Findings from our most recent research show clear signs that race relations on U.S. campuses are better than they have been for years. As we detail in our new book, Generation on a Tightrope: A Portrait of Today’s College Students, over the last four decades, students of color have grown more confident that their college is not viewing them through a color-tinted lens. White students are embracing diversity in large numbers, having grown up as members of the most diverse generation in U.S. history. And a majority of undergraduates —Black and White, Asians and Hispanics —have close friends of other races and support intergroup relationships.
But that doesn’t mean our work — as a nation or as higher-education leaders — is done. It means we can now explore in a more nuanced fashion what diversity should mean for higher education and for each of the nation’s campuses.
Here is where we stand, based on more than 40 years of national surveys of students and campus officials, and site visits at 31 institutions chosen to represent the spectrum of American higher education: Arthur’s research in the 1990s for a previous book in the series, When Hope and Fear Collide, indicated that diversity was the most heated issue on the nation’s college campuses; there were deep divides between undergraduates of different races. It was a painful subject that students did not want to talk about except in homogeneous racial groups.
In that study a decade ago, racial minorities talked about feeling marginalized on campus — “like an unwelcome guest at a party rather than a member of the family,” as one student of color put it. Students of color spoke of being viewed wholly in terms of their skin color: A Black student from one of the wealthiest suburbs in America said she was asked repeatedly by White students what it was like to grow up in a ghetto.
As recently as our 1993 undergraduate survey, 57 percent of Black students surveyed said most American colleges were racist, whether they meant to be or not. But by 2009, only 26 percent of Black students concurred.
In 1993, 67 percent of Black students agreed with the statement, “Racial discrimination will hurt my job chances.” By 2009, that proportion had dropped by more than 30 percentage points.
As our most recent data show, White, Black, Hispanic and Asian-American students are all now more likely to think the country has made real progress toward racial equality in the past five years. A majority of students across all groups — two-thirds of Hispanic students and 80 to 90 percent of White, Black, and Asian-American students — report that they have a close friend of a different race. A majority of students in each group (ranging from 50 percent of Whites to 75 percent of Black students) say that undergraduate education would be improved if there were more diversity among students and faculty.
