Black History Month and Christian Universities
Why administrators must set the stage
Newsletter Notes: 1) I was going to write this yesterday, but between the New York Civil Fraud Ruling and Navolny’s death, I figured nobody would see it. So I’m slightly off my normal schedule. 2) Thanks to all those who let me know about The Christian Scholars Review blog titled “The Struggle for Soul in Christian Higher Education”. It was shared on both of the weekly digest posts I get every Saturday (Chris Gehrz and Scot McKnight). Having just submitted a manuscript on The Fearless Christian University, I have thoughts about the blog which I will address on Wednesday. 3) The CSR blog mentions a recent book by Baylor’s Perry Glanzer that attempts to quantify religious schools on a variety of measures. I was able to get an online version of Perry’s book and will address it on Wednesday. 4) No newsletters on the 23rd or 26th as I will be celebrating my grandson’s 3rd birthday!
This week my friend Marlena Graves shared the image below on Threads.
The first paragraph (in black) is one of those campus-wide announcements that college administrators distribute after a “racially insensitive” incident occurs. It has all the benchmarks of these anodyne responses: a vague description of the event, no reference to what should happen to perpetrators, and an expected reference to the school’s community values. I tried to find news stories about this event at Moody but came up empty.1
The second paragraph (in red) is a student response. Those first two sentences are crushing: I’m used to personal animus but I never thought you’d just tear up random posters. It then calls back to expected community values and expresses disappointment that the differences that one expects could distinguish Christian institutions from secular don’t seem to be present. This sentiment is quite common among students of color at predominantly white institutions. A decade ago Christena Cleveland had a remarkable series (no longer available online) titled “Black to School” that described the experiences of Black students at Christian Colleges.2
Here is how I responded to Marlena: “Administrative failure. They have to prepare the community with a reason to honor Black history.” I got a couple of the expected social media responses that it was up to families and not schools to deal with race or questioning if “whites are really that fragile?”.3
This is what I meant with my Threads post. In my experience, the Black History Month recognitions are usually delegated to the office of multicultural affairs. Students working in the office go to the cafeteria on February 1st and put up a bunch of posters. By the way, even these posters can be anodyne: MLK, Rosa Parks, Obama, Thurgood Marshall, George Washington Carver, Frederick Douglass, Jackie Robinson, Kobe Bryant. There are notable yet important absences: Malcolm X, James Cone, W.E.B DuBois, Jesse Jackson, Mohammad Ali, James Baldwin.
I cannot remember a senior administrator or chaplain articulating WHY the Christian university was celebrating Black History Month. The same sentiments that are shared after an incident like the one at Moody should be deeply explained before anything happens.
To not ground Black History Month into the core identity of the institution invites students to ask “When is White History Month?”4 Proactive steps must be taken that prepare the way to celebrate identity of community members who often feel marginalized. And those must be articulated with authenticity, not just because it’s February.
This observation has been with me for over 50 years. When I started high school in 1968 on the far east side of Indianapolis, the Department of Justice filed suit against the Indianapolis Public Schools for their history of segregating schools.5 That suit was finally settled thirty years later.
One of the first steps that IPS took was redrawing the lines for the feeder schools. So while my graduating class of 350 had two Black students, the incoming freshman class in 1971 was 35% Black.
I do remember an assembly with a Presbyterian pastor promoting support for diversity. I’ll always remember posters that adorned the walls the previous spring that read “It takes both white keys and black keys to play the Star Spangled Banner.” Of course, I can remember students reading that last part as “blackies” and laughing.
In October of 1971, the Black students met with the vice principal to address a number of concerns they had. As the students were coming out of that meeting, they were confronted by an angry mother claiming that the Black security guard had molested her daughter and using racial epithets. Lots of yelling and disruption followed. I remember our Calculus teacher saying “The natives are restless today.” A few minutes later, the principal came on the intercom and announced that school was cancelled and anyone in the building in 45 minutes would be arrested for trespassing. So the entire student body was dumped into the neighborhood (buses were a half hour away). Some fights resulted. Such is the history of the “John Marshall Riot”.
The administrators of my high school and of Christian universities have the responsibility to affect cultural change. It was not enough to put up some posters in the hallways or the cafeteria. There must be the kind of messaging, supported by appropriate sanctions, of what it means to be an educational community.
Failing this proactive stance posters will get defaced, social media posts will circulate, and racially hurtful comments will be made. And then the administration will send out an email saying “This is not who we are” and hold a forum to express their disappointment. Things will quiet down until the next incident.
And the Black students, like the one quoted above, wonder if it’s worth it for them to stay at this “Christian” university.
On this incident. There are stories about why blackface was a bad idea some years ago.
Many of those writers are now well known authors in their own right.
Given the facts, I think the answer is a clear yes!
It’s always White History Month!
I’ve mentioned Timothy Egan’s book on the KKK in Indiana in the 1920s, so this isn’t exactly surprising.
I think you are rightly identifying why we have not made more progress on racial issues within evangelicalism. Evangelicals are happy (generally) to allow special events or for "others" to share. But when white people are forced to articulate why (theologically and culturally) their history has been relatively okay with racial hierarchy, that is harder.
I spent quite a while trying to work on racial issues within my predominately white church. There was verbal affirmation as long as there wasn't anything difficult required. But that is exactly the problem. It is difficult to grapple with the history of white supremacy. Understanding that history creates obligation and people do not like obligation to change.
Daniel Hill in his White Awake book has a short section on why a church interested in becoming more diverse should not just hire a minority staff person but should spend time preparing so that the church was ready to be more diverse. Otherwise, the inevitable harm to that minority staff person will not be a long term benefit to the organization and be very damaging to the staff person, and it will have perpetuated white racial hierarchy whether it intended to or not.
I am working through an advance copy of Scott Coley's Minister of Propaganda and the chapter I just finished was about they ways that white evangelical racial attitudes can oppose individual racial animus but not grapple with the ways that "logical implications" of their rhetoric and actions continue to uphold white supremacy.