Who’s running HBCUs?
14th November 2016 · 0 Comments
By Edmund W. Lewis
Editor
The very first thing I thought about after witnessing the Dillard University protest of former KKK grand wizard David Duke’s appearance on the historically Black campus was the 1988 Spike Lee film School Daze. Remember the scene where a hand-picked house Negro is shown warning the Mission College president what might happen to his job security if he failed to squash an effort by Black student leaders to get the school to divest its business interests in apartheid-era South Africa?
As Mission College’s president ponders the student protest, he is reminded by a Black lackey representing the white folks who run the HBCU behind the curtain like the Wiz that the wealthy and powerful members of the school’s board of trustees don’t like to be told what to do with their money.
“Old, old money,” the lackey adds with great emphasis.
While the scene was from a fictional film about a made-up college whose likeness to Morehouse College, Spike Lee’s alma mater, was said to be purely coincidental, the scene from the movie resonated with many and struck a raw nerve with some who have wondered for a long time how many historically Black institutions of higher learning are actually owned and operated by Black folks.
When it comes to African-centered educational institutions, Black ownership definitely matters. Black ownership means that the institution gets to set the tone and goals for its students with ultimate missions revolving around Black economic empowerment, autonomy, liberation and self-determination.
We need to know that the best and brightest young Black minds are being molded by administrators and educators who have their best interests and the interests of all people of African descent at heart. We need to know that the leaders of the historically Black institutions of higher learning are doing everything in their power to ensure that their student bodies are provided access to brilliant artists, activists, seers, doers and thinkers who challenge them to think critically and analytically about the plight of African people on the continent of Africa and throughout the Diaspora. We need to know that these institutions will not hesitate to help their young charges to build collaborations and connections with other young students and scholars of African descent around the world.
We need bold, courageous Black campus administrators whose integrity and vision compel them to move heaven and earth to help students at HBCUs achieve self-actualization.
The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. found this kind of inspirational leader as a 15-year-old undergrad at Morehouse College in the form of Dr. Benjamin E. Mays. Generations of Morehouse Men have spoken glowingly about the many life lessons they learned from this intellectual warrior.
The last thing we need is a Black administrator who is tossed a high-ranking campus position as a political plum in exchange for keeping Black students in line or controlling what they learn in the classroom. We definitely don’t need another HBCU president who runs his or her campus like their personal kingdom or spends a lot of time thinking that it’s all about him or her.
Nor do we need HBCU leaders who think it is okay to accept millions of dollars from the Koch brothers or administrators who think that Sean “P. Diddy” Combs is the commencement speaker our young people need to hear. Or That rapper Lil’ Wayne’s baby mama or a former porn starlet are at the top of the list of the kinds of thought-leaders and luminaries who are needed to challenge our young people to be all they can possibly be.
Back to Dillard University.
Shame on Dillard’s president for fashioning himself as someone who is uniquely connected to college-age Blacks right up until he makes some questionable moves and decisions and needs to avoid his young charges on Twitter and Facebook.
Shame on wealthy white families who earned a lot of money from African slave labor and used that money to open historically Black colleges and universities that refuse to allow people of African descent to fully develop their talents or empower themselves.
And shame on all of us for pretending for so long not to see that in the 21st century many of our children are being sent off to historically Black institutions of higher learning whose benefactors and administrators don’t have their best interests at heart.
All power to the people.
This article originally published in the November 14, 2016 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
