Black Cultural Centers: Standing On Shaky Ground?
As college campuses become more diverse, many find the future of Black cultural centers in question.
By David Hefner

Ask most anyone on a college campus about the value of cultural centers, and most will quickly tout a number of virtues. They help retain students of color, many through graduation, help ensure a diversity of ideas and help sustain the integrity of the academic experience.
Despite their value, there is widespread debate today over the future of cultural centers on predominantly White college campuses. In an increasingly racially diverse nation, the questions being asked are: Whom should cultural centers serve? And how? What should they be called? Add in culture and costs, and the next question to arise is, should there be a cultural center for every sizeable ethnic group on campus?
The questions may sound like the basis for the kind of political turf war that only a faculty senate could appreciate. Yet the outcome of this debate could have significant implications — possibly dire ones — for Black cultural centers, the facilities that emerged on scores of predominantly White campuses in the 1960s and 1970s to appeal to and appease Black students.

Under Attack?
Black, Latino and Asian college students are enrolling in college in relatively higher numbers than their White counterparts, according to recent reports. However, they still represent a small segment of students on predominantly White campuses. These facts increase the need for cultural centers on college campuses, both for students and administrators. Conventional thinking, backed by anecdotal and some hard evidence, suggests that cultural centers not only offer needed support for students of color, they also help recruit and retain them.
Accordingly, administrators have been pouring millions of dollars into cultural centers. Many directors of Black cultural centers believe this new push is quietly undermining their historical role. In fact, they are worried that Black centers either will be pushed to compromise their African-centered foundations in order to appeal to other ethnic groups or, more ominously, drop the "Black" title all together and become "Multicultural" centers. Either way, many directors are putting on their battle armor because they feel "under attack."
"The state of Black cultural centers is a tenuous one," says Dr. Francis Dorsey, an associate professor in Pan-African Studies at Kent State University in Ohio and president of the Association of Black Culture Centers (ABCC), a national organization made up primarily of Black cultural center directors. (See story on page 28.)  "As the new code words of diversity and multiculturalism have allegedly embraced this nation, it has done so at the expense of Black cultural centers. Resources have been found to create or develop multicultural centers, but at the expense of undermining and/or totally eliminating Black cultural centers."
Dorsey's concerns are widespread among Black cultural center directors, although there are few signs supporting the total elimination of Black centers. There are examples, however, of attempts to redefine the mission of centers, which could arguably be the precursor to "total elimination."
The African American Cultural Center at North Carolina State University has been placed under a microscope and may soon become a "multicultural center" in mission if not in name. The Raleigh, N.C., campus has 30,000 students, of whom 10 percent are Black and about 10 percent more are of other ethnic groups. After an external committee reviewed the 11-year-old cultural center headed by M. Iyailu Moses, the university's vice provost was reported to have suggested that the center move in "a new direction." 
"The intent was to change the mission," Moses says, although she declined to elaborate.
The vice provost for diversity and African American affairs, Dr. Rupert Nacoste, who was not available to be interviewed, reportedly reversed his stance after students, alumni and the Raleigh community waged a protest.
"Those new ideas were questioned by the students, the alumni association and members of the community, as well as some faculty and staff," Moses says. "As a response of that, an internal review has been established that is going to be much more extensive than the previous external review. And out of that we expect to get a clearer picture." Moses says the internal review could be complete as early as Feb. 28.
Dr. Fred Hord, founder and executive director of the ABCC, who served on the external committee that reviewed N.C. State's Black cultural center, was blunt. "They're trying to mess with it," he said of administrators at N.C. State.
Hord and others interviewed offered several other examples of their concerns, although the specifics could not be confirmed directly with the schools involved in each case.
n  In one case, Ohio State University's Black cultural center was under some pressures, albeit different in nature. As a consultant to the formation of Ohio State's new multicultural center, Hord says he found considerable tension between Blacks and other ethnic groups. The other ethnic groups didn't think the university's Black cultural center needed any representation in the new multicultural center, Hord says. This tension has apparently been simmering for years because until now the only cultural center Ohio State had was the Black center, and other ethnic groups felt inadequately represented. Larry Williamson, director of Ohio State's Frank W. Hale Jr. Black Cultural Center, did not respond to a request for an interview.
"There was really some tension when I visited that campus," says Hord, chairman of the Black Studies department at Knox College in Illinois, where ABCC is headquartered.
"The sentiment was that ‘Blacks already got theirs.' "
n  The Multicultural Center at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville was conceived to be a Black cultural center, sources say. However, when it was established in the early 1990s it was designated a multicultural center. The university also has a Multicultural Student Services office. Last month, the cultural center moved into a new location, after being without one for two years, says Dr. Lonnie R. Williams, the center's director and assistant vice chancellor for student affairs at UAF.
"I went through a phase where I had to justify the center and distinguish it between Multicultural Services or why they should not be one unit," says Williams, just days after the dedication ceremony of the new facility. "So far, I've managed to survive that."
n  The Black cultural center at Triton Community College, among the largest community colleges in Chicago, was also designated a multicultural center in the 1990s.