Q&A: Congresswoman Strickland
an attempted light pick me up
💖Motivation Meows💖
Gosh, writing that anti-DEI piece about Claudine Gay made me so depressed I wanted to share some somewhat good academic news. Can you believe it’s 2024? That doesn’t even sound like a real year.
I have decided that this is to be my year of attempted rest and relaxation. I have no goals this year, unlike last year, where I strategically planned out what I wanted and how to hopefully achieve them. Nope. Not one goal. Not one resolution. Well, no, that’s not entirely true — my one goal for the year is to survive another year in New York media. That will be dramatic enough.
As always, please feel free to subscribe, send around, email me your reflections, and follow me on Instagram at dominicmadori or add me on LinkedIn.
This month, I’m reading: My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh. It is a book about a young woman who tries to sleep for an entire year.
This weekend, I can’t stop listening to: Cool It Now by New Edition
💢From the Chatterbox💢
(I would be remiss if I first didn’t recognize Dr. Antoinette Candia-Bailey, vice president of Student Affairs at the HBCU Lincoln University-Missouri, who tragically died by suicide after receiving “bullying and severe mistreatment.” There are calls for the university’s president, a white man named Dr. John Moseley, to now step down. Emails revealed that Dr. Candia-Bailey said he had caused her “harm and mental damage.” Once again, I was seeking to write a happy story and thought one about HBCUs would lead me there. Instead, the realities of being a Black woman haunt at every turn. May she rest in power and may justice be served).
I quite like the renewed attention that people in tech and venture are giving to Historically Black Colleges and Universities.
Sequoia has added some HBCUs as limited partners to its funds. Howard University told me it is investing. A group of investors has donated $10 million to create a fund-of-fund, The Historic Fund, to help nine HBCUs invest, as reported by Axios. HBCUs have been left out of the billion-dollar endowment boom many predominantly white universities experience. The lack of a sizeable endowment means that many HBCUs cannot participate in the larger rounds that bigger funds have when looking to raise capital for a fund. Other new developments include that three years ago, Base10 Partners announced it closed a $250 million fund to invest in pre-IPO startups. It will donate half of the fund’s carried interest directly to HBCUs to help support their endowments and create student scholarships. Meanwhile, Nex Cubed launched a $40 million fund to target HBCUs, noting that the next generation of Black talent is graduating from one of these schools. The firm also partnered with HBCUvc to launch a scout program and train the next generation of Black investors.
Elsewhere, I know that Big Tech companies, like Apple, Amazon, and Google, have started to (with varying degrees of success) try and establish scholarship and recruitment programs at many HBCUs. If anyone knows of any cool HBCU stuff happening in this space, please tell me. I know I missed a lot of stuff happening.
This is all so exciting and had me thinking about all the opportunities that venture has right now to include HBCUs. For example, if not already happening, I wonder if a16z’s Cultural Leadership Fund, which only has Black limited partners, could find a way to involve HBCUs or if that charity initiative a16z has that trains and invests in “underrepresented” aka mostly Black founders could launch a program specifically targeting HBCUs. I want to see HBCUs glamorized and sought after just as predominantly white institutions (PWIs) are in the land of tech; I want more recognition of the excellent STEM programs at these schools, and I want more opportunities and equity spread to these Black academic institutions, especially while the presence of cultural learning at PWIs come under attack by anti-DEI critics.
The first step in helping HBCUs get opportunities, is first helping them find funding. While scouring the internet, I came across an article in the Seattle Medium about a new bill that is being introduced into Congress to help ensure fair funding for Land-Grant HBCUs. A Land-Grant school is a university that receives the benefits of the Morrill Land-Grant Acts, which sets aside federal land to create schools that could “benefit the agricultural and mechanical arts.” It was first signed into law by President Lincoln in 1862 and has been refined throughout the centuries as the nation expanded. Well-known Land-Grant schools include Cornell University and the University of Florida. Under the Second Morrill Act of 1890, States had to either prove that existing land-grant schools were not excluding students based on race or create separate schools for African Americans to attend. The result was that 19 HBCU Land-Grant schools were created, including Tuskegee University, Florida A&M University, and North Carolina A&T State University. Fast forward to today; however, these institutions are often overlooked when it comes to receiving equitable funding, as reported by the Seattle Medium, which is upsetting because these schools graduate some of the most Black STEM talent in the nation.
