Claudine Gay is the new Nikole Hannah-Jones in the same way that Eric Bieniemy is the latest version of Sherman Lewis. And while there’s a big difference between being a leader at an institution of higher learning and coaching football, the common denominator remains the same — excluding Black people from certain positions of power.
Gay — the first Black woman to ever serve as the President of Harvard University — resigned on Tuesday, “amid plagiarism accusations and criticism over testimony at a congressional hearing where she was unable to say unequivocally that calls on campus for the genocide of Jews would violate the school’s conduct policy,” according to a report from the Associated Press.
The report goes on to say: “Gay, Harvard’s first Black president, announced her departure just months into her tenure in a letter to the Harvard community. Following the congressional hearing, Gay’s academic career came under intense scrutiny by conservative activists who unearthed several instances of alleged plagiarism in her 1997 doctoral dissertation. The Harvard Corporation, Harvard’s governing board, initially rallied behind Gay, saying a review of her scholarly work turned up ‘a few instances of inadequate citation” but no evidence of research misconduct. Days later, the Harvard Corporation said it found two additional examples of “duplicative language without appropriate attribution.’ The board said Gay would update her dissertation and request corrections.”
Given that people don’t like to read anything more than a headline, I will translate what that last paragraph was really about. After the fake racial awakening that occurred in 2020, a Black woman made “double history” by being the first Black person and Black woman to hold the most important position at the one university that this country has deemed as its best. And because of that, “the right” got pissed off that an overqualified Black woman — because your resume always has to be two and three times better than your white counterparts when you’re a person of color — held that much power. So, they did what they always do and tried to discredit her. And once they did that, they bullied everybody until they got what they wanted — her resignation, just months after she took the job.
(Sidebar: What you’re reading is a column, which means it’s my opinion. But, let’s not act like that isn’t how this all went down, especially when the anti-DEI crowd is louder than ever in a country sans Affirmative Action.)
What happened to Gay is very similar to what happened to Hannah-Jones when she was at North Carolina. A few years ago, Hannah-Jones was in this same hot seat when she joined the faculty of Howard University — an HBCU — after trustees at UNC voted to grant her tenure, but only after they had originally voted against it. The Right used the same playbook with Hannah-Jones as they did with Gay.
This is how NPR broke it down:
“Some of that opposition came from Walter Hussman, a UNC donor and Arkansas newspaper publisher whose name adorns UNC’s journalism school. Hussman, who is also an alumnus, told NPR he was given pause by some prominent scholars’ criticism that Hannah-Jones distorted the historical record in arguing that the protection of slavery was one of the Founding Fathers’ primary motivations in seeking independence from the British. (Hannah-Jones has recently tweeted she will be able to back up that contention in a forthcoming book.)”
What does this have to do with sports?
Well, sports is a reflection of it.
Look around, do you see any Black majority owners in the pros? Michael Jordan was the only Black majority owner in the NBA, NFL, and MLB — and then he cashed out and gave it all up back in June when he sold the Charlotte Hornets. Ironically, the Bobcats/Hornets were once owned by Bob Johnson, as that city/franchise is the only one to ever have Black majority owners in the history of the league. That city (Charlotte) is also home to two of the worst owners the NFL has ever dealt with, Jerry Richardson, the Panther’s former owner, and Dave Tepper, the Panthers’ current owner.
Baseball doesn’t have Black ownership, and the NFL simply won’t allow it. It’s the same reason why Black head coaches face the same hurdles in Major League Baseball and football. Sherman Lewis got passed over for head coaching positions in the 90s. Eric Bieniemy is the new poster child.
And if you still refuse to connect the dots, just pay attention to how the NFL’s Rooney Rule is nothing more than a fake Affirmative Action/DEI initiative that allows teams to say, “Hey, we have a few Black people here, we can’t be racist!” The NFL just concluded their “Inspire Change” weeks in which they focused on their “commitment” to “social justice.” But does anybody feel inspired by anything this league has done given who they’ve always been?
No.
When the news of Gay’s resignation broke, I immediately thought of Tommy Amaker, Harvard’s current men’s basketball coach. In 2007, Amaker and Traci Green (women’s tennis coach) brought some color to Cambridge. In 2022, Carrie Moore joined them, becoming the first Black woman to coach women’s basketball at the school. While Hannah-Jones was dealing with UNC, Hubert Davis — the first Black coach in the history of the school’s storied basketball program — sat back and said and did nothing. Part of me wonders if Amaker, Green, and Moore will do the same about Claudine Gay, or if they will speak up and use their platforms. However, a bigger part of me understands that they’re there to develop players and run their respective programs, as taking on the additional responsibilities of being change agents for racial and social issues isn’t part of their job responsibilities — which is something their white counterparts are hardly ever expected to do.
If you made it to the end of this column expecting me to have an answer for how things need to change in academia and sports, or what the Black people at Harvard should do — I don’t have one for you. But, if you’ve made it to the end of this column and have a better understanding of how these things work and are all connected — then I’ve done my job.
Original source here
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