Data on masters degree recipients

So, in searching out data for the gender/class/racial demographics of the MFA graduate, I've come across a little bit of data relating to race, not about the MFA specifically, but about the English major in general, of which the MFA comprises some part.

First, racial demographics of the USA, according to the US census. Here's the breakdown for 2008:

White----79.8%
Black----12.8%
Hispanic----15.4%
Asian----4.5%
Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander----0.2%

It's important to note that persons who responded "Hispanic" could also report other categories, which I don't think is the case for the data that follows.

As far as I can tell, what we would hope from a progressive society is, at the very least, that the number of masters degree recipients by race would be roughly proportionate to the racial demographics of the nation. And this is pretty much what we get when we consider all masters degrees received between 2006 and 2007 after subtracting non-resident aliens from the total population measured:

White----74%
Black----11.6%
Hispanic----6%
Asian+pac islander----6.7%

White and black numbers suffer a slight decrease, apparently due to the disproportionately large number of Asian and Pacific Islander recipients. It is not clear whether the number for Hispanic recipients represents a drop from the proportion of the total population since these respondents, I believe, could not double report ethnicity.

So, more or less, this is good news for American education in general. Unless I'm reading the numbers wrong.

On the other hand, things are far bleaker when one turns to the number of recipients of masters degrees in English by race over the same period, again taking non-resident aliens out of the picture in order to get a more accurate representation of domestic racial demographics:

White----85%
Black----5%
Hispanic----4%
Asian+Pac Islander----3.7%

What can we call this but a failure on the part of American English departments? Racist, since it represents an institutional inequality based on race.

What this means for MFA programs is that, assuming the numbers in MFA programs are roughly equivalent to the numbers for the English department at large, in their role as sponsors of creative writing literacy, creative writing programs in the United States are favored white students and disfavored students of any other ethnicity.

Who gets to be a writer in America? Well, it helps if you're white.