You cannot tell someone’s race By their alma mater

​The Trump Administration’s Justice Department has targeted my alma mater, William & Mary

I am in no way surprised.

In fact, after the Administration practically declared war on Harvard — something I wrote about last year — I fully expected William & Mary eventually to find itself on the hit list.

Well, here we are.

So, what is the accusation?

The Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division announced that it has opened a compliance review to determine whether William & Mary offers scholarships and other student benefits using racial criteria in violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act.

Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon put it this way: awarding scholarships or opportunities based on the “color of their skin” is illegal.

Okay.

Then let’s talk about what William & Mary is actually doing.

One of the programs specifically identified by DOJ is the Lemon Legal Scholars Program, which provides at least five full-tuition scholarships to admitted William & Mary Law students who are graduates of Historically Black Colleges and Universities.

And here is a fact that seems rather important:

Nowhere does the eligibility requirement say the recipient must be Black.

Not once.

William & Mary Law says the program is for HBCU graduates admitted to its J.D. program. Its published factors for consideration include an undergraduate degree from an HBCU, academic achievement and commitment to civic engagement.

Race is not listed as an eligibility requirement.

Apparently, we now need to explain that HBCU is not a race.

Historically Black Colleges and Universities are historically Black because they were created with a mission of educating Black Americans at a time when Black people were systematically denied access to many of this country’s colleges and universities.

But historically Black has never meant Black-only.

HBCUs have educated students of different races for generations.

In fact, federal education data show that 15% of HBCU students were already non-Black in 1976. Today, approximately 24% — nearly one in four — are non-Black.

And if you still think “HBCU graduate” is simply another way of saying “Black person,” allow me to introduce you to West Virginia State University.

West Virginia State is an HBCU founded in 1891.

According to the university’s own 2024–25 enrollment data:

67.6% of its students are White.

7.4% are Black.

Yes, you read that correctly.

An HBCU where more than two-thirds of the students are White and fewer than one in ten are Black.

So yes, a White student can attend an HBCU.

A White student can graduate from an HBCU.

And a White graduate of West Virginia State University admitted to William & Mary Law is an HBCU graduate just as surely as a Black graduate of Virginia State University is.

HBCU graduate is an educational credential. It is not a race.

Now let’s make this even more interesting.

Since the Justice Department wants to have a conversation about race and educational opportunity at William & Mary, perhaps we should look at William & Mary’s own numbers.

When I attended William & Mary, Black students represented only a tiny percentage of the student body.

In 1987, Black students were approximately 5% of William & Mary’s students.

In the early 1990s, the percentage remained in the single digits.

Today?

Black students still represent only about 5% of William & Mary’s undergraduate population.

I graduated more than three decades ago.

On my graduation day, there were five other Black undergraduate graduates with me.

More than thirty years later, Black representation at my alma mater is essentially in the same numerical neighborhood it was when I was a student.

Let that sink in.

More than three decades later.

About five Black students for every hundred undergraduates.

Meanwhile, the federal government is investigating whether giving five law-school scholarships to graduates of HBCUs — institutions where nearly one out of every four students nationally is not Black and where, in at least one case, nearly seven out of ten students are White — amounts to racial discrimination.

The irony would be amusing if the history weren’t so serious.

Because William & Mary knows its history.

The university acknowledges that it owned and exploited enslaved labor from its founding to the Civil War and failed to take a stand against segregation during the Jim Crow era.

The Lemon Project exists because William & Mary chose to confront that history.

The project bears the name of Lemon, a man enslaved by William & Mary.

And William & Mary Law explicitly says the Lemon Legal Scholars Program was designed to recognize the significance of HBCUs while recruiting their graduates to the J.D. program.

Think about that history for a moment.

For centuries, this country enacted laws, policies and practices specifically designed to deny Black Americans access to literacy, education and institutions of higher learning.

HBCUs were created in large part because Black Americans needed institutions willing to educate them when many existing institutions would not.

And now, generations later, the federal government is scrutinizing scholarships for graduates of those institutions — scholarships that do not require the recipients to be Black — as potentially discriminatory.

You really cannot make this up.

I also happen to be a William & Mary donor.

Every year, I contribute to my named scholarship fund intended to provide opportunities for first-generation students, with a preference for students from underserved communities.

That is intentional.

And no, that scholarship isn’t “for Black people” either.

First-generation is not a race.

Underserved is not a race.

And HBCU graduate is not a race.

Could an institution theoretically use some neutral-sounding criterion as a deliberate proxy for race?

Certainly.

Investigate that.

Examine the evidence.

Apply the law.

But that is very different from beginning with the assumption that graduating from an HBCU tells us the color of someone’s skin.

It does not.

HBCUs admit students of every race. In fact, the U.S. Department of Education explicitly states that HBCUs offer educational opportunities to students regardless of race.

Historically Black is a description of an institution’s history and mission.

It is not an admissions restriction.

And it certainly is not the race of its graduates.

West Virginia State University alone destroys that assumption.

And the Justice Department itself acknowledges that it has reached no conclusions about William & Mary. It has opened a compliance review.

So review it.

Ask the questions.

Look at the criteria.

Follow the evidence.

But if we are going to invoke the Civil Rights Act in the name of educational equality, perhaps we should be willing to examine the whole picture.

Because more than thirty years after I graduated, Black students still constitute only about 5% of William & Mary’s undergraduate population. 

About where we were when I was there.

Perhaps that deserves a serious conversation about educational access too.

Oh and by the way, 90% of the students who recieve scholarships or grants to attend the William & Mary law school are not Black. 

Frankly Speaking,
Adrienne P. Whitaker
@highlight