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Claudine Gay became the latest casualty of a white nationalist campaign against racial progress when she resigned as Harvard University’s president Tuesday. It comes as far-right conservatives claim they want to return to a fantasy world when America was color-blind.
Gay, the first Black president in Harvard’s 388-year history, made the decision to resign after facing accusations of antisemitism, plagiarism, and after receiving racist threats.
As Israel continues to commit an alleged genocidal campaign against Palestinians in Gaza, the political tension has seeped into the United States, with protests for and against Israel’s actions taking place on city streets and on college campuses.
Republicans, with control of the House, decided to use the political turmoil as a tool to advance their anti-DEI, anti-Black agenda.
Targeting the presidents of some of America’s most prestigious institutions, New York Republican Congresswoman Elise Stefanik grilled the presidents on whether the phrase “from the river to the sea” was a genocidal statement against Jewish students that should face discipline.
Claudine Gay: Latest casualty of conservative campaign
The phrase means different things to different people, but Stefanik wasn’t interested in facts or nuance. She wanted a sound bite she could use to further demonize higher education, contributing to the so-called Culture War conservatives continue to wage against diversity, equity and inclusion programs and anything remotely related to racial justice.
As the first Black president of Harvard, Gay represented the perfect target.
Stuck between trying to support free speech and condemn hate, Gay’s testimony failed to land, and Republicans quickly seized on the international outrage.
First, they painted her as antisemitic, or at least allowing antisemitism to flourish. It didn’t matter that she apologized in an interview with the University newspaper the Crimson.
But when hundreds of Harvard staff rallied behind her, Harvard’s board refused to fire her. Switching tactics, conservatives quickly began looking for any other reason to force her removal.
Through a well-crafted campaign, conservatives unearthed accusations of plagiarism throughout Gay’s career. While Gay did make new citations and corrections following the accusations, the Harvard board declared she did not violate standards for research misconduct.
Still, conservatives weren’t ready to give up.
It was never really about plagiarism or antisemitism
The final blow for Gay’s ultimate decision came after she received numerous texts, calls and emails filled with what she called “racial animus.”
“While President Gay has acknowledged missteps and has taken responsibility for them, it is also true that she has shown remarkable resilience in the face of deeply personal and sustained attacks,” Harvard’s 11-member governing board, the Harvard Corporation, said in a statement after her resignation. Gay will maintain her tenured faculty position.
“While some of this has played out in the public domain, much of it has taken the form of repugnant and in some cases racist vitriol directed at her through disgraceful emails and phone calls,” the corporation added, the BBC reported. “We condemn such attacks in the strongest possible terms.”
It’s interesting how white conservatives don’t call for a color-blind America when Black people are targeted with explicit racism.
Social media posts show true feelings
While many argue over whether Claudine Gay actually committed plaigarism or indulged in antisemitism, the celebratory posts from conservatives indicate their motivations for targeting her were much more simple.
In their racist campaign to conflate DEI, affirmative action and racial justice under one umbrella, Claudine Gay symbolizes the boogeyman conservatives have manufactured to stir up animosity among White Americans who need a target for their unrelated grievances.
Most notably, conservatives, even some well-meaning liberals, have latched onto this absurd idea that by demonizing and diminishing efforts to achieve racial equity in a country built by enslaved people of African descent, they are returning the country back to the days of a “color-blind, performance-based society.”
Can someone remind me when The United States was ever a color-blind society based on an individual’s merits?
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America was color-blind when?
Was it 1619, when the first enslaved Africans were brought to the shores of the “New World?”
Perhaps it was in 1776, when enslaved Africans fought alongside Americans to establish the nation’s independence, only to be reduced back to slave status after the war?
Maybe it was in 1866, after over 200,000 Black people fought for their own freedom and the freedom of their kin during the Civil War? (This comes from the National Archives, not my libtard brain.)
No, even conservatives accept that the nation wasn’t always fair. In a Fox News segment following Claudine Gay’s resignation, pundit Jesse Watters ridiculed “Black leaders” who are defending her.
“Why are Black leaders in this country rallying around other disgraced Black Americans? Just because they’re black? It’s an embarrassment,” Watters said.
His solution: “We have to get back to what’s worked for 100 years in this country–judging people on what they produce.”
Conservatives don’t want a multicultural democracy or a color-blind America. They just want power.
According to Watters, and apparently at least a third of American voters, racial discrimination laws like Oklahoma’s Senate Bill 1 in 1908, the Red Summer of 1919, the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, lynchings and assassinations of voting rights supporters all took place in a country that only judged people by the content of their character and the fruits of their labor.
Black Americans didn’t receive equal rights until the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, and the Fair Housing in the 1960s.
Many of America’s school districts didn’t fully integrate until the 1980s. Yet somehow, there was a magical time of meritocracy flowing across the country before the big bad boogeyman of DEI crash-landed like a meteor.
Ultimately, conservatives and white nationalists are winning the war against multicultural democracy on the political, social and economic levels.
They’ve succeeded in getting the U.S. Supreme Court to strike down affirmative action, silenced discussions on race and history in classrooms, and even targeted Black-owned capital venture funds on the grounds of reverse racism.
Ultimately, they’ve launched a full-scale assault against what Roland Martin refers to as the Browning of America in his book “White Fear.”
We have to fight back by any means necessary
Whether it’s the Great Replacement Theory or attacks on diversity and justice in higher education institutions, conservatives don’t care how many real-world casualties they produce as a result of mass shooters and malignant millionaires inspired by their ideology.
The United States has never been a merit-based society, and America has never been color-blind. Everyday Americans naive enough to believe that act as foot soldiers by conservative war chiefs who know exactly what they’re doing.
Instead of accepting a multicultural society abundant with equity and justice, conservatives seek a pre-Civil Rights era where democracy is viewed as a pie that only some are entitled to.
They want a society where government doesn’t intervene or try to undo systemic racism, and if we don’t learn new tactics to combat them, they might get it.
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