Black students make up only nine percent of very selective school enrollments

Evidence

When black students do attend the most selective institutions, they are a distinct minority: The 2016 Pew Research analysis found that on average, at very selective four-year schools, the student body was only 9 percent black compared with 56 percent white, 14 percent Latinx, 16 percent Asian, and 5 percent who identified in some other way. When a student is one of a few black people their peers encounter every day (or, in some cases, the only black person), it often means performing what I call “racism triage”: Facing a broad range of aggressions from peers and superiors, but lacking the capacity to respond to each and every one, you reserve your energies for only the worst. — Dorothy A. Brown, The Whiteness of Wealth, 271

Categorization

• DEFINE: Introduces the coined term ‘racism triage’ — a defined concept worth preserving.