# Are Ivy League and other top universities hotbeds of racism? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [December 10, 2015, 2:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-ivy-league-and-other-top-universities-hotbeds-of-racism/740033 "2015-12-10T02:55:00Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![UltraVires](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecccb3/32.png) [@UltraVires](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UltraVires)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2015, 4:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-ivy-league-and-other-top-universities-hotbeds-of-racism/740033/41 "2015-12-11T04:36:27Z")
I truly want to understand this “institutional racism” at colleges. I went to college in the 1990s. There were hate speech rules and serious disciplinary consequences for racist antics. A dorm mate down the hall had the word “spic” spray painted on his door. The University relocated him to an off-campus apartment free of charge and paid his rent for the remainder of the term. The campus police treated it like a murder investigation. We were required to take 3 hours in a gender/minority studies class in order to graduate. The entire experience was an absolute bastion of bending over backwards so as not to offend minorities. And this was 20 years ago. Just what, exactly, are these schools doing that is so egregious? ---
**Author:** ![Spice\_Weasel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spice_weasel/32/5435_2.png) [@Spice\_Weasel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spice_Weasel)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2015, 4:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-ivy-league-and-other-top-universities-hotbeds-of-racism/740033/42 "2015-12-11T04:53:17Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > I rather doubt that the administration of any Ivy League school is conservative. Maybe not conservative in the political sense, but in the ‘‘resistant to change’’ sense? Absolutely. I attended University of Michigan for undergrad and Penn for grad. The experiences were like night and day. U of M had a very liberal administration, and by liberal I mean flexible, adaptable, evolving, and very sensitive to students’ needs. Penn was not only not nearly as diverse, it was much more stodgy, inflexible, and resistant to change. There were many more unhappy students. And the Dean of the School of Social Policy and Practice was a political conservative who had been active in the Republican legislative process for child welfare. The last place you’d probably expect a conservative Dean is in the damned school of social work, but there ya go. The students themselves (at least, those in my department) were about equally liberal, about equally sensitive to issues of race and gender, etc. But the administrations were very different. ---
**Author:** ![ITR\_champion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c67d28/32.png) [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2015, 5:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-ivy-league-and-other-top-universities-hotbeds-of-racism/740033/43 "2015-12-11T05:01:11Z")
> [@brickbacon](#): > > Or, maybe Brown, Yale, Harvard, etc. are more responsive to student concerns because they rely on alumni contributions to create a wholistic learning and social environment, whereas Minnisota Bumfuck University is basically offering job training. That’s fine, and there is nothing wrong with that, but don’t pretend elite universities are offering the same thing. You are competing a BMW to a moped. > > Elite universities create leaders who run the world, and who occasionally “whine”. Your school generally does neither it would seem. Kudos to them for having a clear mission and mandate that doesn’t seem to involve anything but teaching students academic subjects at a mildly competent level. It doesn’t speak at all to whether there are racists in either place. In your first post, you said, “It’s not as if racism doesn’t exist at ‘lesser’ schools.” But you didn’t offer any evidence that all those ordinary universities and colleges have a problem with racism. All you’ve done is nitpick at my arguments. I’d like to see someone do a poll of groups of students at the Ivy League, at mainstream universities, and at conservative universities, asking questions like “do you believe that your administration is racist”. I don’t know of any such poll, but if it were taken, I’d expect embarrassing results for the Ivy League. Absent that, the best proxy I have is to read the news and see how many groups of students are screaming profanity at white students in the library, issue statements claiming that racism prevents them from being “whole and well”, etc… I see many such incidents at Ivies and comparable schools. Other than the recent flare-up at Mizzou, I’ve read about nothing comparable at mainstream campuses. ---
**Author:** ![ITR\_champion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c67d28/32.png) [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2015, 5:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-ivy-league-and-other-top-universities-hotbeds-of-racism/740033/44 "2015-12-11T05:08:02Z")
> [@UltraVires](#): > > I truly want to understand this “institutional racism” at colleges. I went to college in the 1990s. There were hate speech rules and serious disciplinary consequences for racist antics. > … > We were required to take 3 hours in a gender/minority studies class in order to graduate. The entire experience was an absolute bastion of bending over backwards so as not to offend minorities. Yeah, it’s almost as if the claim that universities are bastions of racism directed at minorities is the exact opposite of the truth. ---
