LSU College of Human Sciences and Education professors and administrators were joined by students and guest speakers to discuss educational access, equity and related challenges and solutions to promote the success of Black students in a virtual panel on Nov. 12.
The panel was the second installment of CHSE’s Perspectives series, where faculty, staff, students and community members engage in constructive dialogue about diversity, inclusion and civic engagement issues.
The discussion, titled “Black Minds Matter Too,” included stories about Black students’ and educators’ experiences at postsecondary institutions in the South, the role of students and administrators in correcting systemic racism and the intersection between education and government policy.
Howard University professor, author and Baton Rouge native Ivory Toldson joined the discussion to speak about his research and experience as a Black student at LSU. Louisiana state Sen. Cleo Fields joined the panel to discuss the challenges of crafting legislation to deal with issues in higher education.
With a record-breaking 6,690 full-time freshman students enrolled at LSU this fall, diversity of the class is at an all-time high and LSU’s Black freshman population is at 16.8%.
As LSU’s student population increasingly looks more like Louisiana’s population demographics, questions remain about what more needs to be done to correct centuries of systematic oppression of African Americans in educational settings.
“Opening up the gates for Black students to attend prominent universities, both by setting precedent and overturning racist policy, helps instill the sentiment that they deserve to be in those classrooms,” CHSE Dean Roland Mitchell said. “Of course, these strides of social justice do not mitigate the pressure and stereotypical threat that often comes with navigating those classrooms and managing frequent microaggressions as Black students.”
Toldson said that incoming freshmen often struggle with personal identity when entering college. They ask questions about what their identity is, who their friends are and what they’re good at.
“All of the students have these questions and if you’re a student of color — if you’re a Black student in particular — these questions have a deeper meaning and a deeper weight,” Toldson said.
After graduating from LSU, Toldson received his PhD in counseling psychology from Temple University. He was previously appointed by President Barack Obama to serve as the executive director of White House initiatives on historically Black colleges and universities.
Today, he is editor-in-chief of the Journal of Negro Education and executive director of the Journal of Policy Analysis and Research published by the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation.
His research has been featured in the Washington Post, CNN, the New York Times, National Journal, Essence Magazine, BET, the Grio and Ebony Magazine. Toldson has been named in the Route 100 annual list of most influential African Americans.
Toldson said that although he had a lot of scholarship and research he could discuss, he felt more compelled to talk about his personal experiences. He spoke about his parents and what it was like being the first generation legally allowed to attend LSU.
“Both of them grew up in north Louisiana, both of them chopped cotton during the summers, both of them went to Southern University and met there and both of them could not have gone to LSU even if they wanted to,” Toldson said. “They both grew up under Jim Crow laws. I am the first generation where I was constitutionally free to go to LSU, and that means something.”
The history of discrimination in educational settings isn’t the only barrier Black students face.
In 2019, the share of Black Americans in poverty was 1.8 times greater than their share among the general population. Black Americans represented 13.2% of the total population in the United States, but 23.8% of the poverty population, according to the United States Census Bureau.
In contrast, non-Hispanic White Americans made up 59.9% of the total population but only 41.6% of the population in poverty.
Both the historical legacy of discrimination against African Americans and inequality of financial opportunities have manifested in a myriad of ways, including in educational outcomes.
In 2019, 29% of the African American population aged 25 to 29 held a bachelor’s degree or higher, compared to 45% of the white population in the same age range. Additionally, White and Asian students earn a college-level credential at a rate about 20 percentage points higher than Hispanic and Black students do, according to the Institute of Educational Sciences and National Student Clearinghouse.
“We have to acknowledge history,” Toldson said. “We have to acknowledge and atone for the things that LSU didn’t provide for the generation before them because it does make a difference in the position they have when they get to LSU.
“For my parents, it was illegal for them to come to LSU. It was illegal for their parents to engage in the type of capital and commerce that the other parents had access to. We have to create systems to atone for the history that we are complicit in.”
Sports administration sophomore and Black Male Leadership Initiative fellow Julian Williams came to LSU from California. With no local connections, Williams found himself in large classrooms not knowing anyone and wondering what he was doing at LSU.
