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The Persecution of Black Women in Leadership

I do not know Dr. Claudine Gay personally but I know of this story too well because as someone who does anti-oppression work with organizations, I witness it on repeat.

Claudine Gay is a Black woman who ascended into a record-breaking role at a traditional, archaic, and now very much outdated university that was at one time considered by many, through money, men, and manipulation, as one of the best.

Because of the work of Black organizers and activists holding institutions like universities, museums, government, and companies accountable, organizations finally reluctantly hired and promoted Black women who were long qualified and credentialed.

That reluctance could not be more clear in the way that these institutions hired Black women without giving any support, while expecting them to perform perfection, and take on the entire burden of solving oppression as a whole. All of this while an arsenal of misogynoir was still being constantly detonated at them.

These institutions were comforted by the contingency and safety net that if something went wrong, they could sacrifice with no qualms, with zero hesitation the Black woman, and still feel righteous that they hired her in the first place.

This is the dirtiest and most disgusting underbelly of “Diversity and Inclusion.”

All of this reeks of anti-Blackness. It was persecution from the start. The only possible outcome was what the university forced and choreographed to happen today.

The resignation of Claudine Gay, the first and only Black woman ever to be president of Harvard University, in the shortest, yet most important term in its history. This was inevitable because that contingency is already built into these dying institutions.

As the U.S. empire crumbles so too are its founding institutions. The ivory towers are cracking. The marble columns are teetering.

The billions invested into the machine to convince people to attend these institutions just to keep teaching them that they need those institutions, to then teach them to uphold white supremacy, capitalism, and oppression that these institutions need to survive.

The people are no longer falling for it. A critical mass is now awake. The tipping point has tipped. This generation understands and is powerful enough to say that these “elite” universities are overpriced, overhyped, and not where you gain a real-life education.

Life, the thing that stays with you forever, does not grow in the halls of the oppressor.

Empire is grasping for its last breath and dragging down everything and everyone it can with it. Colonial institutions are doing the same.

The issue was never antisemitism. It was never plagiarism. It’s that Claudine Gay is a Black woman at an institution where white dominant culture cannot stand that she exists.

Do not ask me if I condemn Hamas. Do not ask me if I condemn

Published inWhite Dominance and Racism

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