The Destruction and Demise of DEI or Anti-Racism and Race Equity Department Programs.
In recent months, there has been a series of attacks on the experiences and history of African Americans and other people of Color in the public square. The first volley was shot a few years ago when the state of AZ created laws that educational institutions could not teach about Latino experiences of their harm in the Southwest because it makes white students feel guilty. This law stops public entities from requiring institutions to spend public funds on DEI programs or contract with companies that participate in or hire employees to work in DEI programs. They went on to include other racial groups’ realities within their white supremacy curriculum. Fast forward to 2024, the State of Florida recently thought their white supremacy governor and other political pundits codified those edits into law. There are at least seven states, including Oklahoma, Texas, Montana, Missouri, Kansas, and Iowa, and the list is growing who are pushing for the erasing of racial history facts and knowledge about the oppression of People of Color in the United States. These pundits used terms such as critical race theory. In Nebraska, the former governor told some high-level white racist state employees not to mention the term diversity. For those who are dumber than a rock, there were all kinds of DEI ideologies and dog-whistle guidelines issued in secret and white-only staff meetings.
The NYT outlines in (3–3–2024) the steps of how this transpired. Although, when one climbs into bed with pigs, one will not smell sweet or refreshing. The merits of their polemics are that white students should not feel guilty or ashamed of their racial group’s historically manifested destiny behaviors. Meanwhile, millions of acres in the U.S. were given to their forefathers just by being in the right (white) place and staking a claim to free land. At that period, many African Americans were locked in the stages of enslavement or post-enslavement Jim Crow laws. We can trace the current wealth of many white individuals, educational institutions and companies to the enslavement and Jim Crow apartheid laws and practices.
The bone of contention is that Black and Ethnic Studies departments have become cooperated into milk toast apologists for teaching or promoting brainwashing education. Granted, when one’s paycheck or livelihood is tied to lying for the oppressors or white supremacy, many sell-out Negroes and those bootlicking sidekicks fall for the same old racist draw play. These Klan-infested academic gangs up on the only African Americans or truth-tellers and white male them that if they dropped the terms racism, white fragility, microaggressions, and race equity, they could remain in their bobblehead positions. The curriculum of these so-called Black or Ethnic Studies programs reflects poor development or lack of community input for progress. Uncle Tom studies are invariably headed by racists or their Colored sidekicks who have had all semblance of racial pride removed from their brains. Many are teaching the textbook industries that are printed in Texas, and too often, they get free copies of books with lesson plans, PowerPoints, and exam questions on those white-washed Black history books. No independent thinkers are created by such memory or rote education pedagogy.
If we are working in most professions, the quality of its programs is measured by the success of its graduates. Airplane pilots, physicians, engineers, and others can quickly attain the success of its graduates by their incomes and practice within the community of their peers and customers. Meanwhile, thousands of students have majored in Black and Ethnic Studies, and most of them have gone on to be certified lapdogs for Negrophobic racist and apologist clowns. The governor of Florida did not come out overnight with his attacks, but he gradually tested the water by shooting messengers and Afrocentric scholars. Yet, when all of this was occurring, most in the white liberal academic community became bystanders and water carriers for Klan-infested confederacy-loving Christians.
In the City of Omaha and Douglas County governments, they hired unqualified Negroes or “colored” individuals passing as white to rubber stamp their apologist mentality and do-nothing behaviors. One only needs to examine their college or university curriculum to see they have no academic educator or public advocacy in racial topics of merit. If one asks about the emails, letters, and other correspondence under the Freedom of Information Act, it’s apparent there is little work to justify those positions. We can see from looking at the data that the daughters of the confederacy march parades or so-called diversity subterfuges who did not have real People of Color. This becomes a paradox because racist educational institutions are not teaching how the racial gaps have become so profound. Neither of the created positions has an empirical track record of accomplishments or changes in local racist attitudes or nepotism hiring practices.
If we are going to reverse the demise of African American Studies within secondary and post-secondary institutions, scholars must have partnerships with astute community people who are not afraid to speak the truth to power and against the white supremacy mentality. In cultural wars, measurable outputs and outcomes must have an empirical track record of success. We see that the Trumpism Clan is winning the cultural wars because we have third-string quarterbacks playing flag football instead of hitting hard at those Super Bowl gladiators who are setting the foundation for our demise. Look at any of the critical indicators of the quality of life, and we see we are looking at the fourth quarter of our existence. Homeownership, premature deaths, income disparities, and jail and prison time are in stark contrast with whites. Who can we blame but ourselves when we have clay feet in this oncoming storm?
A’Jamal-Rashad Byndon
