Many decades ago, the Swedish economist Gunnar Myrdal and his American associates jolted the conscience of Americans with a book titled An American Dilemma (Myrdal, 1944). Myrdal pointed out the discrepancy between the American creed of equality and the continuing brutal and unequal treatment of blacks in our midst. Since that time, significant changes have taken place both in the law of the country and in the behavior of its people. Yet, even the most casual observer finds persistent patterns of discrimination, including different rates of employment for blacks and whites, segregation in housing, and social separation. We might expect that things would be better in today's colleges and universities, since these institutions have often been in the vanguard of social progress. Professors and students alike are dedicated not just to the pursuit of truth but to the ideal of reflective intelligence and to the task of furthering mutual understanding. The facts of university life, however, show fairly widespread racial abuse (DeCoster and Mable, 19Sl), continuing underrepresentation of blacks on the faculty, social separation of black and white students, and limited help for black students in coping with the effects of discriminatory prior schooling.