Posted on December 11, 2012

University of Texas Professor Claims Black Students Are Failing Because They Are Raised by Poor Single Women

Daniel Miller, Daily Mail (London), December 11, 2012

A professor at the University of Texas has sparked outrage by claiming  black and Hispanic students are failing academically because they have been raised in single parent homes usually by females.

Law professor Lino Graglia was talking to the BBC when he said he could ‘hardly imagine a less beneficial or more deleterious experience than to be raised by a single parent, usually female, uneducated and without a lot of money.’

He said the average black performance on SAT test is 200 points lower than that for the average white student and that among the black population almost three quarters of children are now born outside of marriage.

The outspoken professor appeared slightly flustered when the BBC interviewer pointed out that he was black and raised in a single parent family himself.

Lino Graglia

Lino Graglia

But he continued: ‘How well do these kids do in maths and reading is basically it and they do less well.

‘And race or segregation or history wouldn’t matter one bit if that was not the case.

‘No doubt the race and segregation may have a lot to do why that’s the case, but it is the case and what to do about it now?

‘And admitting them into selective schools with large gaps in qualification is not the answer.’

Graglia is no stranger to controversy and was accused of racism in 1997 after telling a conservative student group that black and Mexican-American cultures ‘set children up for failure’.

He said: ‘They have a culture that seems not to encourage achievement.

‘Failure is not looked upon with disgrace.’

In response the League of United Latin American Citizens demanded he resign issuing a resolution which stated: ‘Graglia believes that minority students come from a culture of failure.

‘He knows nothing of our culture and has never crawled down from his ivory tower to find out.

‘His lack of respect for the students who sit in his classes is unacceptable. His contempt for our leaders is intolerable.’

The University of Texas is currently fighting a legal battle in the Supreme Court with a white student who claims she was forced to go to a second-rate college as a result of the School’s affirmative action program.

Despite graduating in the top 11 per cent of her class in 2008, Abigail Fisher was rejected from U.T. and ‘forced to attend’ Louisiana State University instead.

She has now taken her claim to the Supreme Court Fisher claiming that she was denied entrance into U.T. because she is white, and wasn’t afforded the same career opportunities she’d have had otherwise.

She told the New York Times: ‘I probably would have gotten a better job offer had I gone to U.T.’