The state must provide : why America's colleges have always been unequal--and how to set them right
Adam Harris (Author)
Provides a history of the pervasiveness of racial inequality in American higher education that has systematically excluded Black people from its benefits. From its inception, our higher education system was not built on equality or accessibility, but on educating--and prioritizing--white students. Black students have always been an afterthought. While governments and private donors funnel money into majority white schools, historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs), and other institutions that have high enrollments of Black students, are struggling to survive, with state legislatures siphoning away federal funds that are legally owed to these schools. Adam Harris weaves through the legal, social, and political obstacles erected to block equitable education in the United States, studying the Black Americans who fought their way to an education, pivotal Supreme Court cases like Plessy v. Ferguson and Brown v. Board of Education, and the government’s role in creating and upholding a segregated education system. He explores the role that Civil War–era legislation intended to bring agricultural education to the masses had in creating the HBCUs that have played such a major part in educating Black students when other state and private institutions refused to accept them. This volume is a chronicle of higher education’s failed attempts at equality and the long road still in front of us to remedy centuries of racial discrimination—and Harris poses a daring solution to help solve the underfunding of HBCUs. --From publisher's description
Print Book, English, 2021
First edition
Ecco, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers, New York, NY, 2021