Desegregation and Black Colleges: A Tangled Web of Policy, Politics and Practical Myths.

Federal, State, and private entities combined efforts and deliberately created this country's dual racial system of higher education. This dual system is characterized by distinctions in the racial composition of students and faculty, and by more salient and inequitable distinctions in patterns of funding, growth, and development. Black colleges were established as part of a social system of enforced racial exclusionary practices. However, both Federal and State policies have evolved into seemingly contradictory thrusts. In the interest of diversity, the Title III program seeks to strengthen historically black colleges, while at the same time concern for civil rights is reflected in desegregation efforts which could eliminate these colleges. These contradictions have generated policies which are uneven and often inequitable in their impact on black colleges. (RLV)