Florida A&M's MAGA BOT members soft sophistry about alumni giving

Get the Point!

Two weeks ago, several FAMU Board of Trustees members made snide public comments about alumni giving hovering around six percent as a reason for needing to diversify funding sources. That's a ruby red herring and a Red State Republican talking point combined when considering that:

1. Alumni giving rates across the country average around eight percent—even at larger and far better funded predominantly white institutions with significantly larger alumni bases.

2. Alumni giving has NOTHING to do with adequately funding public universities in Red States! If you've read and understood Project 2025, then you know that conservatives are pushing to diminish the allocation of federal and state funding to public institutions, in general, and are specifically targeting institutions that are not in lock-step with their warped beliefs that "Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion" are THE problem—instead of being part of ameliorating the vestiges of America's "Original Sin," which was (and remains) institutionalized white supremacy! Institutions falling under their DEI rubric include each of the publicly funded HBCUs, like FAMU, that are mostly concentrated in MAGA Red States!

So, in the weeks ahead, I encourage all FAMU alumni and supporters to reject this trite conservative talking point and when you see or hear it offered, remind those doing the offering that what the State of Florida needs to be doing is providing FAMU the BILLIONS of dollars it failed to deliver when FAMU was supposed to be "separate" but "equal" to UF (and later FSU) during the Jim Crow era, and the BILLIONS more in underfunding from 1968 to this very day—six decades after Jim Crow was supposed to have ended...