1) Write a ten-sentence summary of Richards’ essay. Be sure to include at least 3 ideas you think are important in the essay.

2) Richards writes that the public airing of a professor’s comments about black students at Colgate incensed these students. Interestingly, black students seemed more upset about “the implication that their teachers saw them as academically inferior” than about the grade inflation (633). Why do you think the students were more upset about the “academic inferiority” charge?

3) What connections can you see between what Tan writes about Asian-American students in school and Professor Shain’s claim that “minority students were often seduced into unchallenging courses where liberal professors […] gave them inflated grades” (Richards 633)?

4) “Public discussion focuses on multiculturalism and diversity – not the problem of inadequate black intellectual achievement at a prestigious academic institution” (Richards 634). What does Richards mean here? What might it look like to focus on the problem of black intellectual achievement?

5) Find two passages in Baldwin that you think speak to some of the issues in Richards’ essay. Quote them, explain them, and indicate how they speak to Richards’ ideas.

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