UA Officials Sensitive About Race Issues on Campus

It seems like the University of Arkansas has been doing some serious contortions lately in the name of ethnic diversity.

The UA big shots appear to be overly sensitive after firing basketball coach Nolan Richardson in April.

Since then, the UA hired a black basketball coach (Stan Heath), had a black commencement speaker (John Harold Johnson, whose company publishes Ebony and Jet magazines) and hosted the George Washington Carver Project “to help increase the racial diversity of the graduate and professional student body on the UA campus,” according to a press release.

According to the 2000 census, 88 percent of the residents of Washington County, where the UA’s main campus is located, are white. Only 2.2 percent are black, although blacks make up 15.7 percent of the state’s population.

With 980 black students enrolled last fall, African-Americans made up 6.2 percent of the UA’s student body.

The UA has historically had trouble recruiting black students and faculty because of the lack of ethnic diversity in Northwest Arkansas. But it has been trying to change that for years, not just since the disgruntled Richardson started bad-mouthing the administration in April.

After all, the UA has a good track record when it comes to diversity. In 1948, the UA became the first public university in the South to admit an African-American without litigation when Silas Hunt enrolled in law school here. And, within the past couple of years, the UA has hired four African-Americans — Johnetta Brazzell, Brian Hemphill, Arlene Cash and William Smith — in key administrative positions.

We can’t help wondering, though, if Hispanics are feeling left out. They constitute 8.2 percent of Washington County’s population and only 1.5 percent of the UA’s student body.