It’s about time somebody called out the racist hell that is … wait, I have it here somewhere … oh yeah, the racist hell that is George Washington University.
Caleb Francois from GWU, a senior at the university who wrote a Washington Post GW should change its name, op-ed This piece could be explained in one of two ways: It’s an extra credit attempt to show his professors he lapped up every woke nostrum and racialist complaint they vomited out, or 2. Francois has accepted money from a rival university to show prospective students and their parents that a GW diploma isn’t worth a sleeve of red Solo cups.
Either way, it’s not a serious argument – more sobbing whine than think piece.
Why isn’t the Father of our Country’s name good enough to grace a mediocre university in the city named after him? Francois can give you all the facts:
As our nation’s history of slavery, Jim Crow, red lining and other discriminatory policies toward African Americans has never been fully addressed or atoned for, these pleas for racial justice are a reflection of a shifting paradigm in American politics in which compromise and intolerance are no longer an option.
That’s quite a sentence, particularly the last bit about “intolerance and compromise.” Perhaps GW no longer teaches about irony.
But Francois is, I’m sure, in earnest when he says “systemic racism and inequality still present on campus.” His evidence:
- “Today, with Black enrollment at about 10 percent, Black students on campus continue to struggle for community.” Blacks are 13% of the U.S. population. We shall overcome the 3% discrepancy that’s keeping black students from achieving “community,” whatever that is.
- “Black professorship also remains low, especially in the university’s International Affairs program. The lack of Black faculty members teaching African American and African American courses, as well as the continuing neglect of Black academics and Black professorship have created a culture on campus that favors European and White views over Black ones. No African languages are taught at the university, and calls for reforms are often ignored.” When you’re right, you’re right. There’s no reason a college in the capital of the U.S. should lag behind the University of Nairobi in teaching African courses and languages.
- “The Mount Vernon Campus, named for George Washington’s former slave plantation,” and the “controversial Winston Churchill Library,” and the James Madison memorial. “Every day, hundreds of Black students walk on a campus named after an enslaver of men and study at a site named after dark parts of history.” But by all means, let’s get more black students to attend this racist hellhole.
“These problems,” Francois explains, “are rooted in systemic racism, institutional inequality and white supremacy.”
Francois, however, is not a helpless victim. Francois is a man with a clear plan to make GW better. Relax, it doesn’t involve original thought, academic rigor, personal resilience or anything more than identity-based highchair pounding:
The university has at least four options to make progress. These include a decolonized curriculum, an increase in Black enrollment, a renaming the university, and the election of an African American president.
That’s it? All done. Caleb Francois University has earned many honors and awards that I will be following with interest.
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