Randomly browsing any number of Web sites for independent schools nationwide, from California and Oregon to New York and New Hampshire, will reveal more than a few black and brown faces.

The Catlin Gabel Web site shows an African-American girl with braces and braids, smiling with her eyes closed, while lying in a hammock.

The Urban School of San Francisco has a photo on its Internet site in which two black upper schoolers--one male, the other female--sit in a sunlit corridor reviewing notes and typing on a laptop, respectively.

The Web portal for The College Preparatory School in Oakland, California, features an outdoor shot of a young African-American, fitted in a climber’s helmet and girded with rappelling ropes, reaching for the rungs of a ladder.

A black kindergartner donning a hooded sweatshirt and a New York Yankees baseball cap gazes (understandingly?) at a smaller classmate who is white, on a Germantown Friends School’s Web page.

Google “Dalton School,” click on the first result, and one of the photos that alternately appears is of a group of black and Latino boys pop-locking on a back-lit stage, a lone white break dancer, with bent limbs, in the foreground.

On the “Welcome” page for Georgetown Day School’s admission office, a matronly African-American woman extends her hand to greet a small white girl bundled in winter gear.

Marin Country Day School displays an HTML page entitled “Welcome from the Head,” which features two prepubescents, a black boy and a white girl, standing closely side by side and smiling at the camera.

On the Web site for Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire, a young African-American man strides (purposefully?) betwixt two fellow Exonians (both of whom are white).

The cyber-door for Choate Rosemary Hall presents a photo in which a couple of Asian-American coeds peer into microscopes, while a young black man (thoughtfully?) directs his attention toward the front of class.

And at the Julia Morgan School for Girls in Oakland, an African-American girl and her Latina-American classmate (carefully?) examine a microscope slide in biology class.

Judging from these images of cultural diversity or inclusivity, one would think that independent schools abounded with blacks and other students of color.  The truth is that 3 out of every 4 students in these schools are white.

According to the National Association of Independent Schools, enrollment figures for day schools in 2009-2010 revealed that 74.3 percent of independent school students are Caucasian-American; 7.5 percent, Asian-American; 6.0 percent, African-American; 3.8 percent Latino-American; 5.4 percent, multiracial; 1.5 percent, Middle Eastern; 1.2 percent, international; and 0.3 percent, Native American.

Today, diversity is not much more than a marketing device for independent schools.  Regardless of the actual number of non-white students (particularly blacks and Latinos) and irrespective of their actual status in these schools--whether or not they are smoothly integrated into the school fabric--the advertising of diversity, inclusivity, and multiculturalism has become the status quo, an article of independent school etiquette, akin to wearing shoes in public or covering the mouth when coughing.

Plastering the faces of gleeful youngsters of color on school Web sites and brochures is to a considerable degree a voguish bauble, cultural glitter, a sales pitch to “liberal” parents (who are really customers) that “our school is up-to-date,” that “our school community tolerates others, practices political correctness, and does not burn crosses on people’s lawns.”

Notwithstanding these noble intentions, there are students of color attending independent schools who feel “invisible,” who feel as if what they have “to say in class is not as valuable as what other kids have to say,” explained Dr. Susan Wilkens, a clinical psychologist at Children’s Hospital & Research Center (Oakland, California) in an August 2009 interview.

Dr. Wilkens says that some students of color feel “racially valued,” but not socially valued.  In other words, these students see their pictures on their school’s Web site or in a brochure, yet feel unappreciated as a human being, as a student qua student.

In such instances, independent schools are capitalizing on racial or ethnic physiognomies to increase their prestige.  The irony is that physiognomy or physiognomonics--judging outward appearance as an index to inward quality or character--is not only an unreliable art, but also a debunked practice, which last fell into disfavor at the turn of the 20th century.

Youth of color who attend independent schools, Dr. Wilkens concluded, face a “unique struggle that children from the majority culture don’t face.”  In one study cited by Dr. Wilkens, 3 out of 4 students of color in independent schools “reported that they had to make special efforts to fit in, in their school communities.”  The daily toll of facing explicit and implicit messages that may be racist or that may devalue or marginalize these students, according to Wilkens, results in “lasting pain and a hurtful impact.”

Of course, diversity entails so much more than cameos of “colored” children decorating brochures and Web pages of expensive private schools.  While the people who run the latter make conspicuous efforts to pay lip service to cultural diversity or inclusivity in terms of advertisements, it is far less clear what sort of practical commitments these same folks have made in terms of actually cultivating and sustaining diversity at their respective institutions.

At least one institution--San Francisco Day School--has adopted diversity as one of its core values, with the word itself appearing on its official emblem, but the leaders of the school have not the vaguest idea how much “diversity” is even desirable for them.  When this writer inquired of the staff about its diversity goals at a Diversity Forum held on August 18, 2009, everyone in the room responded with silence.

The meaningful or authentic mark of cultural inclusivity is not the array of non-white countenances to be seen on Internet portals and on the covers of glossy brochures, but the extent to which non-white students no longer have to make “special efforts” to “fit in,” or the extent to which the latter are valued, not as exotic physiognomies in a wonder cabinet, but simply as children of God.