Obama applied a meritocratic numbers test to HBCUs without accounting for their financial constraints

Evidence

In a February 2015 meeting with the Congressional Black Caucus, several representatives stated that President Obama made his feelings about HBCUs quite clear. Representative Hank Johnson of Georgia, a graduate of Clark Atlanta University, put it this way: “[Obama] said that there were some HBCUs that were not good at graduating students and if they did not improve they’d have to go by the wayside.” He didn’t seem to care about the complicated relationship between finances and graduation rates at HBCUs—that people took time off to work to earn money to pay for school or they dropped out because the money ran out. Johnson continued, “In other words, he didn’t show much empathy for struggling HBCUs. It was like, ‘Show me the numbers, and if the numbers aren’t where they need to be, that’s it.’ It was a somewhat callous view of the unique niche HBCUs fill.” — Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Democracy in Black, 369

Categorization

• XREF: Contrasts with Obama’s presidency as a whole and relates to critiques of respectability politics/meritocracy found in writings about post-racial America. — connects to: Obama’s free community college plan steered students away from HBCUs
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Obama’s free community college plan steered students away from HBCUs