This new bill called the Land-Grant Research Equity and Accountability Act, would require state governors to attest each year if they plan on providing funding to these schools. It is a way to hold states accountable for their disregard of these institutions. The bill is being introduced by Washington Representative Marilyn Strickland (pictured above) alongside Senators Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Raphael Warnock of Georgia. When I first read this news, I was, of course, excited because it means that there is a possibility of more funding going to these HBCU schools, which in turn can help train the next generation of Black talent. The least states could do is provide these HBCUS their fair share of funding to help double down on creating wealth and opportunity for the Black community. I reached out to Congresswoman Strickland to ask her more about the bill and her optimism about its passing. Here is what she had to say:
The Black Cat: What is happening right now regarding equitable funding and the 1890s land-grant HBCUs that led you and others to create this bill?
Rep. Strickland: Under federal law, states are obligated to provide an equitable distribution of state funding for all land-grant universities. However, historically Black land-grant universities have often been overlooked and don’t always receive the funding they deserve.
TBC: How would the bill work?
Rep. Strickland: The Land-Grant Research Equity and Accountability Act would require governors to annually attest publicly whether-or-not the state plans to provide funding to each 1890s land-grant institution.
TBC: What happens to the states that publicly attest that they will no longer fund these schools?
Rep. Strickland: States are required to fund these institutions. This bill is to reaffirm what is already required.
TBC: Why target just the 19 land-grant HBCU schools and not all HBCUs?
Rep. Strickland: Their funding is different. The 19 land-grant HBCUs are under the jurisdiction of the Department of Agriculture — which is what this bill targets.
TBC: Why does it feel like there has been an increased interest in supporting the economic advancement of HBCUs and their students?
Rep. Strickland: VP Harris especially – and other successful HBCU alumni have raised the profile of HBCUs. Enrollment has increased at HBCUs, and more people are seeing the importance of funding these institutions.
TBC: What are some other ways you would like to see policy support HBCUs?
Rep. Strickland: There are lots of ways I want to see policy support HBCUs, including investing in HBCU to STEM and agricultural career pipelines, supporting research at HBCUs, and so much more.
TBC: Are you worried at all that HBCUs could start seeing legal threats, given the DEI program backlash in some states like Florida?
Rep. Strickland: Backlash against DEI is a threat to everyone. Legislation that tears down the importance of DEI programs is dangerous to HBCUs and all educational institutions.
TBC: Why are HBCUs so crucial to the past, present, and future of the Black community, and how can we all help support them?
Rep. Strickland: These universities are critical to the Black community. In my experience at an HBCU, I met people from all parts of the county who had several different experiences. It diversified my understanding of the Black community and experience. Continuing to advocate for policy, funding, and recognizing the importance of institutions like these are all ways to be supportive of HBCUs.
TBC: How has the response to this bill been, and how confident are you that it will pass and go into effect? What happens next if it doesn’t?
Rep. Strickland: The response has been positive. Regardless of where this bill lands, I will continue to support HBCUs in the coming year.
Now, I don’t know how high the odds are of this bill passing, given the fact that our Congress is notorious for not passing anything without an agenda attached. If this bill is of interest to you, it’s worth calling up your local representative to push for support. From the outside, though, getting anything through Congress seems like a tight walk: Republicans hold both the House and the Senate, and given this new wave of anti-DEI backlash, I have no idea if helping HBCUs is the first thing on their minds. HBCU bills seem to be stalling right now, anyway. For example, the past few years have also seen the HBCUs Ignite bill trying to pass, which sought to help repair the crumbling infrastructure of many HBCU buildings and research facilities. Meanwhile, HBCUs and their alumni have often taken to suing states for racial discrimination over lack of equitable funding, which seems to be the only way Black people have been able to achieve any sort of rights in this country. Can you imagine what someone like Ron DeSantis would say if asked to fund HBCUs? DeSantis will say something like blah blah, woke mob, blah blah, DEI. Although he did recently propose giving HBCUs in Florida $10 million to, ironically, help increase security needs as more HBCUs face terror threats. Seems like he’s preparing them for a fight as he continues his anti-DEI crusade.
In thinking about all of this, suddenly, as with most moments of Black sanguinity, I found my hope forcefully put in check. In the midst of this anti-DEI movement, I started thinking about how at-risk HBCUs could become as more organizations openly come out to support them. I can’t imagine the lies, the insidious truths, the loopholes one could pull in the quest to take down HBCUs. I remember years ago in college, I was sitting next to a white boy in my French history class — he was the supposed smartest kid in our class — and he had never even heard of HBCUs. “Wait, Black people have their own colleges? Why?” I remember him asking.
