White men have said over and over—and we have believed it be­cause it was repeated so often—that not only was there no such thing as a chaste Negro woman—but that a Negro woman could not be assaulted, that it was never against her will. —Jessie Daniel Ames44 The historian Jacquelyn Dowd Hall has called the […]

When Judge Clarence Thomas called the Judiciary Committee’s in­quiry into Professor Anita Hill’s charges of sexual harassment a "high-tech lynching of an uppity black man," declaring himself the victim of "racial attitudes about black men and their views of sex," he invoked the most vivid symbol of racial oppression, the lynch mob.23 Thomas spoke to […]

"Tyson Verdict Sends a Message." These were the words that greeted me on the front of the sports section of my morning Los Angeles Times on February 11, 1992. The subhead read, "Some say conviction on rape charge shows athletes are not above the law."3 I suppose it was a headline I might have expected […]

A Three-Act Morality Play Starring Clarence Thomas, Willie Smith, and Mike Tyson Charles R. Lawrence III Americans are obsessed with sex and fearful of black sexuality. The obsession has to do with a search for stimulation and meaning in a fast-paced, market-driven culture; the fear is rooted in visceral feel­ings about black bodies fueled by […]

I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me. —Ralph Ellison45 The answer to the question "What happens to Black males in col­lege?" is in many respects as complex as the parallel but larger ques­tion of "What happens to Black males in America?" In terms of the outcomes—academic performance, college satisfaction, and self-con­cept—considered […]

The data drawn upon to explore the questions just raised are returns from a 1990 mail survey of more than 2,000 college students.16 The survey focused on gender differences in five specific areas of African American college experiences. Three are outcomes (academic per­formance, college satisfaction, and self-concept); the fourth concerns campus racial climate; and the […]

Of course, the difficulties African American students experience in the educational context is not limited to the precollege experience. An analysis of the college life of Black students reveals how race and gender interplay so that Black female and Black male college experi­ences intersect but do not completely overlap. Perhaps not surprisingly, researchers have identified […]

In 1975, 6 percent of African American males over age twenty — five and 5 percent of African American females had completed 4 or more years of college. By 1992, 12.2 percent of Black men and 11.8 percent of Black women ages twenty-five to thirty-four years old had completed the bachelor’s or a higher degree. […]

From 1980 to 1991, Black male college enrollment increased by 11 percent to 517,000 from 464,000 (+53,000). Black female college en­rollment grew by 27 percent (+175,000) for the same period (from 643.0 to 818,000). Overall Black college enrollment increased to 1.335.0 by 1991, representing a 21 percent increase for the twenty — one-year period. By […]

From 1970 to 1991, high school graduation rates for African American males rose from 668,000 to 1,174,000. This represented an increase in completion rates from 55 percent to 72 percent. Among African American females, high school graduation rates actually rose more slowly than those for African American males. For this period, the number of 18-24-year-old […]