Last year, a panel of students at Columbus State Community College in Columbus, Ohio, gathered to discuss the challenges facing the African-American male. But another topic unexpectedly emerged: who, exactly, was African-American?
That was a loaded question for many of the panelists and the audience because Columbus is home to one of the country’s largest Somali communities. For those students, “African-Americans” are American-born Blacks — an identity they didn’t embrace.
“There was rich dialogue around the difference between African, African-American and an African who is an American,” recalls Renee Hampton, Columbus State’s special assistant to the provost for diversity. “Those are things we have to be aware of in dealing with the students. We are trying to educate ourselves.”
Columbus State, like many other colleges, is finding that traditional categories of race and ethnicity don’t begin to cover the diversity of its student body. Like America itself, higher education institutions are confronting a new wave of intra-ethnic diversity that is expanding old definitions of race and national origin and challenging colleges’ traditional methods of student services.
“There’s a tendency to treat immigrants as a monolithic group, when there are big differences among them,” says Jill Casner-Lotto, director of the Community College Consortium for Immigrant Education, housed at Westchester Community College in Valhalla, N.Y.
A New Understanding of Diversity
It’s no secret that America is becoming more multicultural. According to census estimates, minorities make up more than one-third of the nation’s population. Twelve percent of the population is foreign born, and 20 percent speak a language other than English at home.
