Posted on 06/19/2002 8:11:20 AM PDT by Phantom Lord
Colleges need to recruit more black professors
I never really took into consideration the effect of having an African-American teacher until I got into college. In elementary school, most of my teachers were African-American. During high school, I had two African-American teachers who taught two different subjects. But at Alfred University, I don't have any African-American professors.
During my freshman year, it didn't really affect me because I didn't notice or care. I was just happy that I was in college. But at the beginning of my sophomore year, I felt like I was lacking minority guidance in some classes, and I miss having conversations with teachers from my own race or ethnicity.
Now I'm wondering if an African-American professor will ever teach me a college course. My mother had African-American professors when she attended college in New York City. I never imagined that leaving New York City meant that I would be deprived of learning from someone from my race or ethnicity. Now I realize I took for granted the thought of always having African-American teachers throughout my life.
I wanted to take an African-American history class during the fall semester of 2001. However, I decided not to. I agreed with a friend who said that for classes like African-American history, a minority professor would give us more to identify with.
The perspective presented by a person of color would be a very positive addition to Alfred's faculty. According to most liberal arts faculty members, an African-American professor would bring people closer to the diverse community found outside of Alfred.
So why do I find myself without at least one African-American professor? One reason may be money. Entry level salaries are really not that great at the college level. Also, according to the Education Statistics Quarterly for the summer of 2000, black full-time faculty members were less likely than white faculty members to have higher salaries.
I am in a great learning environment, and I have well-educated professors. However, I cannot bond with them on an ethnic level. If there were African-American professors at Alfred, my fellow students and I would be in a better learning environment. There is no professor that I can relate to or admire within my race while attending college, and because of that, I don't work as hard as I should.
In one year, I'll be finished with my undergraduate degree without experiencing an African-American professor's perspective. I feel deprived of knowledge because when I bring my work home with me and show it to my old African-American high school teachers, they fill in my information void by telling me their knowledge on subjects dealing with African-American history.
When I have my own children, I want them to experience the best of both worlds - white as well as black professors. I don't want them to wonder, like I do, what it would be like to have an African-American college professor.
College has been an experience that I have looked forward to since I was in high school, but the results have fallen short of my expectations because of the race of my professors. The knowledge that I gain while at Alfred will fall just short of complete.
Universities in Western New York are recruiting many African-American students and expect to keep them. These same universities need to recruit African-American professors, figure out how they can give them higher paychecks and make them feel accepted within the community.
SHEREE N. JOHNSON, a student at Alfred University, lives in the Bronx.
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And to be quite honest, most of the black professors I had were wacko leftists who were not only idiots, but poor teachers.
Maybe this lady needs to go back to the 'hood and wise up the younger bruthahs and sistuhs, let them know that getting an education doesn't mean you're "actin' white" or whatever they say these days.
Translation: "Colleges need to recruit more liberal professors".
As if they don't have enough already.
I had a lot of female professors, however I could not bond with them on a gender level. The issue here seems to be comfort level, rather than ethnicity. These poor darlings are in a new and strange environment and they need to be comforted. But in one class I was accused by a fellow student of creating a hositle environment becuase I kept disagreeing with everyone, including myself. The professor threw the other student out after calling him an intellectual wimp.
I hope this sheltered hot house flower learns about how to survive in strange places with strange colored people in it becuase she'll need in life.
Well, maybe on the idenification level, but if you had a leftist, homosexual who really believes that the oppression of every group in the world is the white man's fault, that would be basically the same thing. And, there are TONS of those out there, probably even at Alred University.
Entry level salaries are really not that great at the college level.
Maybe that is the reason. Maybe the black people who are educated at the level it takes to be hired at a university decided they would like to make some "real" money. So, Sheree, which would you rather have the advancement of blacks in business, where they can improve their (and their families) standard of living and possibly add to their community (presumably, a black community)? Or, would you rather have a black professor who will be holed up in a university office or class somewhere spewing the same old "we aren't free" trash? (Guessing from the piece, I would say that your need for identity politics indicates that you don't have an original thought in your head; rather it is simply filled up with the typical liberal trash that is peddled in our public school system).
However, I cannot bond with them on an ethnic level
Huh? Why don't you concentrate on the simplest of groups: Americans. Last time I checked Alfred University was in the USA, so, maybe that would be a good start, you ungrateful, little BEEAACCCTTTHHHH!
If she wanted to study "African-American history," why didn't she choose to attend a college that offered such coursework (taught, presumably, by a person of color)? There's a zillion such schools. Or maybe she'd just rather complain.
Well, you could, but that is a different type of "bonding" <wink>
Disband the NEA.
In other words, the author is a racist bigot who feels white instructors are somehow less inspiring.
The solution to her problem is not to color co-ordinate her instructors to ease her discomfort with white people. The true solution is for her to get over her bigotry and force herself to "work as hard as [she] should"
lexbaird
The best was an Indian, but the worst was also an Indian.
And just in case you're wondering, I studied Computer Science at the Univ. of Maryland, and I'm finishing a second degree in Criminal Justice.
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