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African American Success Of Black Americans By James Baldwin From The Stimulus Material, Sparked My Interest

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Among the nation 's largest Division I universities, the graduation rate for black students was 44% in 2013, compared with 66% for white students (Marklein). This fact along with the article, A Letter to My Nephew, by James Baldwin from the stimulus material, sparked my interest. I began to research the general topic of African Americans in college. Baldwin wrote about the idea of white americans intentionally hindering the success of black americans. As he states that white americans did not expect african americans to aspire to excellence and made sure that african americans knew in as many ways as possible that they were worthless human beings. Researching more into this idea, I found a correlation between African American success …show more content…

Whites even made laws banning anyone to teach reading and writing to slaves (PBS). After the emancipation, Black Americans still struggled to fully educate themselves to an appropriate level equal to that of Whites education. The formation of historically black colleges and universities after the Civil War, such as Howard and Morehouse dwindled this struggle. With the decaying of legal segregation in the South and the nonlegal barriers in the North, an increased amount of blacks started to attend historically predominantly white universities. This has decreased from almost 100 percent to 21 percent of all African American undergraduates who attended HBCUs (Wenglinsky). Despite hope for equality in these desegregated educational institutions, the early promises in both opportunities and attainment in higher education for Blacks has withered away through erosions in enrollment and retention. According to the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, the nationwide college graduation rate for black students stands at an appallingly low rate of 42 percent. This figure is 20 percentage points below the 62 percent rate for white students. Two major components of this is the academic preparedness of black students and the learning environment.
Academic Preparedness
For many years now, numerous colleges have been using affirmative

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