Integrate or Die?

In yet another display of evidence that corroborates Tom Sowell's theory that Affirmative Action produces perverse incentives that harm American Blacks, Texas Southern University can't even give away all its free books and remedial classes to incoming freshmen:

Of the students who received diplomas last May, only 6 percent had earned their degree in the normal four years, and only 21 percent in six years. Those numbers, incredibly, reflected improvement from prior rates.

....Nationally, the historically black colleges and universities have a six-year graduation rate of 38 percent... roughly 40 percentage points lower than for blacks at elite schools.

.... With the desegregation of colleges and universities in the South and the increased recruiting of black students by top universities, what W. E. B. DuBois famously called the "talented tenth" no longer heads to places like Texas Southern by default. In fact, the top 10 percent of graduates from any Texas high school are guaranteed admission to the state university system.

As a result, the students who come to Texas Southern arrive less prepared and sometimes less committed than their forebears. Roughly one-third of them require remedial classes before they can enter college-level courses. More than 100 of the available spaces in the Summer Academy went unclaimed, even though the program charges no tuition and provides a stipend for books that is worth several hundred dollars.

WHY don't they attend? That's the question of the decade," said Dr. Jacqueline Fleming, the director of Texas Southern's academic center. "The single biggest factor is a lack of motivation. Their world is BET, ghetto rap, going to school dressed like you're going to a club. They're here because their grandmother said to be here, or because their parole officer said it was this or jail."