Here are the problems I have with HBCUs.

1. They are discriminatory. If white people openly declared they were opening a “white school”, we would scream bloody racism and segregation. So I do not think it is fair (though necessary at the moment) to have “black” schools.

2. HBCUs further feed into separation by color. We have learned that when it’s separate, it’s never equal so I suggest integration as the plan. Were “whites only” schools desegregated just so we could turn around and go right back to “black” schools? That is just like being able to sit anywhere on the bus but then choosing to go to the back. Is it that much better if you have a choice? You are still in the back.

3. Generally HBCUs cannot compete on a national level in many areas. Instead of learning how to play the game set up by white people in society, we make the mistake of trying to create our own game. Yet they control the corporations, the government and the currency. You will never beat the creator of a game unless you learn his game and apply the rules even better than he does.

4. Our tax dollars pay for us to go to State schools so our children have every right to be there and we should take advantage of that. Even if it’s just for the purpose of learning and infiltration like the Japanese did after World War II, we have to learn how to play the game from those teaching the game.

5. What HBCUs instill (pride, honor, dignity, appreciation of our own) should be instilled first as home by parents, not by educators. That is not the core responsibility of education. That in fact is aiding in the development of a value system and that is not a school’s primary role. Parents need to wake up and be parents.

6. HBCUs cost far too much. Because they are private, many HBCUs do not get the funding that is given to public colleges and universities. The tuitions are so high in HBCUs commonly that the student comes out buried in debt several times over. It thus puts a strain on the parents and the students for years to come.

7. This country is not a great big HBCU and its time students learn interaction with all races, cultures and ethnicities. To keep our young people in a “black box” is to limit the very interaction they will have to face one day anyway. I have seen hundreds of students from HBCUs behave awkwardly around “white” people or other ethnic groups. You cannot hide from the world you must interact in, so why separate ourselves and try to?

8. Ironically some HBCUs were not even set up by us. Morehouse College, Spelman College and Clark College, for example, were set up by “white” Methodists for us. And the only one of the colleges in the Atlanta University Center set up by “us” went bankrupt amidst embezzlement, scandals and mismanagement of funds.