**Author:** ![Spice\_Weasel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spice_weasel/32/5435_2.png) [@Spice\_Weasel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spice_Weasel)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2015, 5:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-ivy-league-and-other-top-universities-hotbeds-of-racism/740033/45 "2015-12-11T05:26:21Z")
> [@UltraVires](#): > > I truly want to understand this “institutional racism” at colleges. I went to college in the 1990s. There were hate speech rules and serious disciplinary consequences for racist antics. I think you aren’t understanding what is meant by ''institutionalized racism." It isn’t individual acts of aggression by people with racist intent. It’s more the result of a laissez faire white majority that fails to recognize the way unconscious bias results in unfair outcomes for minorities. Study after study after study has indicated that the majority of people, regardless of race, have some racial bias that affects their decision-making process. Because white people tend to hold positions of power, it just so happens everyone else gets screwed by that bias. This is how you can end up with an unjust system without ill intent. Some people do not acknowledge the evidence that institutionalized racism is a thing. But that is what these students are talking about. That is what they mean when they say that racism is everywhere. ---
**Author:** ![China\_Guy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/779978/32.png) [@China\_Guy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/China_Guy)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2015, 5:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-ivy-league-and-other-top-universities-hotbeds-of-racism/740033/46 "2015-12-11T05:35:11Z")
First and foremost, it’s cultural and socio-economic. The Ivy’s are bastions of the East Coast, prep school, monied alumni. If that’s not your background, well, you have a hill to climb. It’s socio-economic and not pigment based, although the wrong pigment may exacerbate the situation. Not that I attended either an Ivy or an eastern prep school. I did however, do a year at Lehman Brothers, which was completely East Coast, prep school, Ivy League background. Being a West Coast, University of California, up by the bootstraps kinda guy, well, I didn’t fit in beyond being considered hired help. ---
**Author:** ![Robert163](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/4af34b/32.png) [@Robert163](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Robert163)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2015, 5:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-ivy-league-and-other-top-universities-hotbeds-of-racism/740033/47 "2015-12-11T05:40:09Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > Other than the recent flare-up at Mizzou, I’ve read about nothing comparable at mainstream campuses. It almost seems as if you are saying, if you don’t read about a problem, then it doesn’t exist. ---
**Author:** ![Human\_Action](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/ac91a4/32.png) [@Human\_Action](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Human_Action)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2015, 12:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-ivy-league-and-other-top-universities-hotbeds-of-racism/740033/48 "2015-12-11T12:17:37Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > In your first post, you said, “It’s not as if racism doesn’t exist at ‘lesser’ schools.” But you didn’t offer any evidence that all those ordinary universities and colleges have a problem with racism. All you’ve done is nitpick at my arguments. > > I’d like to see someone do a poll of groups of students at the Ivy League, at mainstream universities, and at conservative universities, asking questions like “do you believe that your administration is racist”. I don’t know of any such poll, but if it were taken, I’d expect embarrassing results for the Ivy League. > > Absent that, the best proxy I have is to read the news and see how many groups of students are screaming profanity at white students in the library, issue statements claiming that racism prevents them from being “whole and well”, etc… I see many such incidents at Ivies and comparable schools. Other than the recent flare-up at Mizzou, I’ve read about nothing comparable at mainstream campuses. Here’s a crazy idea: contact the [MSU-M Black Student Union](https://www.facebook.com/MSUMBlackStudentUnion/) and ask them about their experiences. It’s more work than drawing conclusions from polls that don’t exist, granted, but it’d be helpful to have information before assuming that racism is made up. ---
**Author:** ![puddleglum](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puddleglum/32/137_2.png) [@puddleglum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puddleglum)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2015, 3:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-ivy-league-and-other-top-universities-hotbeds-of-racism/740033/49 "2015-12-11T15:06:57Z")
> [@Spice\_Weasel](#): > > I think you aren’t understanding what is meant by ''institutionalized racism." It isn’t individual acts of aggression by people with racist intent. It’s more the result of a laissez faire white majority that fails to recognize the way unconscious bias results in unfair outcomes for minorities. Study after study after study has indicated that the majority of people, regardless of race, have some racial bias that affects their decision-making process. Because white people tend to hold positions of power, it just so happens everyone else gets screwed by that bias. This is how you can end up with an unjust system without ill intent. > > Some people do not acknowledge the evidence that institutionalized racism is a thing. But that is what these students are talking about. That is what they mean when they say that racism is everywhere. “Everyone else” does not get screwed by racial bias. Asians do better than whites academically even though whites hold positions of power. Jews do better than gentiles even though gentiles hold positions of power. Women do better than men academically even though men hold positions of power. African immigrants do better than whites academically even though whites hold positions of power. If all these groups can succeed despite institutional racism and sexism, then how bad can it really be? ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2015, 3:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-ivy-league-and-other-top-universities-hotbeds-of-racism/740033/50 "2015-12-11T15:32:54Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > Or here’s another possibility. The Ivies educate their students to spot racism lurking under every rock and crevice, regardless of whether or not such racism exists. If that were the case, then it would still be them shooting themselves in the foot. Not that I believe that’s the case, knowing even the little I do about the demographics makeup of the Ivies’ faculty and admin and incidents at Ivy frats and campuses. > [@](#): > > Technical colleges in Minnesota and other schools like that are more interested in giving their students useful skills and preparing them for productive careers, less interested in teaching their students to spot imaginary plagues of racism. What, you think an Ivy education _doesn’t_ prepare you for a productive career? > [@](#): > > In a different post, you linked to a Wikipedia article about institutional racism. It offered up a lot of claims about feelings:[…] > Lots of feelings, but no objective facts. _Fuck_ the narrative that says that feelings don’t matter, especially with something like racism. > [@](#): > > To some skeptics, that might suggest that students at certain universities are being taught to feel about racism in certain ways, even if racism does not, factually, exist at those universities. _Other_ skeptics may think that students at other universities aren’t taught to think about these things at all, even if racism does, “factually”, exist at those universities. ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2015, 4:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-ivy-league-and-other-top-universities-hotbeds-of-racism/740033/51 "2015-12-11T16:18:20Z")
> [@MrDibble](#): > > If that were the case, then it would still be them shooting themselves in the foot. I don’t know that the Ivy League universities are shooting themselves in the foot, but they are supplying their students with ammunition and giving them target practice. > [@](#): > > What, you think an Ivy education _doesn’t_ prepare you for a productive career? Not if you major in Grievance Studies. See **puddleglum** ’s cite. > [@](#): > > _Fuck_ the narrative that says that feelings don’t matter, especially with something like racism. Why? Feelings aren’t automatically valid just because they are feelings about racism. ‘I feel aggrieved because the Asians in my class are at the top and the ones who are the same color as me are at the bottom’ isn’t a feeling that is going to be addressed by protests. It also isn’t going to be addressed by hiring more black professors to teach Whining 101. So the university wants to hire more black PhD.s, and thus become more diverse. Great idea. And not just to teach education - across the departments. > [@](#): > > [In 2004, 2,100 doctorates were awarded by universities in the United States in the fields of mathematical statistics, botany, optics physics, human and animal pathology, zoology, astrophysics, geometry, geophysics and seismology, general mathematics, nuclear physics, astronomy, marine sciences, nuclear engineering, polymer and plastics engineering, veterinary medicine, topology, hydrology and water resources, animal nutrition, wildlife/range management, number theory, fisheries science and management, atmospheric dynamics, engineering physics, paleontology, plant physiology, general atmospheric science, mathematical operations research, endocrinology, metallurgical engineering, meteorology, ocean engineering, poultry science, stratigraphy and sedimentation, wood science, polymer physics, acoustics, mineralogy and petrology, bacteriology, logic, ceramics science engineering, animal breeding and genetics, computing theory and practice, and mining and mineral engineering](http://www.jbhe.com/news_views/50_black_doctoraldegrees.html). Guess how many of those degrees were granted to blacks? 0. And how is being taught to feel sorry for yourself going to help? Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2015, 4:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-ivy-league-and-other-top-universities-hotbeds-of-racism/740033/52 "2015-12-11T16:33:39Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > Why would anyone voluntarily spend that much money to go to a place that’s committing violence against them and ruining their lives with racism? If such horrible things were actually happening to black students at Brown University (and Yale and Princeton and Harvard and …), one would rather expect that those students would choose not to attend. Right?? If they’re not outright liars, they’re clearly just asking for it anyway!! ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2015, 5:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-ivy-league-and-other-top-universities-hotbeds-of-racism/740033/53 "2015-12-11T17:18:57Z")
> [@Jonathan\_Chance](#): > > Please don’t insult other posters, even in jest. I think “Fat Tony” means Antonin Scalia, not **Shodan.** ---
**Author:** ![Katriona](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/katriona/32/113_2.png) [@Katriona](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Katriona)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2015, 5:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-ivy-league-and-other-top-universities-hotbeds-of-racism/740033/54 "2015-12-11T17:23:32Z")
> [@Jonathan\_Chance](#): > > Please don’t insult other posters, even in jest. I believe the poster was referring to Scalia, whose first name is Antonin, and using a Simpsons reference: > **[Fat Tony (The Simpsons)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fat_Tony_(The_Simpsons))** > > "Donnie Fatso" (2010) > Anthony "Fat Tony" D'Amico is the name of two recurring characters in the animated sitcom The Simpsons. Both are voiced by Joe Mantegna and first appeared in the episode "Bart the Murderer" of the third season. Fat Tony is a mobster and the underboss of the Springfield Mafia. His henchmen include Legs, Louie, and Johnny Tightlips, and he answers to Don Vittorio DiMaggio. Upon the death of the original Fat Tony in the episode "Donnie Fatso" of the twenty-second season, the c... ---
