Black college football and basketball players are the most powerful people of color on campus

The protests at the University of Missouri show what can happen when they wield it.

COLUMBIA, Missouri -- A research team from the center I direct at the University of Pennsylvania is spending three days this week assessing the campus climate at a predominantly white university in the Midwest, not far from the University of Missouri.  Based on our findings and experiences elsewhere, I am certain they have heard students, faculty members and staff members of color tell horrifying stories of encounters with racism. 

By now, one of our researchers has probably heard a black student describe the pain she experienced when someone called her the N-word on campus. Others have probably reflected on how they felt when racial epithets were spray-painted on their dorm-room doors or the numerous times their white peers and professors presumed they were admitted only because of affirmative action, not academic talent. Depending on what the fraternity scene is like at this particular university, some students of color my colleagues interview may recap the insults they felt when photos emerged from a recent party with a blackface theme. When the team gets back at the end of this week, I predict they will say very little that shocks me. I fully expect to hear that tears were shed in interviews they conducted, which happens every place we do racial-climate research.

Each year, administrators at several predominantly white colleges and universities across the nation hire us to spend a few days on their campuses assessing the racial climate. People of color not only supply numerous examples of racial harm that has been inflicted on them at the institutions we study but also convey frustration and disappointment with the lack of response from campus administrators. They often tell us that their institutions do not care about people of color, despite the diversity-related values expressed via mission statements, in admissions materials and on Web sites. 

“The president doesn’t listen to us,” is a common complaint. In fact, many participants in our studies meet us quite skeptically. They wonder whether they are, once again, about to waste their time unpacking and reliving painful encounters with racism for the mere sake of institutional window dressing. Most ask us, “Are administrators really going to do something this time?” Sometimes, administrators do. But too often, they don’t.  Jonathan Butler, a graduate student at Missouri, and others there were tired of waiting for their campus leaders to do something about the institution’s long-standing racial problems.

I have been engaged in racial-climate research for more than a decade, including an assessment of the University of Missouri at Kansas City eight years ago. I am repeatedly saddened by the powerlessness that people of color often feel on predominantly white campuses. Having spent my career as an administrator and professor at universities where my people are in the numerical minority, I know firsthand the feelings participants of color in my research routinely express. It is a familiar, lived experience of mine.

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