To be Black, educated, and condescending towards your own people...

Get the Point!

Reposted from my Chuck Hobbs Facebook page

So, I learned last week from a trusted and very credible source that Marva Johnson, the alleged preferred MAGA candidate to become Florida A&M's presidential candidate, was "joking" during their conversation that she may need to hire security to come on campus and interview this week.

Yesterday, not surprisingly, the word on the street was that FDLE and FHP had an increased presence on the FAMU campus 🤔. (Late in the evening, after my Facebook post, this was confirmed by another very credible source who works at FAMU and saw the additional police presence).

I don't know about any of you, but I am deeply troubled by even the slightest insinuation, in jest or real, that any candidate for any job on FAMU's campus is in danger of harm! Such is patently false and absurd!

As a journalist who has written extensively about FAMU through the years, I often remind that the University was created during the Jim Crow era and has dealt with overt and covert systemic bigotry THROUGHOUT its illustrious history from racists in the Florida Legislature, the Governor's Mansion, the State Board of Control, which morphed into the Board of Regents, which morphed into its current form of a Board of Trustees under the auspices of the State University System's Board of Governors! Meaning, from the Civil Rights Movement, on through the anti-FSU merger Movement, to the anti-Tier classification movement, to the anti-One Florida movement, FAMU student leaders and stakeholders have ALWAYS protested peacefully, exercised CIVIL disobedience, and utilized the court system to seek redress from wrongs, both actual and perceived!

So to me, even the idea of "peace" being needed at this time—as interim President Timothy Beard suggested via video despite no wars or rumors of physical wars having been waged or raised—is highly insulting and condescending! Not to mention, such histrionics forget the role that FAMU has played in the peaceful journey for equality and inclusion in the State of Florida since its founding in 1887!

Which is why I can only hope that Candidate Johnson knows in advance that just because thousands of loyal FAMU Rattlers see her as a plant being used to further the conservative restructuring of Florida's public institutions, and just because we DON'T WANT HER to serve as our president, doesn't mean that Rattler Nation will act out of character in any way, shape, or form in expressing our votes of no confidence in her credentials—or her reasons for wanting to lead a school that she allegedly may be too nervous to walk across without a security detail...