Anti-Black bills attack education, DEI. Is it time for us to leave?
Written by Black Hot Fire Network on January 10, 2024
Ricky L. Jones
Let’s begin with true statements many will deny. Black men, women and children have always and are still suffering racial attacks on their bodies, minds, aspirations and possibilities simply because they are Black. These assaults prove many Americans don’t really believe in the country’s stated core principles of equality, freedom, justice and liberty for all. No end to this hostility is in sight.
It must be understood that ongoing so-called “initiatives” targeting “diversity” from education to law firms to corporations across the country aren’t really about BLM (Black Lives Matter), DEI (Diversity Equity and Inclusion), CRT (Critical Race Theory) or any other acronym. Modern persecutors of Black people only use those things as distractions. They are really motivated by anti-Blackness and the desire to keep the descendants of American slaves in their place. Sadly, they are winning.
Kentucky joins other states in anti-Black legislation
Ron DeSantis has all but dismantled substantive education about Black people in Florida. Nikki Haley recently refused to admit the American Civil War was about slavery. Both are presidential candidates who trail Donald Trump, a man whose anti-Black racism is legendary. Despite that, many people want to return him to the White House. What does that say about the country?
Will any schools fight back this time?How Berea College once fought racial injustice and lost.
In Texas, Senate Bill 17 has “effectively outlaw[ed] diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) offices at public universities.” In Wisconsin, “the Legislature’s budget committee voted in June to eliminate 188 diversity, equity and inclusion positions within the university system and slash UW’s (University of Wisconsin’s) budget by $32 million, which is the amount Republicans estimated would be spent on so-called DEI programs over the next two years.”
In Kentucky, now the eighth whitest state in the country, the legislature is pushing Senate Bills 6 and SB 93, the latest in a line of hostile proposals that scrutinize or even outlaw diversity efforts in education from kindergarten to college. All this in a state that already has very little diversity, no Black power, and minimal Black resistance to white domination. Anti-affirmative action champion Edward Blum and his deceptively named organization, Students for Fair Admissions, are now suing West Point (and, ostensibly, other service academies), arguing the schools (which are already mostly white) discriminate against white students in admissions. The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed with Blum before. It may do so again.
These people clearly don’t want Black children in their schools. Neither do they want anything taught about Black people to students, Black, white or other.
Black professionals are constantly under siege
Meanwhile, attacks on the Black vote, any possibility of Black political power or self-determination through myriad measures are ongoing nationwide. Black professionals are constantly under siege. It doesn’t matter if they are corporate executives, university presidents, college basketball coaches or the President of the United States, many white people feel Black people are always unqualified — affirmative action, DEI hires who do not deserve their jobs. In their minds, Black people are seemingly only suited to serve and entertain, never to lead. Contrarily, white people never benefit from their whiteness. They always rise to their positions because of “merit,” no matter how mediocre or even inept they are in reality.
Black Americans who question these contradictions are labeled troublemakers, excuse-makers or the “true racists.” They often endure gaslighting and are told, “If you hate it here so much, leave!” I now ask seriously and soberly, is it time to take that advice?
Quoting my book on racial justiceis getting Christian college professors fired
Even Abraham Lincoln thought integration was wrongheaded. He believed Black and white people would never live together peacefully in America on equal socio-political footing. In that respect, he agreed with Marcus Garvey and other Black fundamental nationalists who felt Black people should leave the country. Indeed, some are doing so. Others have argued America should give Black people land to, in effect, establish their own country within this country.
More recently, New York Times columnist and author Charles Blow posed an interesting proposition that Black people should untether themselves from seemingly indestructible American white supremacy by migrating back to Southern states that already have significant Black populations. Blow opines that by doing so they can seize political power and build lives free of daily white domination while remaining a part of the United States. It’s a fascinating argument.
Maybe it really is time for Black people to leave
No matter which option you choose, it’s a fact that many Black people are exhausted from constantly defending themselves and explaining how white supremacy daily stresses and damages them.
Maybe Charles Blow and others are right and it’s time to give up on the failed integration experiment. Maybe it’s time for Black people to leave places like Florida, Texas, Wisconsin, Kentucky and others. Maybe we should abandon such racial war zones, let our white brothers and sisters have their white ethno-states in peace, and stop humiliating ourselves by begging them to treat us and our children humanely and fairly in these godforsaken places. Maybe it’s time we listen to that age-old white advice to “love it (as it is) or leave it.”
To be sure, it’s impossible for any sane Black person to “love” these places as they are. So, maybe it’s time we start having serious conversations about developing strategies to “leave” them. Maybe that would make everybody happier.
What do you think?
Dr. Ricky L. Jones is the Baldwin-King Scholar-in-Residence at the Christina Lee Brown Envirome Institute and Professor of Pan-African Studies, University of Louisville. His column appears bi-weekly in the Courier-Journal. Follow him on Threads, Facebook, X, and LinkedIn.
