An American Problem
by
Amir Abou-Jaoude
President Woodrow Wilson was the father of the United Nations, the
commander-in-chief of U.S. forces during World War I, and the author of
the Fourteen Points that guided American foreign policy throughout the 20 thcentury. He was also an unabashed racist, who segregated government
agencies, fired African-American bureaucrats, and praised D.W. Griffith’s
1915 film The Birth of a Nation, which glorified the Ku Klux Klan, as a true
historical document.
Before serving as the president of the United States, Wilson was
president of Princeton, and, as the New York Times reports, the school of
public policy and a dormitory at the Ivy League university bear his name. In
recent weeks, Princeton students have demanded the removal of Wilson’s
name from all buildings on campus.
Wilson left a complicated legacy, and while it is important to realize
his positive contribution to our heritage, it is essential to address his
backward views. While we must acknowledge this painful past, it is more
important to look at the present and towards the future as we address the
underlying issues that are at the heart of these protests.
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Sadly, Wilson was not the only leader of the country who advocated
for inequality and segregation. Should we remove the name of Stonewall
Jackson from a multitude of schools in the South? Thomas Jefferson, who
penned the words “all men are created equal,” did not live up to his creed—
he once wrote that African-Americans were as “incapable as children.” How
should Jefferson’s University of Virginia address this legacy? This debate is
not just over names. As the Lexington Herald-Leader reports, after student
protests, a mural depicting slavery was covered up at the University of
Kentucky.
Nor is this debate over perceived racism on college campuses and
elsewhere really about Woodrow Wilson or Depression-era frescos. A quick
look at statistics reveals some truths about race and education in America. A
report compiled in 2014 by the U.S. Department of Education states that, for
the 2011-2012 school year, African-Americans were three times as likely to
be suspended as white students. More than a quarter of schools with the
highest percentages of African-American students did not offer Algebra II or
Chemistry. African-Americans were three times more likely to attend a
school where fewer than sixty percent of teachers met all state certification
requirements. Many of these students are not as prepared for college as
Caucasian students.
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A study released by Georgetown University’s Center for Education
and the Workforce shows that more African-Americans attend community
college, while Caucasian students with the same grades tend to go to
universities. Furthermore, only twelve percent of students who start their
secondary education at a community college are able to earn a bachelor’s
degree in six years. The BBC reports that only ten percent of AfricanAmericans over 25 have a college degree. Education is not equal for all.
Why do these deep racial divides exist? We as Americans have not
done enough to overcome the horrific legacy of slavery. The dreams of civil
rights activists like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X still have not
been realized. In order to address protests at Princeton and the University of
Missouri, we have to acknowledge that racism exists. Speaking on equality
for people of all races in 1965, President Lyndon Johnson stated that the
denial of voting rights to African-Americans was “an American problem.”
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 have done
much to ameliorate race relations in America, but we have to realize that the
“American problem” that President Johnson mentioned remains a part of our
society.
Where should we start? Programs like affirmative action do help
African-Americans access higher education, but, as Professor Glenn Loury
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writes in an op-ed piece for the Brookings Institution, this is “only a
marginal instrument for addressing the nation’s unfinished racial business.”
Some African-American students are not able to get as high an ACT score as
they could because of socio-economic factors. It is hard to worry about a test
when there might not be anything on the dinner table. A study by professors
at Harvard University shows that if lower-income people move to a more
affluent neighborhood, they are more likely to succeed. We need to create
programs to improve the low-income neighborhoods where many AfricanAmerican students live. We need to make standardized test tutoring free so
lower-income students will have access to the same resources as others.
(According to NPR, some organizations, like the College Board, have
already started to do this.) We need to ensure that these individuals are
receiving the instruction and assistance that they need at school so that they
can pass their classes, attend college, and become productive citizens.
College campuses are the home of our next generation of leaders. It is our
duty to ensure that people of all races and religions are included in that
educated group so we can guide our country to a brighter future.
Above all, we need to look beyond the circumstances of the events at
universities across our nation. It is easy to make this complex debate about a
fresco or a school named after an unapologetic racist. What the students at
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Princeton, the University of Missouri, and other college campuses are
calling for is really an idea that, ironically, President Wilson expressed in
his Fourteen Points speech—that all people of all races and ethnicities would
be able to “live on equal terms of liberty and safety with one another.”
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