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In the United Negro College Fund's new Fairfax, Virginia, offices, former House Majority Whip and current UNCF President William H. Gray, III, recently sent a morning with Educational Record's editor-in-chief. During this graciously afforded interview, Gray contemplated the major challenges facing diversity, both on campus and throughout the larger society, shared his perspectives on the current debate around these challenges, and offered his thoughts on potential remedies. The following are excerpts from his comments.
On he major challenges to diversity...
A major challenge is fear--fear that with change, there are those who are going to lose--lose jobs, lose contracts, lose status, lose seats in higher education and graduate schools, lose scholarships. Those who exploit that fear, for whatever purposes, present the greatest challenge to diversity. Another challenge to diversity is the lack of resources to achieve it. There are groups of citizens--especially in higher education--who are highly qualified to excel but who don't have the resources to participate. Thus, the ability to diversify often is limited by financial constraints.
On the role of economics...
I think economics plays a part in fear, especially during times of uncertainty. Even though there's been a pretty strong economy for the last year or so, it's clear from all data that most Americans still feel pretty uncertain about their economic future. And that uncertainty is brought on by a rash of monumental changes taking place--changes in the economy, changes in the world economic structure, changes in geopolitical structures that have an impact on Americans.
But, really, the fundamental question that we are facing in diversity issues in this country goes beyond economic uncertainty; it goes to the bedrock of who we are. Probably the most emotional, gut-wrenching issue of American history is race.
America has gone through a variety of economic changes; we've survived depression, recession, ups, and downs. But race is the one issue that we have never fundamentally been able to deal with. It's the most volatile and most painful issue in our history. We fought America's greatest war not in Vietnam, not in Korea, not in World War II or World War I, not even in the American Revolution. It was the Civil War, and it was fought over the issue of race. Yes, there...