“It’s definitely been tough,” Williams said. “I think it goes back to what Dr. Jennings and Dr. Toldson talked about — that community and relationships. I had never been to the South, let alone Louisiana before getting here.
“I saw the NAACP and Black Male Leadership Initiative. They caught my eye. On Instagram I’m seeing all these Black males out there, Black women, this Black community — very successful, intelligent. I’m like ‘I need to be a part of that.’”
Williams said the sense of belonging and community these organizations provided has helped him find his place on campus.
“Access is my first major focus but it’s also important that this is a destination for students that they feel welcome and they feel included and feel that they belong and ultimately can be successful,” assistant professor of higher education Ashley Clayton said.
“The importance of belonging and being a part of a community is so incredibly important,” Mitchell said.
The conversation shifted to practical ways universities can correct systemic problems. Relationships, especially ones between Black faculty and Black students, were at the forefront of factors in ensuring the success of Black students.
“Relationships matter,” Toldson said. “The people who I remember, the people who wrote my letters of recommendation, the people who got me the internship at Penn State, these were Black administrators that cared about Black students. The more Black administrators and professors that care about Black students, the greater the chance your students will come out successful.”
Black men represent less than 2% of the entire teacher workforce, according to a study conducted by the National Center for Education Statistics.
In Baton Rouge, the disparity is even more drastic. Despite the city population being majority Black, less than 1% of teachers in Baton Rouge are Black men, according to the Schott Foundation for Public Education.
“When you’re a white student and you look at the number of professors and administrators that they have access to, compared to Black students — just look at the number of Black professors and administrators that they have access to — you know that there is a disadvantage there,” Toldson said.
Aside from increasing Black faculty at LSU, the University needs to further invest in underrepresented organizations and programs to promote the success of those groups, according to Toldson and Clayton.
“It’s one thing to provide access but we also have to provide the support and you can’t provide support on a shoe-string budget,” Clayton said. “You have to financially fund it and it has to be enough money to actually make these programs run properly, be sustainable and also to increase their impact over time.”
“The kind of capital that the white fraternities and sororities have access to — they do things with that to create a better experience for them. The Black students don’t have the same amount of capital,” Toldson said. “Again, the reasons they don’t have that same capital is because of Jim Crow laws that happened relatively recently that the institution participated in. [Because of this] there is a responsibility of the institution to set up funds for Black organizations.”
The historical and financial disadvantages facing Black students also need to be addressed at the state and federal level, according to Fields.
In 1992, Fields was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, where he represented Louisiana’s 4th congressional district and became the youngest member of the 103rd member of Congress at age 29.
When Fields got to Congress, he said there was a congressional caucus for just about everything — except education. He and another senator worked together to develop the first caucus on education, getting members from both parties to start talking about the importance of education and the government’s role in it.
“There was a big fight going on about how it’s not the federal government’s responsibility to actually fund schools,” Fields said. “That caucus, what we decided to do was say ‘Look, we built prisons, why can’t we build schools?’ I think that if we’re going to be successful as a nation, we have to make a financial commitment to education from all levels. We just can’t leave it to the locals.”
Today, Fields serves as a Louisiana state senator representing district 14, which includes the LSU community, where he currently serves as chair of the Senate Education Committee. As state funding for public institutions has been declining, Fields said he is trying to focus more attention on education from a fiscal perspective.
As the panel came to a close, panelists expressed optimism toward the future of LSU and Black students’ place in it.
Sheara Jennings is an associate professor at the University of Houston’s Graduate College of Social Work. She received her master’s degree from LSU and her daughter now attends LSU.
“[My daughter has] talked about some things around race and discrimination that she’s unhappy about at LSU,” Jennings said. “But what I appreciate is that she does feel like she has a voice and she’s able to express it and community with other Black students at LSU.
“We had a community; it was a small one. Her’s is larger and far more vocal than we were. I was afraid to be what I thought was a trouble-maker but they’re not afraid and I’m happy about the way they’re able to express themselves and be heard.”
