While immigrants make up 13 percent of college-aged blacks in the U.S., a recent study has found that they are nearly a quarter of blacks at the nation's most prestigious colleges -- and economic disadvantages and negative perceptions about African-Americans are suggested as possible causes.

One of the study's authors, Associate Professor Camille Charles of the University of Pennsylvania, was online Tuesday, March 6 at 3 p.m. ET to take questions and comments from readers.

In Diversity Push, Top Universities Enrolling More Black Immigrants (Post, March 6)

The transcript follows.

Charles is the Faculty Associate Director for the Center for Africana Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, and is the author of " Won't You Be My Neighbor?: Race, Class, and Residence in Los Angeles."

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Camille Charles: Hello and thank you for questions.

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Normal, Ill.: It seems that no one is addressing the cost of tuition for immigrant students vs. the cost for American students. For the same education, the university collects three times the tuition cost. Could this be another major motivating factor to recruit students from outside of the U.S.?

Camille Charles: It could in some instances, but our participants had to be at least resident aliens, so our population didn't include true international students.

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Washington, D.C.: Hello. I wonder if you did a further breakdown between Africans and Caribbeans? You're right, some of the elites are upper-class with money.

Camille Charles: I'm working on a project now that compares African and Caribbean students, both first and second generation to native multigenerational American black students, and there are differences between each of those groups. African students actually have the best college preparation in terms of academics, test scores, AP courses and those sorts of things. Quite often the Caribbean students, across generations tend to look more like African-American students in terms of their social background characteristics and academically, but they're a little bit better out of high school.

In general African immigrants are in general the most educated immigrants in the U.S. They're coming from further away, too, so there is that self-selection process. They're better equipped in terms of human capital characteristics (parents, education, occupational prestige, etc.) than Caribbeans are.

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Hyattsville, Md.: Does the study make distinction between the different backgrounds of the "Black Immigrant Students"? Does it include those students from humble backgrounds -- let's say refugee immigrants -- or does it just refer to wealthy black immigrant students? There are two kinds of immigrants -- wealthy immigrants who made rational choices to immigrate and those who are forced to immigrate ... thanks.

Camille Charles: We didn't self-consciously ask about the circumstances of immigration, but there is a variety in terms of material resources. Again, more so with the Caribbean students than with the African students. In terms of the countries that most of them came from, I suppose some of the Haitian kids could be refugees, but that's not something we asked about consciously. So it's possible, but we're also taking account of social class characteristics with the understanding that they're not all going to be wealthy elites. Because at the same time we did study selective colleges and universities, we're not going to have a representative group in terms of social status -- you are going to get more affluent blacks and immigrants just because of the nature of the schools that we sampled.

In terms of human capital characteristics, really the only major difference was that immigrant fathers were more likely to have an advanced degree, so in terms of what the average native vs. immigrant student looked like, they're not that different in terms of social class.

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Greenbelt, Md.: What was the need to differentiate within the black culture? I'm afraid with the lack of common sense lately, many will associate the word immigrant with "illegal."

Camille Charles: I think that there's a tendency for us to assume that all blacks are the same and have a similar experience and increasingly just as the American population as a whole is becoming increasingly diverse, so is the black population. So in purposes of just knowing who we are, you want to pay attention to those things.

It's also that there are these preconceived ideas about immigrant blacks being preferred so that for example immigrant blacks are much less segregated than African-Americans are. There is some research that suggests immigrant Africans sometime make conscious decisions to maintain accents to avoid the sort of discrimination that African-Americans face, and so there's some conflict because of that.

And if, just for purposes of studying racial inequality, it's important to check if improvements are occurring in the same population we had 30 years ago, or whether those improvements are only from immigration. If you're really into affirmative action and the improvement of the descendants of slaves in the U.S., then this might be important to you because those meant to benefit from affirmative action might not be. If you're really into diversity, then maybe this is a good thing, because you learn that there are all kinds of black people with different world views and ideas.

So there are all kinds of reasons to disaggregate black students. In discussing black immigrants, we're getting people to really think about a group that is sort of invisible to the American public.

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Virginia: The silence from the NAACP and Urban League is deafening -- they knew and did nothing.

