“When I came to Nobles, they told me there was a freshman alcove, a sophomore alcove, a junior alcove, a senior alcove, and a black alcove.”

In 2003 I wrote an essay on the “Black Alcove” at Nobles in part because of a student comment about the institutional geography of the Nobles High School hallway that I had heard during a classroom discussion. That article, which NAIS was kind enough to publish in its inaugural issue of Independent Teacher, examined an ad hoc unofficial affinity group formed by Students of Color by themselves and for themselves.

Initially, administrators, teachers, and white students met the unforeseen arrival, public placement, and racial constituency with some confusion and some resistance. What was to be done? Was the Black Alcove exclusive? Proud? Defiant? What should white students think of it? How would it look to visitors (i.e. Admissions applicants and their families)? Could the alcove be somehow integrated before it became established as “reverse segregated” territory? Which adults in the community should approach the students in the Black Alcove to investigate its culture and its purpose?

There were many other questions, but few asked the question that mattered most: Why did students of color feel the need to create their own space to find solidarity, affirmation, and community?

Perhaps that question was not being asked, because Nobles was not fully prepared for the answer: the existence of the Black Alcove was a declaration that the Nobles institutional culture and majority white student body and faculty did not provide students of color with an experience of belonging and inclusion. The Black Alcove was indicative of an inevitable need for students of color attending a “private school” like Nobles to seek community and survival within their own minority group because the school’s majority population had somehow failed them.

In a postscript to that 2003 essay, I added the following:

“… The Black Alcove was dependent upon the students who maintained its existence and its presence. Many of the students who frequented the Black Alcove have now graduated, and the Black Alcove, along with what it represented, has left with them.”

That statement sounds mournful… and, at the time, it was. Thankfully however, I was wrong. I underestimated the continuing resolve of students of color at Nobles to provide what they needed for themselves, even when Nobles could not or would not. In the years since 2003, the Black Alcove has moved locations, expanded its constituency, and proven more inclusive and more resilient. In 2017, the Black Alcove is active, viable, and essential, although current students, of all races, may not refer to that alcove with an assigned nomenclature that implies a mutual rejection of the “other” community. Instead, the majority of white Nobles students and adults now pass the alcove with acceptance and acknowledgement, and maybe even respect for a space that is brimming with confidence, energy, laughter, pride, and self-determination.

Nobles, like most Independent schools, insists that it is “committed to diversity” and working towards a higher percentage of students of color and faculty of color. And this is more than a goal; it is a measurable historical fact. I once wrote that Nobles needed to achieve a student population of at least 33% students of color to claim any sort of real commitment to diversity. Well, for the 2017 – 2018 school year, we have arrived, to the credit of the policies, practices, and efforts of the Nobles Admissions Team and the commitment of the Head of School and the rest of the administration and faculty.

So mission accomplished? Not yet. Still not good enough.

Things are better at Nobles than they were fourteen years ago, and certainly better than they were twenty-five years ago when Nobles began to address its indifference to Diversity, including requesting a NAIS Multicultural Assessment Plan. Not surprisingly, the news of the “MAP” was mixed; yet Nobles continued to progress, and the Black Alcove and its membership have been essential to the improvement. However, a reexamination of the Black Alcove and Nobles’ commitment to diversity brings some new concerns and some new goals for us.

Moving forward in its commitment to Diversity, Nobles must strive for an even higher percentage of students of color as a permanent “critical mass” that would continue to influence school culture, curricula, admission, and hiring. Furthermore, Nobles must specifically and precisely break down racial, ethnic, and religious populations to create specific goal driven strategies for equitable access and better experience for all students of color. Additionally, precise public data will move Nobles from using an amorphous percentage of students of color as evidence of a well intended, although incomplete, commitment to diversity, i.e. 33% students of color is somehow automatically “better” than15 % or 20% or 25% students of color. Like all Independent Schools, Nobles knows these specific percentages, and should be prepared to examine them closely and use them in decision-making. Below are student percentages for Nobles for the 2016 – 2017 school year.

