Slaves helped build prestigious universities in the U.S. such as Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and among others. Unfortunately, a small percentage of black students have access to such schools and this is very disadvantageous to African-Americans when it comes to securing good jobs in the country. The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education argues that low income black students “are not the students benefiting from today’s race-sensitive admissions programs at America’s most selective colleges."
This issue makes me question the importance of the affirmative action, which Thomas Sowell doesn't think help solve the problem of inequality in education. This is because some African-Americans who are accepted in top universities aren't prepared well enough to face the competition in these schools, and some of them end up dropping from college.
In 2011, eight top universities accepted less that 8% of students of color. This has continued to harm generations of black community in America that has a hard time catching up with the other communities that have more access to resources.
If you are interested in learning more about how the top universities in the U.S. benefited from slavery, you can read Ebony and Ivy, a book that was published this month by Craig Wilder, a history professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. You can read some pages of the book here.
Image adopted from amazon.com
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