BIN Daily Podcast. March 1, 2023

Howard University made news this week when a White student sued the University for 2 million dollars over claims of racial discrimination after being expelled from the HU law school. Host Ramses Ja offers his thoughts on this topic in today's edition of "One More Thing". 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
That this is the Black Information Network Daily Podcast and
I am your host, Ramsy's Jah. And sometimes the amount
of stories that make their way to us means that
we simply can't cover everything that comes our way. But
from time to time, a story just stays with me
and I feel compelled to share it with you and
give you my thoughts. And now one more thing. All right,

(00:33):
So today I got a weird one for you. No
news clip today. I'm just going to be reading an article.
This comes from newsbreak dot com and it cites the
New York Post. So headline reads, white student sues historically

(00:54):
black college Howard University for two million dollars over racial discrimnation.
How about that? Now, in order for me to paint
this picture I'm going to be reading, I want you
to know at advance that I am not going to
read the whole article. I'm going to read different paragraphs
that I feel paint the picture. But please do me

(01:15):
a favor. Check this out once again New York Post
or newsbreak dot com to get the full story. I
don't mean to misrepresent what's being said here, but it's
pretty lengthly. So we'll start a white student at Howard
university's law school is suing the institution for racial discrimination,
alleging the school created a quote hostile education environment unquote.

(01:39):
Michael Newman, the plaintiff, attended Howard University School of Laws
starting in the fall semester of twenty twenty and remained
there for just two years until he was expelled in
September twenty twenty two, is seeking two million dollars in
monetary damages for quote pain, suffering, emotional anguish, and damage
to his reputation unquote. Rank Trambell, vice President and chief

(02:00):
Communications officer for Howard University, said that while he could
not comment substantively due to penning a litigation, the university
is quote prepared to vigorously defend itself in this lawsuit,
as the claims provide a one sided and self serving
narrative of the events leading to the end of the
student's enrollment at the university. Following discussions of Newman's purported

(02:21):
racial insensitivity, students learned of a tweet from Newman's private
Twitter account that included a picture of a slave bearing
his badly scarred back, with the caption but we don't
know what he did before the picture was taken this.
According to the lawsuit, Newman tried to remedy the situation
by sending out a four part letter explaining his views,

(02:42):
but the effort was labored a quote manifesto, with one
student accusing him of quote manipulating classmates emotions as a
social experiment unquote. The lawsuit said the letters allegedly resulted
in Newman's removal from a second class wide group chat.
So that is the long and the short of it.

(03:04):
Of course, mister Newman has a different take on what happened,
and of course he says that he meant things differently.
And I just allow me to give you a couple

(03:25):
of examples, and this, I know I'm not reading from
the article, but he said that when he posted the
picture of the slave with the whipped up back. You
know the picture. I'm sure you've seen it as many
times as I have. It's a black and white photo.
It's a thick scars all across an enslaved man's back.
He says that he was trying to suggest by saying,

(03:50):
we don't know what he did before the picture was taken,
that that is the type of rhetoric and the defense
strategy of folks who say in response to you police
videos showing police brutality and police shootings to the folks
that say, well, we don't know what he did before

(04:10):
the police got to him or before the video picks up.
So you know, he's trying to say, hey, this was
my way of mocking that group. I wasn't trying to
mock black people. And you know, there's a few other
things where he has his version of events and it
was either taken out of context or misunderstood or whatever.

(04:32):
This is what he's saying, and that the university and
the students' response to him has caused him this mental
anguish and so forth, and caused him to feel like
he was discriminated against. Hence a two million dollar lawsuit
against Howard University. So this one was a little strange,
and there is no wonder to talk about. It is

(04:53):
because there's something here about how some white folks come
down from the mountain and interact with black folks and

(05:13):
they are well intentioned, and they have good hearts and
they mean no harm, and yet it ends up being
a catastrophe. And I think that these are situations that
we need to examine critically because the motivation, the intention
is often good. You know, folks want to be good

(05:39):
and be allies and that sort of stuff, and they
just don't have a clear framework of what that looks
like and an operational framework in terms of how to
behave and like I said, they end up messing things
up for themselves and the folks around them. So how
does that happen? Well, I don't know if this particular

(06:04):
instance is him being well intentioned, although that's what I'm
going to assume, or if this is simply a matter
of play stupid games, win stupid prizes. On the story.
On its face, you have a white man going to
historically black college and you know, trying to educate people, right.