I was so shocked and even surprised that someone had never heard of HBCUs, and it dawned on me that maybe there is an entire segment of this country that not only has no idea what HBCUs are but has no idea what they are even for. When I think about it, I didn’t learn anything about HBCUs growing up in Florida — I knew about them only because I was Black and involved with the local NAACP, and my mom went to one, and well, everyone has heard of Howard, or so I thought. The erasure of HBCUs from the history books plays into the deeper conversation of what happens when you separate or erase African American history from the overall record of this nation. The gap where education should be is instead filled with ignorance, and already, we see that the educated racist class is fighting to keep people untaught because they know it is easy to influence the unlearned to become soldiers in their quest for power. I think of that white boy in my French class often because I imagine the nothingness he must feel when he thinks about HBCUs or the reason they exist. The genuine perplexity expressed in his “Why?” still rattles my brain. Here he was, sitting in a nation built by my ancestor’s blood and bones, and this so-called brilliant mind feigns oblivion.
I worry there are many like him in the world, in positions of power, who don’t know and do not care about the importance of HBCUs. Online, I’ve already started to see some worrying commentary. This week, after another plane debacle, where the doors on a United Boeing flight had a “possible issue,” the anti-DEI crusaders stormed to blame the incident on DEI, arguing that prioritizing safety happened at the expense of hiring more diverse (wink wink, Black) talent. In the midst of that, I saw a tweet to which Elon Musk responded. The tweet said:
The average IQ of USAF pilots is about 120, and the figures I've seen for major airline pilots range from 115 to 130. By contrast, the mean IQ of grads from two of those United Airline HBCU "partners" is about 85 to 90, based on the average SATs at those schools. (The SAT correlates reasonably well with IQ.) To put this into context, the HBCU IQ averages are within 10 points of the threshold for what is considered "borderline intellectual impairment," while the pilots IQ averages are within 10 points of what is considered "intellectually gifted." I'll add that IQ is a well-studied and well-known predictor of job performance, especially for quick-processing and mentally-demanding occupations like major airline pilot.
To which, of course, Elon responds, “It will take an airplane crashing and killing hundreds of people for them to change this crazy policy of DIE..” The account he was talking to replies, “Die with DEI.” I don’t need to break down how racist this interaction is or how racist these conspiracy theories are. Instead, I will fight negativity with something positive. I actually had no idea about the work United was doing until I came across these tweets. Less than 4% of all U.S. airline pilots are Black, and United, in the wake of George Floyd’s murder, launched a program to partner with HBCUs Delaware State, Hampton, and Elizabeth City State University to the next generation of diverse pilots.
“These esteemed colleges and universities will help us meet our commitment to breaking down barriers for women or people of color, and we’re incredibly proud to be the first pilot career development program to partner with HBCUs,” United wrote in a statement back in 2021. Now, I haven’t checked to see how these initiatives are going or how they are faring during The Great Rollback, but there is something quite nice in seeing that United, an airline I associate most with beating the hell out of a man a few years ago, saw and recognized the necessity of further supporting Black academia. I hope others keep realizing this, too.
In a perfect world, where our Black elite class is less worried about trying to please white supremacy, I imagine that no HBCU is struggling with money or opportunities. There are grants and scholarships galore, a plethora of pop culture references with fictional students attending HBCUs as much as they do those fake Ivys; there’s an influx of stories, ideas, and events with top scholars and study abroad programs. I don’t know, I’m just fantasizing here. I never went to an HBCU; I went to a PWI and spent my early newspaper days writing about Black businesses in Los Angeles. Perhaps I’ve always been quite obsessed with these spaces that do not focus on centering Blackness as it relates to white America, where our guards are down, and our conversations are loose and riské. I want to protect them as much as I can, lest that too is taken away. I always say if I had fuck you money, the money billionaires like Jeff Bezos spend on clocks, I would first buy everything from that HBCU x Ralph Lauren collection, then fund a media scholarship at Bethune-Cookman or something and wipe out debt for the girls at Spelman like Robert Smith did for the boys at Morehouse.
But first, I’ll call my congresswoman to ask her to support this Land Grant bill, and then I’ll close my eyes and try to think happy thoughts, only happy thoughts about the possibilities the future might bring. Even though hope is quite far away right now, isn’t it?
🔥Please, Mind My Business🔥
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💫Kitty Talk💫
Here are some interesting articles I’ve read since we last met:
The Guardian, “Colonial past must be in mainstream of UK history, says new English Heritage chief”
The Atlantic, “Skull and Bones and Equity and Inclusion.”
Wall Street Journal, "The Latest Dirty Word in Corporate America: ESG”