Camille Charles: How did they know? I don't know what they knew and didn't know and I don't know what one would expect them to do. At the end of the day we're talking about a group of people who are black and by virtue of their phenotypic characteristics are likely to experience racism and discrimination. In some ways I advocate for those students just as much as I do for the traditional African-American and I would guess that those groups do to. But I don't really know what they know or don't know in part because admissions offices aren't really releasing the information that way -- it's not easy to get a breakdown of immigrant versus black students.

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Gainesville, Fla.: Is it possible that the obsession with hip-hop and the misplaced "stop actin' white" attitude have slowed the flow of historically ambitious young people of color?

Camille Charles: No. This notion of blacks devaluation as "acting white" is a myth. There is no good empirical data to support it.

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Woodbridge, Va.: How many colleges were in this study, and can you break it down between public and private institutions? How about socioeconomic factors?

Camille Charles: Twenty-eight institutions. They include liberal arts colleges, Ivy League institutions, large public selective institutions and Ivy League peer institutions (Northwestern, Stanford, etc.). We did look at the representation of immigrant vs. native numbers at the 10 most selective schools in the sample and the Ivy League schools in the sample, and the disproportion gets more severe the more selective the set of schools was. In terms of socioeconomic factors, there's nothing in our data to suggest that immigrant students are better-able to afford selective institutions than natives are. Certainly nearly all of the institutions we included offer pretty generous financial aid packages. But in terms of the costs of the schools themselves, I would say that obviously the large public universities like UNC, Cal or Michigan obviously are more affordable than places like Princeton or the University of Pennsylvania (which is private).

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Oakland, Calif.: What kinds of policy implications should this study have upon college admissions at selective schools?

Camille Charles: Why does everybody what to talk about policy? Again, I think it depends on your goal. If your goal is, in very simple terms, diversity on campus, in some sense there's nothing that needs to be changed. If however you're still committed to the goals of affirmative action, it would seem to suggest you need to pay a little more attention to the origins of the students that one is admitting.

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Fremont, Calif.: What you say is true; my daughter was one of a very few traditional African-American students in her undergrad class at the University of Pennsylvania, (BS, Biology, 1999). What can I do to help?

Camille Charles: I think, again, probably one of the big things to focus on is improving the overall profile of African-American students, which researchers haven't been able to figure out a way to do yet. I think another piece of it is awareness -- a lot of us don't ever think about the composition of the black population in college in terms of where they come from.

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Bethesda, Md.: I was very pleased by this article as an African woman who came to the US to pursue a master's degree. The one thing that African parents from all class level stress is the importance of education -- as African's our parents have repeatedly told us, the one thing that they can give us of utmost importance that no one can take away is a good education and this is why we will take any and every opportunity to further our education. This emphasis on education does not exists in African-American homes and if it did maybe the numbers would be different.

Camille Charles: It's wonderful that her family stressed that for you, but I disagree with your suggestion that African-American families don't. The ability to read and write was at one time punishable by death for African-Americans, so this is not something that they take lightly, nor is it something that they value any less than any other group for society. Again, there is not good empirical data to suggest what you may have seen anecdotally. To go back to that other person's suggestion, loving hip-hop and loving learning are not mutually exclusive.

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Local TJ alum: I think the class difference is marginal at best. When I was in school my Nigerian, Ugandan and Haitian classmates lived on the same blocks, went to the same elementary and middle schools and had gone through a lot more than the average kid to get where they were. It's the work ethic, not the money.

Camille Charles: I would agree that there aren't big class differences. I also would agree that they have gone through a lot more than the average kid. Immigrants in general, no matter what race they are or country they come from, made a decision to leave everything they know and are comfortable with to make hopefully a better life for them. And the farther you've come, the harder it is to come back if things don't work out immediately. You're also getting a non-representative subset of the Ghanaians, Haitians, Jamaicans etc. -- the ones most likely to succeed no matter where they are. It's unfair to compare them to the full range of American blacks because there are the ambitious, the average people, the people who won't succeed no matter what. Whereas the immigrant population clearly is driven to change their lives -- so in many ways it's an unfair comparison.

The other piece of it is that you have to take into consideration how the host society perceive them and respond to them. What we know to this point is that mainstream America respond more favorably to immigrant blacks than they do to American blacks, which in subtle ways enhances opportunities for immigrants while constraining opportunities for natives. There are no simple answers.

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Arlington, Va.: In your research on the matter did you consider for a moment the possibility, for argument's sake, that there is some truth to the "negative perceptions" of African-American students? Are you saying that Africans would not be subject to the same treatment?

