Though the dust has seemingly settled and the little media talk that there was has died down regarding the hostile corporate takeover of Tennessee State Univeristy, known around these Houston parts as the “other” TSU, the implications of that gangster move are alive and well.
Why did I call Tennessee’s Republican governor Bill Lee’s signing of a bill into law that nearly a month ago removed the entire Board of Trustees at Tennessee State a hostile corporate takeover?
Because the GOP is a white nationalist conglomerate with multinational, global ties to the hyper-wealthy “elite;” the 1% of the 1%. Those are the “dark money” funders behind every anti-Black candidate, initiative, program, movement, etc. over the past few decades.
They are the funders behind Project 2025, the GOP’s out-in-the-open effort to overthrow democracy and install a dictator so strapped for cash and bereft of any semblance of shame or intellect or human decency or morals and ethics that he would gladly bend over backwards, or merely bend over, so this big money class can do their anti-Black machinations through him.
One of the areas these white nationalists seek to dominate is the educational space, which they believe has been under the control of heathen liberals. They want to white-wash education from K-college of any and all vestiges of white history (i.e. enslavement of Africans, Japanese internment, mass lynchings of Mexican immigrants, near-total destructive of indigenous Americans, medical apartheid, etc.).
Controlling what’s taught in K-12 classrooms is critical. But the GOP’s real target is colleges and universities – those places where many of these racists’ own children matriculate and then get slapped in the face with the crimes their parents, grandparents, and ancestors have perpetrated upon all of humanity. Over the years, GOP, or rather unabashed white nationalists, have seen a troubling rise in the number of their spawn who actually began pushing back on their own ancestors’ heritage and ill-gotten gains; the tipping point coming during the Summer of George Floyd, where their children openly rejected their legacy created by white privilege, and joined calls made by Blackfolk and others for an overhaul of the entire system.
Seeing their white babies recognizing the humanity of Black and Brown people was a bridge too far. And it didn’t help matters that the nation’s demograaphics is getting darker, younger and more progressive every second of every day. This called for immediate action.
The active attempts to fire the heads of Ivy League schools were no happenstance. The voucher movement and the local school board takeovers didn’t come out of nowhere. The demonization of critical race theory, the white-ification of the term “woke,” the destruction of DEI, and exorcism of affirmative action have all been part of the same scheme to maintain the myth of white supremacy and hold onto the very real power that myth has afforded its wealthier adherents.
Destroying DEI on white campuses and in all corporations was a huge piece of this jigsaw puzzle. But that wouldn’t be enough, especially when those pesky HBCUs produce the lion’s share of Black… well, everything (lawyers, doctors, pharmacists, PH.Ds, etc.).
These white domestic terrorists, who by light of day use policies and laws as their weapons, decided to stop half-assing their HBCU takeover attempts, Borg-ing them into state systems, and simply take them over where they stand. Hello “other” TSU.
You’d think the fact that these GOP state lawmakers have illegally under-funded HBCUs from jump and for generations to the tune of “lost” millions, if not billions, would be enough. But I guess they figured, what’s stopping us from removing whole HBCU boards and replacing them with those who will allow us to set the entire agenda on those campuses?
Apparently, nothing.
Tennessee’s Lee wasted no time replacing now-former board members with his people.
Weeks have gone by since this story blipped on social media for a hot second, then disappeared.
But don’t get it twisted. Not everyone was silent. Those who raised voices of protest are seeing what I see – a Tennessee gameplan that’s about to be used from sea to shining sea.
On an edition of “Roland Martin Unfiltered” that aired just as news of Lee’s gangster move broke, the host said, “When I talked about how these Republicans roll, they do things in one state and then they replicate. It is not scaring folks to say, ‘Other HBCUs, be leery. You may be next.’”
And Martin’s guests agreed.
“Something like this, once you’ve seen it in one state you are bound to see it again and again.,” said Lauren Victoria Burke, president Black Press USA. “[GOP state lawmakers] are on a kick to set back the clock when it comes to race. And Donald Trump is quarterback of that. And some of the things we thought unthinkable to be wound back are getting wound back.”
Sirius XM’s Reecie Colbert, host of the powerful show that bears her name, lamented the lack of outrages from the Black community.
“The reality is that we are not realizing that these things are not happening in a silo. These are opening salvo after opening salvo of what the Republican Party, as Lauren has said, is organized in dismantling our civil rights and our institutions because they understand that when they dismantle our institutions, they’re also dismantling pipelines,” she said.
Howard University professor and all-around champion for the pan-African world, Dr. Greg Carr had for word for Black legacy organizations regarding their very loud silence on Tennessee State.
“NAACP, listen to me very carefully at this point. Brother Derrick Johnson, I’m calling you by name, brother. You, sir, and the organization you head, you all at this point, as it relates to Tennessee State, are worthless… Brother Marc Morial, it’s beautiful to talk about the ‘State of Black America’ [but] where is the Urban League?” asked Carr, a Tennessee State alum.
During a Tennessee event protesting Lee’s move, attended by several national activists, Shaun Wimberly Jr., a former student trustee for Tennessee State’s board said the sad state of that school’s overtaken board was a reflection of our current Black community.
“The state that our university is in right now is simply a product of us not thinking as strategically, moving as quickly or being as unified as our ancestors have been in the past. We’ve allowed others to determine our path and we’ve almost forgotten that HBCUs are our home here in America,” said Wimberly.
But it’s not just other HBCUs those who took over Tennessee State will be coming for soon and very soon. They’re coming for all things Black – funding for scholarships that were created to do redress generations of racist inequities; books written by conscious Black authors; social commentary coming from a progressive Black perspective; funding for Black women-owned businesses; corporate policies that allowed over-qualified Blackfolk to finally have a chance at competing for positions historically “legacied” to mediocre white boys; Black intellectual property – using our artistically creative words against us in courts of law, stealing our scientific brilliance and repackaging it as their own, and canceling our shows, movies, plays, events and careers left and right.
If we don’t act soon, all that will be left are our Black bodies. And history has already proven, they’ll come for those too.
