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Running head: DISCRIMINATION OF MINORITIES
Historical Analysis: Discrimination of Minorities in Higher Education
Jabal M. Moss
Georgia Southern University
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“If there is no struggle there is no progress… This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a
physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle.”
-Fredrick Douglas
Gaining access to higher education “has been characterized as one of the greatest hopes
for intellectual and civic progress in this country” (Harper, Patton and Wooden, 2009) or in my
beliefs- higher education is one of the most rewarding experiences for a person to experience in
the United States of America. However, for minority students in America, the experience did not
come without a struggle from the white supremacist that have lead the experience since the
founding of the United States of America. To understand the reason why the experience has been
ruled and dominated by white males, you have to remember the earlier history of the United
States of America. Society in America and the “values” that were indoctrinated by the “founding
fathers” have lead the United States since it gained its freedom from Great Britain in 1776. The
United States began as a country split along the lines of slavery, since its conception. That issue
of slavery lead to the segregation and Jim Crow laws of the south that lead to the racial
discrimination, not limited to the south, that many minority students would experience at the
colleges and universities that white males had the pleasure of dominating for so long.
Specifically, looking at Georgia, the University of Georgia is a prime example of the
“segregation admission policies that was by state-sanctioned racist policies” (Daniels and
Patterson, 2012). The school did not become integrated until 1962 and even then, the minorities
that were admitted still did not have many rights as their white counterparts.
Minority students in America come from very diverse backgrounds. Many people
automatically think of African-Americans as the top minority in the United States. However, the
minority spectrum includes those of Mexican American descent, Native American descent, and
even women in America. Many of these minority groups have fought for equity and equality in
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higher education in the United States. Both the Native American and African-American minority
groups began to fund and find their own institutions to educate their race since the United States
did not want to do it based on the discrimination of the times. For Native Americans during their
self-determination era, which was a part of their three phase quest for higher education, came
“the emergence of the tribal college which is the single most significant thing in their fight for
higher education” (Fox, Lowe, and McClellan, 2005). The tribal colleges for the Native
Americans were created to preserve “culture and pride in identity” (Harper, Jones, Schuh, and
Associates, 2001). Hispanic (Mexican Americans) have had “few institurions that have been
established with the express purpose of responding to the educational needs of these students”
(Harper, Jones, Schuh, and Associates, 2011). However, the American congress did try to
address the issue with the passing of the Morrill Land Grant Act in 1862 and 1890. The textbook
put it this way for African-Americans, “the Morrill Land Grant Acts collectively created greater
access to private higher education of previous eras. Moreover, the land grant acts of 1862 and
1890 are recognized as influential pieces of federal legislation that fostered increased access for
African Americans to public higher education” (Thelin, 2011). This historical analysis paper
will touch bases on the discrimination of three minority groups in America: 1.) AfricanAmericans; 2.) Mexican Americans; and 3.) Native Americans and each of their quest to gain
access to higher education and the discrimination that faced each group as they moved through it
as the United States began to change in demographics and change to meet the cultural needs of
each individual minority ethnic group. The paper will also provide a brief glimpse into the
women, mainly minority women, of America, as they struggle for higher education and what
they had to overcome to become educated.
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Two of the articles that contributed to this analysis spoke about the struggle of minority
women to receive higher education despite the discrimination that was against them. For
example, the role of women from the beginning of the United States was to be housewives and to
not go outside of the home. This was not only true for African-American women, but AfricanAmerican women had no right to even call themselves educated because they were low-class
citizens of the United States. However, “Mary Jane Patterson became the first African American
female college graduate in 1862” (Harper, Patton, and Wooden, 2009). This was not only a
major achievement for African Americans, but African American women because the
achievement and inadequate representation of education for women was not present until this
time. Women would go on to make other significant strides throughout this time through the
women’s suffrage movement and going against the belief of “then” modern society. Mexican
women led the Chicano movement in the 1960s and early 1970s. This would continue in the
early 1990s when the Mexican Americans in America had to revamp the educational policy
environment to include them in the quest for greater education. In addition, my mind is plagued
with the perseverance of each individual minority group to create their own place to educate their
students. The African-American minority, although torn about who/what institution is the first,
have three institutions that were created to educate their freed during the most segregated and
racial point in American history, which affects their higher education discrimination, it was a
solution to the problem that they faced. These institutions “created expressly for freed slaves and
their children, ignited what would eventually become a major access movement for African
Americans- the establishment of Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs)”
(Harper, Patton, and Wooden, 2009).