Camille Charles: In terms of the first question: no. I did not consider for argument's sake that the stereotype about African-Americans are true. I do not believe that they as a group tend to be lazy, unintelligent, don't try hard or don't value education. And as for the second part of the question, I think there is evidence that mainstream Americans give a break for being immigrants -- we assume that they've overcome tremendous obstacles are hardworking people. And I think that's true of all immigrants, but again, we're looking at an unfair subset of immigrants -- these are the people who get up and leave instead of just talking about it.

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Atlanta: My two cents. The need to differentiate Black culture comes from the fact that blacks are not monolithic -- the experience of a black person from Africa black are not the same as a black person from the Caribbean or the United States. All black experiences are unique and valid.

Camille Charles: Exactly.

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Burtonsville, Md.: Has your study looked at the qualifications of the students admitted to the selected institutions? Were African-American students excluded because they were from the United States or because they were not as qualified as students from foreign countries?

Camille Charles: They were not less-qualified. There were no big differences. This is really the point -- we didn't find anything to distinguish native vs. immigrant blacks in terms of qualifications. That's why we sort of suggest there's sort of a subjective process, whatever that may be. We're not suggesting that these are conscious decisions made by admissions officers, we're saying that there's a trend. Maybe we should pay more attention to that trend. If we want to understand the underachievement of minorities in universities in broad terms, you've got to understand the population you're studying. The idea that the black experience is monolithic is a myth, and one of the important contributions of our study is statistics that prove that. We were prepared to discover that immigrant students are better-prepared academically, but as an aggregate group they are not. If you look at Africans vs. Caribbeans, Africans are better prepared than native black students, but Caribbean students are indistinguishable from African-Americans.

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Richmond: Why should a student's race matter? I thought we were beyond the days of quotas and admission of less qualified students for the sake of diversity? Do universities still admit students based on race? If so, how can that be constitutional?

Camille Charles: Why do we assume that when we're talking about black students going to college that they are unqualified? Universities can in fact consider race as one of many factors in making an admissions decision. To my knowledge, though, they have never been in the business of admitting any student who could not successfully achieve -- that doesn't benefit the student, or the institution which has to report graduation rates and the like. We assume that SAT scores and even to some extent high school grades are the best indicators of student ability. Particularly with SAT scores, there's no real evidence that they predict anything other than first-semester's grades. Often the best predictor of success is the student's own self-confidence that they can succeed, and often having overcome adversity of some sort or another better prepares a student for achieving in the market or beyond.

In terms of moving beyond race, we like to delude ourselves that we've gotten to that point in our country, but by and large we're too scared to have that conversation. As long as we have persisting inequality that is so closely tied to race, I don't think we're anywhere near to a situation of colorblindness, or at least true equality or pluralism. There is too much evidence of persisting racial discrimination in all aspects of American life, but particularly in housing and in the labor market, and those two areas of American life are too intricately tied to our life chances, whether that be education or physical or mental health or the ability to provide for our families to say that we've gotten anywhere close to a level playing field.

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Decatur, Ga.: I read your story and viewed the questions here. I am unsure of what the reader is supposed to gleam from your work. What should the reader take away from your article?

Camille Charles: I think for me, for that particular piece, it's about not only recognizing the diverse origins of the students and again the more broad heterogeneity of the black community than we often tend to think about, but also the stereotypes blacks themselves tend to adhere to about differences between African blacks and native blacks. They aren't true -- they aren't all that different and they share much more in common in their experience than is different. That's important to understand more broadly.

If you're interested in American racial politics and access to higher education and those kinds of issues, you might want to think about what that overrepresentation means in terms of eradicating inequality among American blacks.

On the other hand I think you could look at it as just another opportunity for students in these institutions to experience a different kind of diversity in their educational experience.

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Burtonsville, Md.: Did your study examine the number of applications from foreign countries? Have the number of applications from foreign students increased during the period studied? Have the number of applications from domestic students decreased during the period studied?

Camille Charles: We didn't look at the number of applications from any kind of student -- we only got access to student statistics from after they were admitted. Also again, international students weren't included in our study, so all of the students in our project were citizens or resident aliens. Even the latter category included both first- and second-generation students -- both the immigrants themselves and the American-born students of immigrants to the U.S.

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Camille Charles: Thank you for all of your questions and your interest in my research. It's been a pleasure.

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