It’s absolutely mindboggling how the same universities that have ridden the backs of Black student-athletes for multiple decades to March Madness Final Fours and NCAA championships in football, basketball and other sports, are offering zero resistance to their states’ moves to end DEI and affirmative action policies.
These states, many of whom were card-carrying members of the confederacy and enforced a strict ban on Black students before the late 1960s and early 1970s, now stand on the verge of having campus populations that mirror the 1950s’ all-white demographic.
Texas is among five states that have recently passed legislation trashing DEI programs. At least 20 others are considering it. The University of Texas at Austin, the supposed bastion of liberalism in the Lone Star State, fired darn near 70 folk complying with Senate Bill 17, the new Texas law effectively banning DEI efforts at public colleges.
The University of Houston was one of the first colleges to shutter its Center for Diversity and Inclusion, bending to the will of that same state law.
But it’s not just in Texas that this is happening.
Duke University in North Carolina discontinued its full-ride scholarship for students of African descent and replaced it with a program without a scholarship that is open to all students. This move came after last year’s U.S. Supreme Court decision to strike down race-conscious college admissions practices.
The irony here is that the scholarship was named after Reginaldo Howard, Duke’s first Black student body president, and created as a pushback against the school’s long history of purposefully barring Black students from admission – a practice that was literally the reason for the need for DEI programs in the first place.
Further south, Alabama Governor Kay Ivey signed a bill banning DEI programs in publicly-funded colleges, making the former member of the confederacy just another Republican-led state to make such a move. Ivey gleefully complied with Alabama’s SB129 that not only banned institutions from maintaining DEI offices but also from teaching what the bill calls “divisive concepts” about race and identity – i.e. the truth about the history of white domestic terrorism, land theft, affirmative action for whites only, etc. and the truth about Pan-African excellence, accomplishment and never-ending resistance to oppression.
And there was no way Florida, the state known as America’s intellectually and morally retarded sociopath, was not going to join in on the “fun” of attacking Black people. The University of Florida closed its “Office of the Chief Diversity Officer, eliminated DEI positions and administrative appointments, halted DEI-focused contracts with outside vendors… and (and this is no small thing) reallocated approximately $5 million in funds once reserved for DEI expenses.
We would do well to recognize what these schools/states have in common – their legacy of sports domination, especially in football and basketball; a domination that has been dependent upon Black student-athletes. The same Black student-athletes who were denied access to those schools until the late 1960s and early 70s.
Without these Black bodies, none of those national championships won by UT, Alabama, Duke and Florida would reside in their hallowed halls.
Yet, these same schools that have created generational wealth for their institutions and their lilly-white head coaches, off the blood, sweat, tears, talent and intelligence of Black student-athletes – wealth that enriches the coffers of their state houses also – have moved to literally cut off access to those schools by Black students who aren’t athletes; Black students who aren’t on those plantations building “massa’s” empire.
And this same game of punking Black people and Black bodies will continue non-stop until we choose to end it ourselves.
But how do we do that?
Glad you asked. Here’s how: henceforth and forever more, all Black student-athletes, and all Black students period, will attend HBCUs.
Good suggestion. Heard it before. But do we have what we need to make it happen?
Another excellent query. The most important thing we need is the will, but for many, that depends on a viable way.
Here’s the way.
Needs
· Black millionaire/billionaire class, tax yourself and provide annual funding to the constellation of HBCUs
· HBCU alumni to step up giving
· All Black people, HBCU alums or not, invest in HBCUs (we’re all HBCU-adjacent in some way)
· Parents, allow your high school senior star athletes choose their college destination… as long as it’s an HBCU
· Current Black student-athletes at PWIs, hit the Wakanda transfer portal immediately
· Corporations that want and need Black dollars, invest in HBCUs with funding for programs, infrastructure, advertising, scholarship
· Lawmakers who want and need Black votes, stop the centuries of bull*****ing and fully fund HBCUs. Then hold yourselves accountable for those gazillions y’all willfully denied HBCUs, and add a punk-a$$ racist penalty tax to the overdue funds, plus interest.
· Industries that need talent, provide additional funding, set up job training and apprentice programs, with employee profit-sharing programs. We’re not trying to simply replace white capitalists with Black ones.
· Healthcare institutions, provide universal healthcare to staff, students, faculty, alumni, parents, siblings, aunties and play cousins of all affiliated with these HBCUs
Impact
· Corporate dollars will follow student-athletes
· Larger investment in HBCU infrastructure
· Black coaches (pro and college level) will view HBCUs as a destination rather than a stepping stone, thus improving the quality of coaching and quality of athletic play and competition
· Pay increases for HBCU faculty and staff
· Improved athletic competition which will create a movement back to when HBCUs had the best teams and players
· More investment of time, attention and resources from professional sports leagues
· Destruction of PWI sports monopoly
· More eyes on already-existing excellence at HBCUs (faculty, programs, environment, students, history, etc.)
· Whites step up efforts to officially classify Hispanics and AAPI folk as white (a move whites have consistently done throughout history when they felt their numbers and societal influence were in danger of waning). This move will initiate intense reviews of how Hispanics and AAPI folk have been treated by whites historically. Some will choose whiteness. Others will call for more collaborations with other POC and institutions (i.e. HBCUs) that support them.
· US government will threaten to cut funding for public HBCUs and move to destroy HBCU and Hispanic-Serving Institution status, but will eventually comply.
· Many HBCUs may move to become private institutions until state legislatures fully come around and get with this program.
· State legislatures will be pressured by alumni, corporations and others to end their attacks on programs and policies that are anti-Black, and to reverse decisions made to end programs and initiatives conducive to healthy Black life.
· Blackfolk realize we can do anything, and start doing anything, recognizing the truth of those words the Risen Christ shared with his followers: “What I can do, you can do, and even greater things shall you do.” We get busy doing greater things.