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African-Americans experience the worst part of gaining access to education even though
much of the policymaking has been as a result to educate this group of minorities. According to
the article written by Harper, Patton and Wooden, “racism is a normal part of American life,
often lacking the ability to be distinctively recognized, and thus is difficult to eliminate or
address.” In an all-out attempt to understand the need to diversify campuses across the United
States, one must understand the trajectory of “misconceptions concerning racial fairness in
institutions” (Harper, Patton, and Wooden, 2009). Racial microaggressions or subtle insults
plague predominantly White institutions (PWIs) across the nations. In a 2012 article, Harewood,
Huntt, Mendenhall and Lewis went to understand the microaggressions of colored students at
predominantly White institutions. The changing demographics of the United States has called for
policymakers to challenge the colleges and universities across the United States to become more
diverse, but “Black students at PWIs, when compared with those at historically Black colleges
and universities (HBCUs), do not feel integrated into the campus… these students also
experience hostility and discrimination” (2012). This is the reason many minority students on
campuses across the United States drop out or do not finish their degree programs, especially
African-American students at predominantly white institutions.
Mexican Americans are another minority in the United States who have struggled to find
their rights across the country in higher education. “Mexican Americans have a long history of
protesting discrimination in the classroom, detrimental educational policies, and segregation”
(Hernandez, 2013). Mexican Americans had to overcome the same struggles as their AfricanAmerican counterparts when it came to racist practices and activities in school districts, colleges
and universities across the United States. The Mexican Americans created their own movement,
just like African-Americans, their movement was known as the “Chicano movement of the late
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1960s and early 1970s” (Hernandez, 2013). As struggle for equality for this particular minority
group in the United States, this group had to re-emerge to keep their privileges and curriculums
that had been implemented during the Chicano movement. The students who rose to this
movement are referred to as “the second wave of college student activism during the 1990s”
(2013). The primary reason for many of these Mexican Americans to come together to create this
“second wave” was because during the 1990s “there was a resurgence of anti-immigrant
sentiment and rollbacks in affirmative action policies” (Hernandez, 2013). The struggles of these
students are linked to what many researchers are calling the “identity politics movement.” The
reason for this is because many believe that the students who began these movements for
equality on college and university campuses in the 1990s “replaced dispassionate and objective
pursuit of knowledge with political correctness and identity politics” (Hernandez, 2013).
Mexican American students are still on the fight for equity and equality across the country.
One of the most disregarded groups of minorities in the United States is the Native
Americans. These people are prisoners on their own land, even in the educational field.
