Kathleen
McElroy – a Black woman, a preeminent
professor and journalist - was hired to revive the journalism
program at Texas A&M University. Then came
the backlash from white
conservatives within the system who took issue with her work at the
New York Times and her focus on diversity and
inclusion in newsrooms. Texas A&M then
backtracked and watered down its offer, which
McElroy rejected. This is but the latest
example of Black educators under attack —
scrutinized, marginalized and scapegoated by
white supremacists who would remove Black
people from education.
On Thursday, Texas A&M reached
a $1
million settlement with McElroy. This, after an internal
investigation found that conservative university
officials sabotaged her hiring — part of an
effort to promote “conservative values” in the
A&M journalism program and elsewhere in
the university, and “control the liberal
nature that those professors brought to
campus.”
What happened to McElroy is nothing new
and reflects a widespread pattern of attacks
on Black educators. As Michael
Harriot painstakingly chronicled in his
four-part series in theGrio, South Carolina —
once a Black-controlled state during
Reconstruction — is ground zero in the attack
against Black educators and culturally
responsive education. In the Palmetto State,
Moms for Liberty is taking out Black
superintendents in majority Black school
districts in the name of preserving whiteness.
Whether in college or on the K-12 level, the ongoing purge
of Black teachers, professors, educators,
administrators and Black studies will have a
devastating impact not just on Black students
but on all students, society in general and
the educational system as a whole. When we
hide the crimes of history and silence the
truth-tellers, we empower and embolden repeat
offenders.
A tenured professor at the University of
Texas at Austin and a former director of its
journalism school, McElroy was recruited to
lead the journalism
program at her alma mater, which had been
dissolved in 2004.
What began as an offer for tenure and a
five-year contract to lead the program — which
she signed, pending approval from the Texas
A&M Board of Regents — was whittled down
to a five-year contract with no tenure and
finally a one-year contract as a professor
with no tenure and three years as director,
with Texas A&M being able to fire her at
will. Amid a “DEI
hysteria” that led to her
appointment stalling, McElroy rejected the
offer.
Texas A&M President Kathy
Banks, who announced her immediate
retirement in light of the matter, said she
was unaware of the contract changes leading to
the hiring mishap. However, Banks
reportedly interfered with McElroy’s hiring process, and
race played a role in the watering down of the
professor’s contract, according to Hart
Blanton, head of Texas A&M’s department of
communications and journalism, who was
involved in recruiting McElroy.
“Texas A&M is going to remain a
second-rate institution and we will never be a
top-tier institution if we allow individuals
to accept the reality that we cannot recruit
diverse people,” said veteran journalist Roland
Martin, a Texas A&M alum at the Texas
A&M Black Former Student Network Virtual Town Hall Meeting.
Meanwhile, the Texas
A&M Faculty Senate condemned the school administration
for its role in the botched hiring process.
The faculty group said in a letter that it
“decries the appearance of outside influence
in the hiring and promotion of faculty,” which
is detrimental to “the common goal of
preserving Texas A&M University as a
premier institution with an outstanding
reputation,” as the Texas Tribune
reported.
Professors and advocates of free speech
alike noted that vocal
right-wing pressure groups were speaking out against the
hiring of McElroy.
A conservative lobbying group of Texas
A&M alums also opposed the hiring of
McElroy and said “she was not a good fit
for this role,” and reportedly had access and complained
to university officials. This group, the
Rudder Association, was formed during the George Floyd Black
Lives Matter protests of 2020 to protect the
campus statue of Lawrence Sullivan “Sully”
Ross, former Texas A&M president and Texas
governor, and confederate general who was
praised as “the gallant Texas
negro killer,” Ross was responsible for ordering
the mass murder of Black Union soldiers who
had surrendered outside Yazoo City,
Mississippi on March 5, 1864.
The war on Black scholars
What happened to McElroy in Texas is but the latest
example of a full-scale war on Black educators
and Black education across the country.
Ta-Nehisi
Coates recently crashed a South Carolina
school board meeting on the banning of his
2015 autobiography “Between the World and Me,”
which deals with racism and being Black in
America. Coates lent support to a teacher who
came under fire for teaching his book.
Texas and other jurisdictions have banned
the teaching of Nikole Hannah-Jones’ 1619
Project. Hannah-Jones was denied tenure at the University
of North Carolina-Chapel Hill — unlike her white
predecessors in that position — because of white backlash over
the 1619 Project. She then rejected their
subsequent tenure offer and headed to Howard
University. Walter
Hussman, a UNC graduate who donated $25 million
to the journalism school that now bears his
name, told university officials he opposed
Hannah-Jones.
