In 1963, racist Democratic governor George Wallace stood in the doorway of a building at the University of Alabama trying to prevent African Americans from integrating the school. In 2019, race-baiting Atlantic magazine writer Jemele Hill is encouraging black athletes to leave "white universities" and segregate themselves at historically black colleges and universities (HBCU's). Hill's story is titled, "It's Time for Black Athletes to Leave White Colleges."
Hill says black athletes "attract money and attention to the predominantly white universities that showcase them, while HBCUs struggle. What would happen if they collectively decided to go to black schools?"
Division I universities accept students of all races and nations, and more than 50 percent of the football and basketball players at Power Five conference schools are black. Nonetheless, Hill zings them because just 2.4 percent of their undergraduate enrollment is black. At the same time, HBCU schools are struggling financially.
The historically black schools generate far less income and have much smaller endowments than those "white" schools, but they produce the majority of black judges, lawyers, engineers, doctors and members of Congress, as well as the only black presidential candidate — U.S. Senator Kamala Harris (Howard University '86).
In the past, HBCU's produced great athletes like NBA stars Willis Reed and Earl "the Pearl" Monroe and NFL stars like Walter Payton and Jerry Rice. Now athletes at big "white" schools are more likely to be high draft picks and receive lucrative endorsements. And thus we have another socialist tale of race and class warfare: one group advances by victimizing the less-privileged, yet entitled, class.
"But what if a group of elite athletes collectively made the choice to attend HBCU's?" Hill asks.
"Black athletes overall have never had as much power and influence as they do now. While NCAA rules prevent them from making money off their own labor at the college level, they are essential to the massive amount of revenue generated by college football and basketball. This gives them leverage, if only they could be moved to use it."
What if young black athletes could force change? They are, as Hill writes, "the prized workforce." She mentions the Power Moves Initiative, a group that seeks a socialized solution to the financial struggles of black college athletics. This group stated that African Americans "are not stakeholders at predominantly white universities and corporations that profit from our talent. The system must be disrupted to redirect the stream of wealth."
Robert Buck, the man behind the Power Moves Initiative, shares Hill's comlaint that black athletes are generating money for predominantly white schools and depriving black communities of revenue as well. He said they are being used and he, too, wants to steer black prep stars to HBCU's.
Hill says that Michigan's Fab Five basketball team of the early 1990s, featuring Chris Webber and Juwan Howard, among others, is the model for black schools. They got together and decided to enroll at Michigan and create a super team, eventually taking the Wolverines to NCAA Tournament championship games in 1992 and 1993.
"What if instead of enrolling at Michigan they'd gone to Howard, taking the Bison, rather than the Wolverines, to the Final Four," Hill muses. If this happened now, it would change the place of HBCU's in American culture. It would amplify the power of black coaches excluded from advancement at white schools, stimulate the economy in black communities and direct wealth from white communities to black communities.
Without mentioning the "white supremacy" term that made her famous as an ESPN SportsCenter co-anchor, Hill doesn't just want African Americans to prosper; she wants mostly white schools to pay a price for it. "More revolutionarily, perhaps they (HBCU's) could disrupt the reign of an 'amateur' sports system that uses the labor of black folks to make white folks rich."
