The Educational Opportunity programs funded by the Federal and State Governments in response to widespread urban disorder reveal one clear element of built-in self-defeat. Educational programs were created or updated to deal with what whites believed to be the "authentic but forgotten blacks" whom educated blacks and black leadership had supposedly spurned and for whom the White Establishment had previously shown no care. These new black students came into largely alien environments with few role models of their own from whom strategies for survival could be learned. Blacks need not equal opportunity but equitable opportunity: Hundreds of thousands of blacks between the ages of 35 to 50, and even older, find themselves limited in the utilization of their talents in the quality of employment available simply because they do not have college degrees or credits. The younger, "low-achieving" blacks who were brought into higher education could have fared much better if they had had the encouragement, companionship, wisdom, and added collective strength as would be afforded by the presence of older blacks with them as peers and colleagues. This should be the goal of such programs when reorganized, now and for the future. (Author/JM)