Another Racial Blunder for UMass Boston's Leaders

The harder they try, the harder they fail, and we're here for it!

Our Supreme Leaders have been trying so so so hard to show how anti-racist they are. They set up an honorary George Floyd fellowship! They have a Black lives matter day! They have a special assistant to the Chancellor for black lives! They put anti-racism at the front and center of everything they say and do!

And yet, the harder our Supreme Leaders try to perform anti-racism, the faster and stronger it comes back to bite them in the ass. It makes the Flickering Beacon happy. 

Case in point: UMass Boston’s embattled Africana Studies department has been embroiled in a fight with the administration as far back as any of us can remember - even longer than the current administration. The latest problems involve tenure track searches that were cancelled by the administration midway through, the removal of the department chair by the administration, and the reduction of the faculty headcount to 1.5 full time equivalent. And this is just the tip of the iceberg.

As a result, and instead of being grateful for our Leaders' incessant attempts to show what great white saviors they are, three Africana Studies professors filed a complaint with the Massachusetts commission against discrimination (MCAD), alleging that UMass Boston has been racially biased, has been hostile toward their department, and has repeatedly intimidated and retaliated against its faculty for calling out structural racism at the school. “The hostility is not bearable,” said one of them. Another professor said that: “Now [administrators] don't talk to us. ... I used to text and call, have open doors. They hardly acknowledge me in the hallway.”

The three even lawyered up and will go to court if nothing comes out of their MCAD complaint.

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We at the Flickering Beacon are all for it. Way to go, gentlemen. Any enemy of our Leaders is a friend of ours. Our politics may differ, but the one thing we wholeheartedly agree on is that their anti-racism charade is just a show. And not a very good one at that.

On the other hand, y’all are not as special as you think. Our illustrious Leaders also treat us at the overwhelmingly white and Asian college of Science and Math with unbearable hostility, don’t invest in us and never talk to us either. It’s just how they roll.

But we still wish you good luck, if only to expose another piece of our Leaders’ hypocrisy.