The Graduate Employees’ Organization (GEO), Black Student Union (BSU), and Students of Color of Rackham (SCOR) condemn the wave of bomb threats made against Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) this month, and stands in solidarity with students at these HBCUs. At least 14 HBCUs received bomb threats on February 1, 2022, the first day of Black History Month, forcing many to cancel classes. This is an escalation from threats against three HBCUs made on January 5, 2022.
The purpose of these bomb threats is racial terror. The threats are intended to communicate that there is nowhere that Black people are safe, not even in institutions that are supposed to be designed for Black students. As sociologist Tressie McMillan Cottom put it in her recent conversation with U-M Professor Celeste Watkins-Hayes:
“This is what Black institutions are. They are institutions that assume the humanity of its Black students. And when you are Black in America, it is probably the first and the only time that you will be in an environment where your humanity is assumed.”
Violence and the threat of violence have been a fundamental tool to destroy the education of Black people in this country since before its inception. While the perpetrators of Tuesday’s threats may have been identified, structural anti-Black racism remains a major issue in American education. For decades, public HBCUs have been systematically underfunded and graduates of HBCUs have faced systemic discrimination. Additionally, anti-racist pedagogy everywhere is under attack through a transparently racist panic about critical race theory.
We can also see structural anti-Blackness at our own historically white institution. In GEO’s recent membership survey, over one third of Black respondents said they had experienced racial discrimination. UM’s 2016 DEI climate survey found that Black students were more likely to be dissatisfied than any other racial group on campus. When the first Black Action Movement organized a 13-day strike in 1970, they won a commitment from U-M to increase Black enrollment to 10 percent of the student body. At that time, Black students were 3 percent of the student body; today, the proportion is estimated at 4 percent. GEO itself can and must do better to welcome Black students into union spaces and empower them in its decision-making.
Black students deserve to be safe, supported, and able to thrive. We uplift and support the Students of Color Liberation Front’s anti-racist demands from Fall 2020, which provide a broad and cohesive agenda that U-M has so far ignored. We welcome input from Black graduate students and all students committed to the fight against anti-Blackness, and invite you to join us in making our union, university, and community a safe, healthy, and just place for all (umgeo@geo3550.org).
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