Black Students Don’t Feel Welcome at ‘Hispanic-Serving Institutions,’ Study Finds

Black students do not feel welcome at “Hispanic-serving institutions,” according to a new study.

However, higher education in general has a racist history, according to the University of New Mexico scholars who wrote the study.

“Conceptualizing Anti-Blackness at a Hispanic-Serving Institution,” includes interviews with black students who attend one of these colleges.

“To qualify as a Hispanic-Serving Institution (HSI), an institution must be an accredited degree-granting college or university with enrollment of at least 25% full-time equivalent undergraduates who self-identify as Hispanic,” the study explains.

The authors include Brandi Wells-Stone, who directs “African-American Student Services” at the University of New Mexico. Her employer is a Hispanic-serving institution.

They argue that while racism existed from the beginning of higher education in America, it still exists today. “Unfortunately, anti-Blackness has continued to permeate[colleges] into the 21st century. Today, anti-Blackness in U.S. [colleges studies includes the institutionalization of Black suffering.”

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The suffering also includes “defunding of Black student success work, and the framing of racialized acts towards Black people as unrelated or separate from the legacy of the university system by placing the primary focus on the individual(s) involved.”

“Anti-Blackness includes the culmination of interpersonal racialized moments within a broader systemic devaluation of the Black body rooted in chattel slavery, colonization, and systems upholding white supremacy,” the authors also write.

The actual survey involved just one unidentified university in the Southwest (there are 615 Hispanic-serving institutions in the U.S.).

The responses are what is to be expected from a small survey group focused on asking people to share their grievances.

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Probably uncomfortably for the researchers, another student shared that he felt the leadership of black groups was too gay.

“Not enough heterosexual visible Black male leadership outside of Frats,” one student wrote.

Another student said she was the victim because she was often the only black woman in some of her classes.

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