Harvard is Closing its Doors to Those That Built It
Michaela K. Glavin ’25 calls on Harvard to provide a breakdown of Black identities at Harvard in order to “quantify the disparity and potentially understand the drivers and its connection to the legacy of slavery.” While Affirmative Action may not survive SCOTUS, Glavin says, “I wish to call on Harvard to recognize their failure at ensuring the representation of Generational African American descendants of slavery… Harvard should set a precedent — one that takes accountability for its part in the legacy of slavery not solely through a public report, but through the recognition of the deficit of descendants on this campus.”
The student laments the inability to quantify the resulting magnitude of marginalization. “As a Generational African American at Harvard myself, I wish I had the statistics to describe the feeling of otherness that stems from being a minority within a minority.”
Setting Generational African Americans apart from African and West Indian immigrants, among other Black individuals who cannot trace their roots to American slavery, Glavin says, “The Generational African American identity is one that has endured more pain and perseverance than one can imagine — pain and perseverance that has not ceased to penetrate our lives today. The socioeconomic effects of slavery and oppression under Jim Crow are alive and well and continue to exist as a boundary to higher education for those who are descended from those who experienced its restrictions.”
Related:
Top Colleges Take More Blacks, but Which Ones? (NYT, 2004)
