Charles, who is a professor of sociology, African studies and education at Penn, says popular perception “would tell us that I should assume that any black student I meet is from a poor background, probably a single parent background. , And [has] non-owner parents [who] didn’t go to college.

These types of students are in colleges, she said, but they’re not the majority. Regarding parental education, for example, about one-third of black students in the research sample came from families where neither parent had gone to college. Another third of black students in their sample came from families where one parent had a college degree, and a third came from families where at least one parent had an advanced degree.

Charles explores the complex histories of the demographics of what she calls the rising black professional class in her new book, “Young, Gifted and Diverse: Origins of the New Black Elite.”

EdSurge spoke with Charles, who also works on efforts to help first-generation students at Penn, to dive deeper into his findings and what they mean for education at the recent ISTE Live conference in Philadelphia. (EdSurge is an independent newsroom that shares a parent organization with ISTE. Learn more about EdSurge’s ethics and policies here and supporters here.)

Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts, or use the player on this page. Or read a partial transcript below, slightly edited for clarity.

EdSurge: You have long studied the impact of racial segregation on education. What has your research shown you about the impact of school segregation on the experience of black students?

Camilla Charles: When I went out into the world as a sociologist, I studied urban inequality writ large. And a common thread has always been the impact of racial segregation in neighborhoods and schools.

We know that segregation concentrates poverty. And so for black people, coming out of segregated circumstances means they’re coming out of neighborhoods and schools that, on average, experience more everyday violence and social disorder than your average white and Asian student. Because what we found was that white and Asian students were really similar coming from neighborhoods that were over 70% white. And they were richer.

This meant that when we looked at exposure to violence and social unrest, for example, in their neighborhoods and schools during their pre-college life, [Black students] have been exposed to something like 17 times more violence and social disorder on average than your typical white and Asian student. It also tends to mean that as a result, because they might be, [by] income, middle class, but they are not [by] rich middle class [from families with large amounts of assets and savings], they also experience this kind of upheaval in their own family. So even for an affluent black student, they usually have immediate family members who are not affluent and dependent on them.

And so the other thing that we pay attention to is what we call stressful life events. You know, in the past 12 months, has anyone in your immediate family passed away? Did your parents lose their jobs or divorce? Has anyone been the victim of a violent crime? … And black students experience, on average, one stressful life event per year, while white and Asian students experience, on average, one during their studies. The stress level is therefore higher.

Could you tell us a bit about the work you do with first-generation college students? And why do you think colleges need to support first-generation students in any particular way?

I’ve been at Penn for 25 years now. And when I came to Penn, most black students came from underprivileged communities. What was really interesting was the number of white students who came to me to talk to me about how they felt invisible because they also came from low-income backgrounds – first generation – but no one at Penn thought to white students this way. because the average white student was certainly not that.

So it was really interesting to hear white college students talk about how they had to explain to friends why they couldn’t go to Aruba for spring break or why they worked part-time in the bookstore. Because I was hearing conversations between white students where it was like, ‘Yeah, you know, I’m going to have to get a job because I spent all the money my parents gave me for this semester.’ And their friends were like, ‘Dude, just ask them more.’ But that was foreign to their experience.

Thus, over time, the composition of the black population has changed due to the diversity [efforts]and the easiest way to recruit a diverse class is to look for black students and brown students who have the same profile or as close as possible to the same profile as white and Asian students from affluent backgrounds.

And as immigration has increased, immigrants from Africa are the most educated immigrants coming to the United States, period. And so African immigrants come from the highest income families among black people. …two-thirds of African immigrant students come from households with two higher degrees in their household [and want their students to go to a selective college]. So what we’ve seen over time is that the black student population is more diverse in the classroom.

When I wear my racial inequality hat, I say, ‘You know, don’t forget that there are white students who are poor and who are the first in their families to go to school. And that not all black and brown students are poor and need financial support, although more of them actually need support than you might think because [of differences in] wealth, and they don’t have the same configuration. They don’t have parents and grandparents they can ask for extra support. So I wear both hats because I think both things are important.

[Audience Question] What will be the impact if the Supreme Court decides not to allow affirmative action in college admissions? [Editor’s note: That decision happened a few days after this interview]

I’m from California, so I know what’s going on. Let me say that what the Liberals are doing wrong is preparing for the inevitable. So I think we knew in Bakke [a 1978 Supreme Court decision against affirmative action in admissions in California] that one day we would be there, and that higher education has not thought about how to do things differently to maintain diversity.

Somehow we kept kicking that possibility. And there’s been a discussion for a long time about, “Well, if we just focused on socioeconomic status, wouldn’t it be [that work]? And the answer was no, because it’s not one or the other, it’s both. And so I think at first you’re gonna see a dive [in non-white students at selective colleges].

You had a lot of these colleges that really bragged about having these extremely diverse classes this year because they knew that was the last time they could do admissions like they did.

Now the mistakes are that being able to verify you’re black or Latino gives you all that advantage in admissions, and it doesn’t. You get a lot more out of being a former student, which is ironic because that just means your parents did something, right? It has nothing to do with your own ability. But 40% of those incoming classes are legacy children. And then if those inherited children apply an early decision, it’s even higher.

I don’t know what’s going to happen, but I think things will get worse before they get better because I don’t think higher education is sufficiently prepared for what’s to come.

Listen to the entire conversation on this week’s EdSurge podcast.