As more diverse ethnic groups walk the Boston University campus each year, the face of the city’s once-dominant white population is changing as well.
Despite a slight dip in BU’s white population over the past few years, the number of white students at BU is significantly higher than the number of white residents living in Boston, a figure which some attribute to changing family structure and housing costs.
Boston went from a mostly white city to a mostly non-white city between 1990 and 2000, according to a 2002 study titled “Race, Place, and Opportunity: Racial Change and Segregation in the Boston Metropolitan Area,” conducted by Harvard University Civil Rights Project researcher Nancy McArdle.
The BU freshman class of 2005 was 71 percent white, according to the University Admissions Office website. Non-Hispanic whites make up 54.5 percent of Boston’s population, according to the 2000 U.S. Census.
In 2000, more than half of Boston’s population, 54.2 percent, was non-Hispanic whites, according to the study. This number decreased to 49.5 percent in 2002.
According to the study, residents of Boston’s suburbs are more than 90 percent white, which may be because of the city’s high cost of housing, said City Councilor-at-Large Felix Arroyo. The cost forces many whites to seek better-quality and less-expensive housing outside the city, he said.
“Also, there’s the quality of public schools,” he said. “Other districts [in the suburbs] have better quality school systems.”
The age difference between white and minority families may account for the decreasing number of whites in the city, Arroyo said.
“Older whites are living in Boston,” he said, “and they’re having fewer children. People of color have younger families.”
There is a small BU minority representation, said sociology department chairman John Stone.
“In a university where Martin Luther King is one of the most famous alumni, it’s certainly surprising that there are so few black students on campus,” he said. “We need to create a kind of atmosphere where minority black students feel comfortable. We need to treat everybody as normal human beings. One’s background is interesting but not a factor to create divisions.”
Stone said he could not speak with authority about legacy, the process of lowering admissions standards to allow children of BU alumni into the university, but he said he views its effects as a form of reverse affirmative action.
“Critics of affirmative action, if they believe in colorblind policies, would have to get rid of legacy to be consistent,” he said.
The BU College Republicans, who proposed the “Caucasian Achievement and Recognition Scholarship” last November to highlight the “absurdity” of race-based scholarships, criticized affirmative action.
“[Affirmative action policies] maintain the power relationship between races,” said BUCR President Joe Mroszczyk. “Essentially, what whites say to minorities with these programs is, ‘Since we know you cannot achieve on the same level with us, we’ll have these special programs for you.'”
Despite the scholarship he proposed last semester, Mroszczyk said he does not believe any scholarship should be based on race.
“Diversity at a university like BU should be defined by a diversity of opinions and viewpoints,” he said, “but forced racial diversity serves little purpose and is of little value since the color of one’s skin is irrelevant to many students, including myself.”
Stone called the BUCR scholarship “a stupid publicity stunt.”
“It shows a lack of understanding of what affirmative action is supposed to achieve,” he said.
Political science professor Oneida Meranto, of Metropolitan State College in Denver, said affirmative action gives special opportunities to groups who have historically suffered at the hands of the U.S. government.
Stone said there is a discrepancy between blacks who achieve higher education and whites.
“The goal to achieve is getting numbers up to 12, 13 percent,” he said. “That’s the percent of African Americans in the overall population. Boston University and most other major universities are nowhere near that.”