Why Black Students Are Avoiding UC Berkeley

J. Douglas Allen-Taylor:

In the post-Prop 209 era, nearly 60 percent of African-American students accepted at Cal are choosing to attend other colleges -- often, because they feel unwelcome.

In 1997, the year after California voters approved Proposition 209, which prohibited the consideration of race or ethnicity in the operation of state institutions, black students made up 8 percent of UC Berkeley's freshmen enrollment -- roughly the same percentage of African Americans living in the state. The following year, the percentage of black freshmen at Cal plummeted by more than half, and has hovered at or below 4 percent ever since. It averaged 3.6 percent in the five-year period between 2006 and 2010.

"On the campus website, more often than not, you'll often find a black face representing some program or other," said American Studies senior Salih Muhammad of Oakland. Muhammad is the former chair of Berkeley's Black Student Union and currently chair of the statewide UC African-American Coalition. "But when it comes to walking around the campus, those black faces are few and far between. Or, you'll see the 'I Support Berkeley' banners on campus, with all these black faces on them, but there are more black faces on the banners than there are in many of the classes."

In fact, some students in Cal's science and technology departments -- where black students are least represented -- said they can go an entire day without seeing another African American.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at November 12, 2013 12:01 AM
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