Problems of Adjustment of Negro Students at a White School

In June, 1940, I submitted a thesis entitled, A Study of the Problems of Adjustment of the Negro Students Attending the University of as partial fulfillment for the degree of Master of Arts in the Department of Sociology, University of Michigan. On the basis of that study this article has been prepared in an effort to indicate the problems faced by Negro students at a white school which are not faced in a Negro school and the possible effects these problems have upon the educational endeavors of the students concerned. It is hoped that the same will induce and inspire other persons to make an investigation or scientific testing of the problems and assertions herein indicated. In the original study the problem was to determine how adequately the problems of the University of Michigan Negro students might be interpreted in terms of their backgrounds without placing any significant emphasis upon a consideration or estimation of the influence of the specific race-minority factor upon the same. We have learned in America and elsewhere to make and distribute propaganda faster than we have learned to resist and evaluate it. Consequently, there is a fiction among many white people that the Negro generally is happy, has few problems, and is not too concerned about his condition. However, that is only a surface observation. The Negro keeps up a brave and happy front, but in many cases this front covers a broken and distressed spirit. The outward behavior of the Negro student is no index to his inner life. Therefore, it was thought that an attempt quantitatively to determine some of his major problems and general attitudes concerning his matriculation at the University of Michigan was justifiable and quite worthwhile. The source of information was taken from data obtained by means of a schedule administered to fifty (50) Negro students who represented nearly one-half of all the Negro students attending the University of Michigan in 1939-40, and about one per cent of the total student enrollment for the same period. The schedule was designed to provide certain salient facts about the students' backgrounds and their problems of adjustment in five major areas, economic, academic, social, religious, and health. For that study, problems of adjustment referred to those situations that arose as a result of those factors, material, cultural, or what not which thwarted to any degree the Negro student's fullest development of his personality or which contributed to his mental frustration; those factors, personal or otherwise, which denied or negated his opportunity to realize the maximum benefits from his matriculation at the University of Michigan, and those factors that operated to prohibit or hinder his liberal participation in all the facilities that his chosen

Mathematics education · White (mutation) · Psychology · Race, History, and American Society