68.9 % white/Caucasian

9.6% Asian-American,

7.8% bi-racial/multi-racial

7.7 % African-American/Black

4.7% Hispanic or Latino,

1.1 Middle Eastern

0.2 American Indian/Native American

Such specificity not only provides a more accurate picture of student diversity for student applicants and potential faculty and staff to consider, it also provides data and incentives for Nobles to work on in its immediate six year) future as well as its long term impact and legacy.

But there is a “rub.” Nobles faces significant difficulty attracting and matriculating African American young men, and while Nobles is not alone amongst Independent Schools in facing this problem, we must confront some troublesome data tucked within our overall students of color percentage.

On June 2, 2017, 129 students graduated from Nobles, and of those, African American males made up only 5% of the class or approximately 10% of the 67 senior boys. Tangentially, our faculty has grown dramatically since I arrived at Nobles, and there are many more folks of color on the faculty, yet there are only a handful of Black adults who are full time classroom teachers.

Colleagues at Nobles, as well as teachers at other Independent Schools, are also keenly aware of the diminishing numbers of African American boys in the students of color percentages at co-ed Independent schools in the Boston area. For many of us, there is an uncomfortable irony in this dynamic when we consider that African American young men were amongst the first to forge into “private school” populations and cultures in the 60’s and 70’s and to fight the institutional prejudice and self congratulatory Noblesse Oblige that accompanied their arrival at Nobles and other schools. Interestingly, and not surprisingly, the low percentage of Black young men at Nobles is also of concern to Nobles Black alumni, many of whom graduated from an earlier time when diversity, inclusion, and outreach seemed dependent upon, and more attentive to, the Black communities of Boston and Cambridge. The lower percentage of African American male students may come from a calculated grouping of all students of color to arrive at a “better” number, while close attention to specific racial/ethnic groups is considered a secondary concern.

However, there may also be a less attractive and less acceptable explanation for the static, if not diminishing, percentage of Black students while the percentage of Asian American students (including children from the Indian sub-continent) has surpassed all other minority groups. Perhaps there is a Model Minority hangover at play. Whether it is unconscious or quietly acknowledged, stereotypical assumptions of compliant assimilation, the relationship of expectation and motivation, and stereotypes regarding academics and athletics may be at work at Nobles and other schools.

To be clear, this observation is not presented to create competition between the racial groups that make up the various percentages of diversity at Nobles, far from it. Instead, it is a suggestion that an institutional blindness regarding race creates unintentional policy and practice that is stereotypical and prejudicial to both African American and Asian American students.

To truly embrace our “commitment to diversity,” and therefore to be relevant in the future landscape of Boston area education, it is time to for Nobles to change desired percentages and stated goals for student (and faculty) diversity. The next step at Nobles should be to create a student body in which the percentage of students of color would rise above 50%. In doing so, Nobles would construct a new diversity “pie chart” and move beyond previous acceptable notions that “diversity” can be achieved by a multiracial 25% – 35% “slice” cut from a ostensibly white pie. Instead Nobles would create an approximate 50% + students of color population. In such a school community Asian Americans, Latinos, Bi-Racial students, Native Americans, and African Americans would create a collective “critical mass” that would mathematically and inarguably make Nobles diverse. Additionally, the percentages of Asian American and Hispanic and African American students could be raised to individual levels that would truly create a sense of community for each group within the overall students of color population. Such a shift to a genuine and full investment in diversity would make Nobles a demonstrably more impactful and important school.

There would also be other significant positive changes.

Higher percentages of all students of color groups would be attractive to families in the admission process (white families included) as visible proof that policies and practices promoting diversity already exist. No doubt ethnic and religious diversity of students would likewise flourish as Nobles moves beyond a predominantly white Judeo-Christian majority. The Nobles curricula would also be reexamined in relation to a more diverse community; Math and Science would be newly assessed for multicultural relevance as well as the authors, texts, and events taught in English and History courses.

Ultimately, in this new realized standard of Nobles diversity, students and teachers would learn and teach at a school where the Black Alcove would be an honored part of Nobles history as well as an actual space that would be too small to hold the students of all races and cultures who would want to stop by to sit, to study, to converse, to laugh, and to contribute in a truly diverse community.

The original essay, Noble and Greenough’s “Black Alcove” can be found at:

http://www.nais.org/Magazines-Newsletters/ITMagazine/Pages/Noble-and-Greenough’s-Black-Alcove.aspx