On Black higher education amid Florida's MAGA culture

Get the Point!

Late last week, the University of Florida (UF) announced plans to eliminate all Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programs from the institution, effective immediately. I have anticipated this move ever since Gov. Ron Desantis and the Republican dominated legislature pushed through a law last year that bars using government funds for "any program, campus activity or policy that classifies individuals on the basis of race, color, sex, national origin, gender identity or sexual orientation, and promotes differential or preferential treatment of individuals on the basis of such classification.”

The University of Florida is the nation's #5 public University according to U.S. News & World Report.

So, before I analyze the latest form of systemic racism in my native Florida, allow me to give a little personal history about my own affiliation with UF.

Several months after my father, Charles Sr., died of cancer in 2000, I started the long process of going through his old boxes of pictures, military and civilian files, and all sorts of memorabilia that was stacked up in our garage. One afternoon, I stumbled across a letter that was postmarked from Vietnam circa April of 1969, and addressed to his mother, Arilla Hobbs, in Miami. As my grandmother died about eight weeks after my Dad, I exited the garage to have a seat in the living room to read what I instantly knew would be a treasured keepsake. 

At the time that the letter was written, my father was less than one month away from returning to the States, so he told his mom that it was very possible that he may resign his commission as a Captain in the Army after six years of service.

Cpt. Charles Hobbs (front row, 3rd from left) with the command staff of the 720th MP Battalion in South Vietnam circa May 1968

Dad added that he had received a letter from his friend and Florida A&M University (FAMU) classmate, Captain G.W. Mingo, about his own plans after serving two tours as an infantry officer in Vietnam. Captain (now Dr.) Mingo told Dad that he had heard that the University of Florida was heavily recruiting Black students for its graduate and professional school programs, this after integrating at a snail's pace during the 1960's like each and every predominantly white state school in the South; Mingo told Dad that his intention was to earn a PhD in Gainesville—which he did—before becoming a legendary administrator on UF's campus for several decades. 

Dr. G.W. Mingo and me circa 2016 following church services at Flipper Chapel AME Church in Tallahassee

But what Dad wrote to his mother next jumped off of the page because he NEVER uttered a word of this to me—he wrote that if he chose to resign from the Army, that he would apply to attend law school at…wait for it…the University of Florida for the 1969-70 school term!

Ultimately, when Dad returned home from the war that Spring he chose to accept a position teaching military tactics at FAMU before being assigned to the Army's Command and General Staff College in Kansas (about a month after I was born in 1972); he would go on to serve at numerous posts across America until he finally retired as the Professor of Military Science at FAMU in 1983. 

But as I sat in our old living room pondering what I had just read that afternoon, I could not help but to wonder why my father chose to stay in the Army in '69—and I could not help but to have an "aha" moment when I reminisced how VERY proud that he seemed when I entered law school at UF during the 1995-96 school year; in a way, I was fulfilling a dream of his own that had been deferred. 

Charles Sr. and Charles II on the day of my graduation from the University of Florida College of Law in ‘98

Even more pertinent to today's essay, I was admitted in what is still regarded as the largest single class of Black students in UF Law history—over 50 in total—one filled with both Black PWI and HBCU grads (with the majority hailing from FAMU), and students reppin' eight of the Divine 9 Black Greek Letter Organizations on the law school yard. 

The UF College of Law Black graduates circa ‘98

But alas, the potential diversity at UF that Dr. Mingo and my father discussed in Vietnam—the diversity that I and my classmates actualized in the 90's—has been in steady decline across the UF campus over the past two and half decades with one exception—the Black athletes who dominate the Gators football and basketball teams!

Black enrollment is safe in the UF Department of Athletics—and all across the SEC and ACC in the once Jim Crow South 👀

The UF minority enrollment decline will only grow more pronounced in the years ahead as Gov.  Desantis and his ilk continue their sinister and cynical attacks on anything that fosters equality regardless of race, gender, or sexual orientation and identity. 

While UF's decision is greatly disappointing, it comes as NO surprise because the climate in Florida's politics remains decidedly MAGA with conservative whites now cast as the victims of "reverse discrimination," an oxymoron trumpeted by morons who refuse to concede that Blacks, Latinos, and the LGBTQ have never had the power (or desire writ large) to exact discriminatory vengeance upon whites. 

But the reverse has ALWAYS been true, which leads me to my deepest fear in this still racist age, which is that attacks on DEI programs across the South have begun on PWI campuses today, but may target the elimination of state funded HBCU's tomorrow!

Lest we forget that from the late 1960's on through to the early 1980’s, FAMU, Florida's lone state funded HBCU, persistently fought legislative efforts to merge it with nearby predominantly white Florida State University. In 1968, the original FAMU College of Law was closed, and it's library books were shipped about two miles north to the brand new Florida State University College of Law—where they remain in the stacks to this very day—with the old FAMU Law insignia still stamped inside!

In 2022, graduates from the new FAMU College of Law in Orlando (est. 2001) pose in front of the original FAMU College of Law in Tallahassee, which was housed in the Coleman Library complex…

Lest we forget that but for the advocacy of then FAMU Presidents Benjamin Perry (1969-77) and Walter Smith (1977-85), coupled with the efforts of white local Democratic state legislators like Donald Tucker and Pat Thomas, FAMU may have ceased to exist!

I raise this point because there are few in today's Florida legislature who would have the desire to push back against the madding MAGA crowd should it set its sights upon eliminating FAMU. Again, let's take another careful look at the language of the anti-Diversity law:

"Any program, campus activity or policy that classifies individuals on the basis of race, color, sex, national origin, gender identity or sexual orientation, and promotes differential or preferential treatment of individuals on the basis of such classification." 

Clearly, the Florida MAGA minions have weaponized race and color by foolishly equating programs that are designed to ameliorate over 150 years of slavery and Jim Crow in the Sunshine State with having a discriminatory impact against whites. And while absolutely none of those sentiments is true, FAMU's accrediting mission statement does expressly provide in pertinent part that:

"...(FAMU) continues its rich legacy and historic mission of educating African Americans and embraces all dimensions of diversity."

Indeed, the FAMU mission statement is a fast ball down the middle of plate just ready to be smashed across the fence by Florida's “race-ball” playing Republicans!

Again, if it's goodbye UF Diversity offices today, it very well could be goodbye to FAMU tomorrow if plans are not actively developed by FAMU stakeholders to lobby, litigate, legislate, and agitate—so as to keep Florida's political right from doing what's wrong with regards to the academic futures of minority students. 

Lest we forget!