INCLUSIVITY

Questioning Whether Black People Belong at Harvard Is Racist

Some doubt Black people are capable of earning a seat

Woman wearing a black, long-sleeved shirt reading a book | Photo by Christina Morillo via Pexels

American history is a story of exclusivity, of welcoming some people with open arms while keeping others at bay. You only have to glance at the country’s prestigious colleges and universities, which began as whites-only institutions, to see this spectacle play out. For example, Harvard University, a private Ivy League school in Massachusetts, started admitting students in 1636 but did not admit their first Black undergraduate student until Beverly Garnett Williams in 1847. For over two hundred years, the racist, you-can’t-sit-with-us culture persevered on campus, limiting Black students and faculty opportunities.

So, when Republican Representative Jeff McNeely, a White man, asked Democratic Representative Abe Jones, a Black man, “if he would have gotten into Harvard if he wasn’t an athlete or minority,” he was continuing this tradition of questioning whether Black people could, based on merit, gain acceptance to a prominent university, like Harvard. Remember that McNeely does not work in Harvard’s academic admissions department or have access to Jones’ educational record. Yet, he assumed that a Black man like Jones could only attend Harvard in the 1970s through a race-based…