On Jan. 2, 2024, Dr. Claudine Gay resigned from her position as the first Black president of Harvard University after receiving backlash for how she decided against punishing students who spoke out against genocide; 70 members of Congress asked her to resign as if they don’t have better sh*t to do.
She was subsequently accused of plagiarism, which was a narrative sped along by the same people who decry that those same institutions of higher education are nothing but factories pumping out liberal students at a rate too fast for the slow conservative release. The same group which knuckle-drags itself into the polls to vote against furthering education initiatives and funding public schools is the same group which balls its fist at any mention of a history that was consumed by that same firsthand violence. For the bigot who hates the thought of learning almost as much as he hates the thought of a Black person learning—a Black woman in power, in that much power, no less—must make his soul dissolve.
Many of those same people were calling Gay, a Harvard, Princeton and Stanford-educated woman, a DEI hire.
Gay was accused of plagiarizing her own thesis advisor, who would be considered her co-author, making their claims that much more ridiculous, but at this point it does not matter, the stain has already set. In a world where it is a far too widely held belief that the Black race is the least intelligent and a widely held belief that women are the least intelligent; being both can feel like a never-ending fight to assert your aptitude in a room where you could never be the smartest, even if you are.
Dr. Ketanji Brown was the most qualified Supreme Court Justice on the bench, yet her nomination process was overly scrutinized by the same government entity, which allowed the Supreme Court to survive its scandals, not because of innocence but rather because of immunity.
Is there any worse place to put an (angry) Black lady?
The same Supreme Court where Clarence Thomas, the highest do-boy in the land, claimed not to know that he was breaking the law by accepting expensive gifts, as if his job isn’t to know the law better than anyone else in the country, to remain on the bench without further probing, Brett Kavanaugh is more than likely a rapist with money issues and Amy Coney Barrett essentially lied under oath about her abortion stance.
To sum that up, there are three lawbreakers serving as Supreme Court justices.
When Matthew Hawn was fired for giving a Ta-Nehisi Coates essay about Donald Trump and the poem “White Privilege,” written by me, as assignments to his class in a county that is over 90% white, the Sullivan County School Board stated that neither Mr. Coates nor I were credible sources. Mr. Coates, in particular, has an incredible career speaking and writing about racism and politics as well as teaching collegiately at NYU, MIT, Howard and CUNY. Yet, somehow, his credentials are still not enough. Sitting at a table surrounded by white people who did not believe that I was a credible source of my own experience is the very living embodiment of white privilege and the irony was not lost on me. When the lawyer for Sullivan County School Board asked me where I went to school and subsequently asked what I majored in, he visibly shifted upon finding out that I have a degree in history. If he assumed that I was just some uneducated, disgruntled artist with baseless grievances, he is not alone. In fact, many times, the comments section of that poem is filled with white people telling me to learn my history; I imagine the list of why they feel this way is very short.
White people are never required to prove their merit. It is always assumed unless egregiously proven otherwise. Diversity is seen as a problem when nepotism and legacy don’t raise nearly as many eyebrows. Giving everyone a fair shot is considered much more damaging to a structure or institution than the exclusivity that comes with money and name, which are themselves considered as some sort of merit.
Neri Oxman—the wife of one of Gay’s most vocal opponents and one of Harvard’s biggest donors, Bill Ackman—posted on Twitter on Jan. 4 that she was forwarded an email which noted the same lack of citations that would equate to the same plagiarism claims her husband so vocally shouted about Gay.
He has not spoken about his wife’s situation but has continued to share posts about Gay, further proving the point that it was not about credentials nor plagiarism either; it was about white people thinking they have a monopoly on education and a Black woman being in charge at the most prestigious university in the U.S.
White people assume the intelligence of their brethren and are, at best, shocked at the intelligence of others, and if that isn’t the exact opposite of merit-based, then I do not know what is.
