Integration benefiting top black students leaves the other ninety percent stranded

Evidence

HBCUs may be losing some of the top black students to elite white institutions, but they still play a crucial role for the many students who can’t get into these elite schools. A good thing about the elimination of racial barriers in American higher education is that more black students could go to places like Princeton or Williams College and end up with top jobs, even become president of the United States. But it’s not solving the real problem to simply shave off the top 10 percent of black students and say, okay, the doors are now open to these folks. — Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Democracy in Black, 363

Categorization

• XREF: Directly parallels the reader’s interest in the value gap and whom racial progress actually serves; mirrors the trap-not-strategy frame applied to electoral politics.
• SEED: Angle for an essay: measuring racial progress by top-decile access is itself a form of value-gap thinking.