**Author:** ![WF\_Tomba](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/d9b06d/32.png) [@WF\_Tomba](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WF_Tomba)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2015, 5:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-ivy-league-and-other-top-universities-hotbeds-of-racism/740033/55 "2015-12-11T17:32:22Z")
These debates make me think of Jewish history. Over the course of the 19th Century, Western European society became gradually more tolerant of Jews, and Jews became more culturally and socially integrated into that society. And yet, by the end of the century, you had the Zionists, who concluded that Jews could _never_ feel fully normal—fully accepted, fully safe, fully themselves—in Gentile society, and that they needed their own country. And then there came the rise of the Nazis and extreme anti-Semitism, with large numbers of Gentiles apparently deciding that, notwithstanding the preceding centuries of coexistence, they just couldn’t stand having Jews alive in their world. Does integration actually work? I think we’re about to see a new wave of racial separatism. Thoughtful people of color are going to start asking themselves whether they can ever really feel OK while surrounded by white people. Some of them are going to conclude that they can’t. ---
**Author:** ![ITR\_champion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c67d28/32.png) [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2015, 5:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-ivy-league-and-other-top-universities-hotbeds-of-racism/740033/56 "2015-12-11T17:36:59Z")
> [@MrDibble](#): > > _Fuck_ the narrative that says that feelings don’t matter, especially with something like racism. Nobody has said that feelings don’t matter. What I’ve said is that when studying something like racism on campus, facts matter. Feelings are not proof of facts. Suppose there was a rich, white man with a large following, loudly proclaiming that he felt white people were having their lives ruined by Mexicans and other racial minorities. Let’s call this purely hypothetical person “Donald Trump”. How should we respond to this person? By automatically basing policy on the feelings of Donald Trump and his followers? Or by caring about what the actual facts are? Everyone has feelings. Oftentimes people’s feelings run contrary to each other, and it’s not possible to make everybody feel good, because what makes some people feel good leads to other people feeling bad. Logic and reason are what allow a community where people feel differently to still function. ---
**Author:** ![Human\_Action](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/ac91a4/32.png) [@Human\_Action](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Human_Action)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2015, 5:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-ivy-league-and-other-top-universities-hotbeds-of-racism/740033/57 "2015-12-11T17:39:53Z")
What sort of facts did you have in mind, that are positive either way? ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2015, 5:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-ivy-league-and-other-top-universities-hotbeds-of-racism/740033/58 "2015-12-11T17:41:30Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > Suppose there was a rich, white man with a large following, loudly proclaiming that he felt white people were having their lives ruined by Mexicans and other racial minorities. Let’s call this purely hypothetical person “Donald Trump”. That hypothetical is way too absurd to be taken seriously. 🙂 Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![davida03801](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b5e925/32.png) [@davida03801](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/davida03801)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2015, 7:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-ivy-league-and-other-top-universities-hotbeds-of-racism/740033/59 "2015-12-11T19:07:06Z")
They are, but you can’t tell them. You can always tell a Harvard man but you can’t tell them much. ---
**Author:** ![WF\_Tomba](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/d9b06d/32.png) [@WF\_Tomba](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WF_Tomba)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2015, 7:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-ivy-league-and-other-top-universities-hotbeds-of-racism/740033/60 "2015-12-11T19:12:25Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > Everyone has feelings. Oftentimes people’s feelings run contrary to each other, and it’s not possible to make everybody feel good, because what makes some people feel good leads to other people feeling bad. Logic and reason are what allow a community where people feel differently to still function. What exactly does it mean for a community “to function”? And is that really something to be desired? Seems to me that North American slavery, for example, was a system that “functioned” perfectly well. Some people (the slaveowners) felt good about it; other people (the slaves) felt bad. But the community continued to function. Yet today, we view it as a good thing that the slavery-based society eventually ceased to function, even though that breakdown involved the deaths of over 600,000 people in a four-year period. (I realize that I’m making an extreme comparison here. My intent is simply to point out the conflict between justice and social order. Use of an extreme example makes the principles clearer.) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-ivy-league-and-other-top-universities-hotbeds-of-racism/740033.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-ivy-league-and-other-top-universities-hotbeds-of-racism/740033.md?page=4)