According to the article, “Where we have Been: A History of Native American Higher
Education”, the “literature has paid attention to certain aspects of Native American education in
the United States, it has largely not addressed Native American higher education” (Fox, Lowe,
and McClellan, 2005). One of the most documented discrimination and perseverance cases came
from North Carolina. The Native Americans in the southeast region dealt with the racism and
discrimination at an all-time high level during the early twentieth century, but put measures in
place to overcome it. According to an article written by Walker Elliott, the Native Americans in
North Carolina created strong strategies to “bend white supremacy to their advantage” (Elliott,
2013). Native Americans in the North Carolina region were able to support democrats because
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the democrats in the late 1800s began to push legislation that would benefit the Native
Americans in the region and to garner their support in elections. This push for legislation to
support the Native Americans worked because “in 1185, Hamilton McMillan, sponsored
legislation that designated the Native Americans as “Croatians,” provided for a separate Indian
school system, and afforded the community some measure of educational autonomy” (Elliott,
2013). This showed to push African-Americans further back in the state because this creation of
the Native American learning community “dissolved the political and educational ties of
African-Americans and Native Americans” (Elliott, 2013). However, these creations of separate
education among races in North Carolina lead to the trend in the state where education was the
“means to forge a new economy built on industry, segregation, and the suppression of overt
racial discord” (Elliott, 2013). This led to the discrimination to continue for the Native
Americans in North Carolina because the legislators began to defund the schools that were
started for them and the Native Americans of the area had to run the schools created for them
independently. Native Americans in the region began to deal with those issues in higher
education, but were able to sustain academic growth and move their culture forward in higher
education because of the “implementation of a post-secondary teacher training program at
Pembroke for Indians” (Elliott, 2013). The issue of Native American higher education is still a
debated topic today because this minority group is still the least advocated for in most of higher
education policymaking across the country.
The struggles of discrimination by the White dominated higher education institutions
affected each of the minority groups in history as this paper has depicted, it is (discrimination on
minorities) an issue that still plagues campuses across the country. However, there is a new word
that reflects the sentiment of campuses that have become diverse and it is institutional racism or
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discrimination. The move for this is because federal regulations make the need for schools to be
diverse and offer money to schools that comply with the federal standards. Therefore, “the
diversity of American institutions and their international reputation for quality remain key
advantages for social and economic development of our society” (Harper, Jones, Schuh, and
Associates, 2011) especially in the terms of discrimination on campuses of colleges and
universities in the United States. Colleges and universities across the country must remember
that “student-student interaction is essential for realizing the assorted educational benefits”
(Harper, Jones, Schuh, and Associates, 2011) and this will help their particular campus dispel the
myths about racial, ethnic, and gender discrimination on their campuses. In addition, the
administration at colleges and universities must support their minority students in the missions,
visions, core values, and strategic objectives that they create for the campus. Furthermore, it is
essential for college and universities to have a plan that recruits, retains, and promotes a diverse
faculty and staff because they serve as the institutions front-line representation of what they do
on their campuses in student recruiting. The final way according to Harper, Jones, Schuh and
Associates to keep negative impacts of discrimination from happening in higher education is to
simply “implement and plan an ongoing program of assessment that allows them to determine
the impact that diversity has on important individual and institutional outcomes.” I simply
believe that discrimination can end with the changing of people’s hearts across college
campuses.
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References
Daniels, M.C., & Patterson, C. (2012). (RE)CONSIDERING RACE IN THE
DESEGREGATION OF HIGHER EDUCATION. Georgia Law Review, 46(3), 521-556.
Elliot, W. (2013). “I Told Him I’d Never Been to His Back Door for Nothing”: The Lumbee
Indian Struggle for Higher Education under Jim Crow. North Carolina Historical
Review, 90(1), 49-87.
Fox, M.T., Lowe, S.C., & McClellan, G.S. (2005). Where We Have Been: A history of Native
American Higher Education. New Directions for Student Services, 109, 7-15.
Harper, S. R., Jones, S. R., Schuh, J.H., & Associates (2011). Student Services: A handbook for
the Profession (5th edition). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Harper, S.R., Patton, L.D., & Wooden, O.S. (2009). Access and Equity for African American
Students in Higher Education: A critical race historical analysis of policy efforts. Journal
of Higher Education, 80(4), 389-414.
Harwood, S.A., Huntt, M., Mendenhall, R., & Lewis, J. A. (2012). Racial microaggressions in
the residence halls: Experiences of students of color at a predominately White university.
Journal of Diversity in Higher Education, 5(3), 159-173.
Hernandez, E. (2013). Mexican American Women’s Activism at Indiana University in the 1990s.
Journal of Higher Education, 84(3), 397-416.
Thelin, J.R. (2011). A History of American Higher Education (2nd edition). Baltimore, MD: The
Johns Hopkins University Press.