(06:30):
You know, there's there's other examples in this article, and
I want you to read him where he was asking
questions and saying, well, why why are black people voting
this way? And you know this sort of thing, right,
And you know how you ask questions and kind of
the answer is in the question, so you're not really
asking it. You're more kind of pointing it out under

(06:54):
the guise of asking a question. So it's this sort
of energy and this sort of behavior that I'm sensing
from this student through the article. That I'm reading again,
might have a good heart, might be well intentioned, but
there's something that he doesn't seem to be fully tapped

(07:15):
in with. And this is something that may come up
again in your life. Has certainly come up in my
life sort of a recurring theme. I know of it
to be called white savior complex. And in short, what
that means is that if a white person shows up

(07:38):
in a black space to stand in solidarity with black people,
they show up very much with a sense of entitlement.
Is almost an arrogance. Doesn't happen all the time, but
it does happen a lot, and they are there to
save the day, and then they're not aware of it.

(08:01):
You know. It's not like someone goes into it's like, yeah,
I'm going to save all the all the black folks.
They just show up and they think because they've seen
all the movies and the hero looks like them, or
how whatever conditioning that has taken place in these folks lives.
You know, they're they're often centered in every room they
go in that as a race, they're the the main character,

(08:23):
if you will, in their own stories. So they show
up and feel like the best way that they can
contribute is by being the center of attention, the decide,
or the leader. Right. Couple of this with the masculine

(08:45):
propensity to behave in a very similar manner with respect
to women, you often end up with white men behaving
in a way that is very off putting, and oftentimes
they don't even know it because they think they're helping.
We saw this during the Me Too movement. It's a

(09:06):
great example and a great guide post for you know,
progress that we all can refer back to. There were
lots of men trying to help women, trying to help
by suggesting how women should go about creating the professional

(09:29):
world in which they wanted to work and women many
women push back against that, and I understand why women
are intelligent enough to be self determined to write their
own stories, to define an outline and articulate what it

(09:51):
is that they want, and they don't need a male
leader to do that for them. In fact, the very
notion of it is insulted. Far be it for me
to speak for women. But this is my understanding of
the general reaction to men man splaining proper tactics that

(10:13):
women should adopt to bring about the changes that they wanted.
During the me Too movement. So similarly, we have a
situation again with mister Newman here, who shows up and
is involved in very very important, meaningful conversations at indeed

(10:35):
Howard University. I'm now, I want to make sure that
I'm being very clear. I'm not saying that white folks
shouldn't go to HBCUs. In fact, I was just at
Norfolk State and I saw, of course most of the
people they were black. It is an HBCU, but many
folks there are not black, and everybody seems to get

(10:56):
along just fine. And I love that. You know, it's
not unlike being afforded an exchange student. It's not unlike
you know, what many folks do to expand their horizons
in their viewpoints. So I love the idea of it
on its face, but we have to remember that a

(11:17):
lot of times the folks who have been centered to
the majority of their life, they show up and they
think that they got the answers to all the problems,
and they don't often recognize how insulting and how hurtful
just their very positions can be. And you know, this
is a student, but you have to ask the question, yo, man,

(11:39):
did you did you go here to learn or did
you go here to teach? Because learning is sitting down,
shutting your mouth and listening. And again, the energy that
I got from the readings that I've done on mister
Newman suggests that he was not quite the air with

(12:02):
a humble enough attitude to really receive the instruction and
the information that would have been necessary to avoid all
of this. In my estimation, I believe Howard has a
pretty solid case. Now we know that learning is listening,

(12:27):
and we know that white folks have not been in
this position before. There's not never been in time, you know,
in the history of this country where white people have
had to learn from black people. Of course, there's been
a handful of white people who have listened and reluctantly

(12:48):
granted what we would call progress at different points in
you know, this American timeline, but in terms of white
people in mass learning from black folks, this is a
very new things. So for the student to show up
thinking that he has the solutions to Black America's problems,

(13:13):
he ends up in a in a bad space, in
a bad way, and the students, it appears, reacted accordingly,
and the faculty, in order to keep the peace had
to do what they had to do in order to
make sure that they prioritized having a an environment conducive
to educating their students. But the fact is, we're all

(13:39):
learning as we go, and sometimes the lessons we're learning
are difficult, which results in stories like the one we're
talking about now. So I'd love to get your thoughts
on this as always, So again, you can find the

(14:01):
full reading at newsbreak dot com or on the New
York Post and let me know what you think. I'd
like for you to know the same things that I
know so that we can have this conversation. I never

(14:23):
profess to be right, but at least on this version
of the show, oftentimes I have a bit of perspective
that is left out of the narrative. So again, let's
talk about it. Use the red microphone talk back feature
on the iHeartRadio app. Of course, you can hit me
at Ramsy's job on all social media and until you

(14:45):
do peace. This has been a production of the Black
Information Network. Today's show is produced by Chris Thompson. Have
some thoughts you'd like to share, use the red microphone
talkback feature on the iHeartRadio app. While you're there, be
sure to hit subscribe and download all of our episodes.
I'm your host, ramsas Jah on all social media. Join
us tomorrow as we share our news with our voice

(15:07):
from our perspective right here on the Black Information Network
Daily Podcast