And Black scholars face punishment from
universities for speaking out on the racial
issues of the day. For example, when Queen
Elizabeth died — and Black, Indigenous and
Irish Twitter took the opportunity to reflect
on the genocidal legacy of British colonialism
and imperialism — Carnegie Mellon linguistics
researcher Uju
Anya showed no mercy for the queen on
social media and wished her an excruciating
death. After
billionaire Amazon founder Jeff Bezos
complained about the tweet, Carnegie Mellon responded by tweeting “We do not condone the
offensive and objectionable messages posted by
Uju Anya…Free expression is core to the
mission of higher education, however, the
views she shared absolutely do not represent
the values of the institution, nor the
standards of discourse we seek to foster.”
When slavery benefited the enslaved
Like Texas, Florida is waging an assault
on Blackness, history and academic freedom.
The Florida Board of Education has approved
new whitewashed standards to teach middle
school students how
enslaved Black people “developed skills which, in some
instances, could be applied for their personal
benefit.” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis managed to
both distance himself from the new curriculum
standards and
support them, claiming “I wasn’t involved,” but
adding, “They’re probably going to show that
some of the folks that eventually parlayed,
you know, being a blacksmith into doing things
later in life. But the reality is, all of that
is rooted in whatever is factual.”
Further, Gov. DeSantis is dismantling New
College — a small public liberal arts college
and a self-described “college of free
thinkers” with a substantial LGBTQ population
— and transforming it into a dystopian white
nationalist hellscape. Claiming that New
College indoctrinates its students with
leftist ideology, DeSantis has purged
administrators and faculty and installed
anti-critical race theory henchman and water
carrier for white supremacy Christopher
Rufo as a board member. Florida has
become toxic
ground for Black professors, and other
faculty who are either fleeing the state or
refusing to come to a place where Blackness
and diversity, equity and inclusion
(DEI) are under siege.
A national crisis of Black professors
This purging of Black professors and
Black studies is doing real damage. Along with
these concerted efforts to wipe Blackness out
of education, there are examples of “racism without
racists” — where racism most certainly
shapes the structures of these predominantly
white and male educational institutions even
as individuals in these institutions may not
consider themselves racist.
A mere 6%
of college faculty in the U.S. are Black
professors. The low numbers of Black faculty amount
to a “national crisis” in higher education, reflecting a
widespread belief among white academia that
Black profs are too risky and not a “good
fit.” It gives the impression that some
colleges and universities are more
reluctant to hire Black faculty than admit Black students.
Similarly, Black
teachers and administrators on the K-12 level are leaving the
profession due to burnout and heavy workloads,
lack of support, COVID and angry parents and
politicians.
U.S. public school teachers are far
less diverse than their students. In recent
years, nearly 80% of teachers were white, even
as white children were a minority of students.
Teachers of color are 20%
of public school teachers, with 7% as Black teachers. In the
2020-2021 school year, fewer than 2% of
teachers were Black
men, while white women accounted for
61%.
Yet, the benefits of having Black
educators are clear. Black professors and
other faculty of color are crucial in
providing students with intercultural
competence, which is a person’s ability to function
and communicate well across different
cultures, and is critical to the development
of college students in navigating a
multiracial and multicultural world.
Hiring more Black teachers improves
educational outcomes for Black students. Young children
develop better
problem-solving and learning skills when taught by teachers of the same
ethnicity, with the most dramatic effects for
Black and Latinx children. More Black
male teachers are needed to serve as role models
and mentors for Black young people. It is
important for Black children and young people
to see their future selves reflected at the
front of the classroom — Black teachers as
living examples of their future
potential.
Black teachers go about the world with their own swagger
and energy, their own perspective and
worldview that society will not find
elsewhere. How dare we deny young minds and
future leaders of this energy, other than to
disempower them and rob them of the tools for
their success? White supremacy would say
that’s the whole point, which also explains
the war on Black studies.
What we are witnessing with the DEI
hysteria in Florida, in Texas and elsewhere is
fascism with American Jim Crow sensibilities,
or what Toni
Morrison called “the forces interested in
fascist solutions to national problems.” In
1995 at Howard University, Morrison said
“Racism may wear a new dress, buy a new pair
of boots, but neither it nor its succubus twin
fascism is new or can make anything new. It
can only reproduce the environment that
supports its own health: fear, denial and an
atmosphere in which its victims have lost the
will to fight.”
Erase the memory of our past and those who teach it, and
you deprive us of our power and a better
future. And without the knowledge of past
injustices, we allow these injustices to
return, as in right now. This is why the
battle for Black educators and Black education
is so important.
This commentary is also posted on TheGrio.com.
