Dateline: St. Louis. MO
“If my child had prejudice in his head, I'd be ashamed. I would see it as my failure as a parent.”
Salman Rushdie
“Bias and prejudice are attitudes to be kept in hand, not attitudes to be avoided.”
Charles Curtis
In the hashtag# society in which we now reside, social uprisings are known by their #. “#Black Lives Matter” grew from the summer of 2014 Ferguson riots. The catch phrase inflames many whites, liberal and conservative alike. Why? The term “#White Privilege” has come to symbolize the fall of 2015 student uprising at the University of Missouri. The phrase alone can set off a firestorm of protest from offended whites, both liberal and conservative. Why?
To me “Black Lives Matter” does not and never did mean white lives don't matter. It does not and never did mean that only black lives matter. It simply says to someone who feels invisible, “I see you and I value you.”
“White Privilege” I find more difficult to understand and accept. It is more personal and more chaffing upon personal introspection. However, to immediately dismiss it outright has become the accepted strategy of the group I consider today’s most damaging racists - the liberals who run the nation’s institutions of higher education. High ranking college administrators today are caught in the cross hairs of the ugly aftermath of the 2015 University of Missouri and numerous other campus protests across the nation and they don’t like it. Good. Let them squirm.
I have worked in a school district where the most-vile of racial slurs when referring to students of color was used regularly in private conversations amongst both school board members and school administrators. I have worked in a district where the right to wear a confederate flag ball cap in the school building was considered a more valued entitlement than being taught to read. I have as a professional educator been exposed to discriminatory ignorance by those entrusted with running public schools that would warm the wretched heart of the Grand Cyclops of the KKK. However, beyond any shadow cast by a Klansman’s robe, the most racist educational entity I ever worked for was a group that considered themselves a bastion of liberal political correctness and racial inclusion, Fontbonne University in St. Louis, MO.
At Fontbonne University, in the
first decade of the new millennium, a black athlete receiving a diploma was
about as common a finding as a white cornerback in the National Football
League.
In 2006 I started the cross
country and track and field programs at Fontbonne, a small Catholic institution.
In 2007, I recruited two African American track athletes to Fontbonne. Both
young men were very talented and would have immediately made a major impact on
the national level in NCAA Division III track and field. Neither had the high
school academic achievement level of standards to get through the NCAA’s
Clearing House, a mandatory requirement to accept an athletic scholarship at a
larger Division I school. This was the only reason they were not running in a
major college program. For sure, they were both fast enough.
As a NCAA Division III university
Fontbonne could not give athletic scholarships, thus neither runner would have
to certify through the clearing house. I strung together a combination of
federal grants and loans to get them to St. Louis and enrolled. I found both
jobs bagging groceries at a market near campus. I assisted them in finding
affordable off campus housing.
Both young men came from the
Mississippi River Delta area of West Memphis, AR; a vastly different cultural
background than the large majority of Fontbonne students. I was assured by the
track coach and the principal at their high school that both were of good
character. What I am offering, I told both, is a chance. One made a 22-hour bus
ride to St. Louis with all of his worldly possessions in a tattered back pack,
arriving on campus sight unseen. “I got to make it here,” he told me when I
picked him up at the downtown bus station, “because I got nowhere else to go.”
Two weeks after the fall 2007
arrival on campus of these two young men, they came to me upset and ready to
quit school and go home. They complained to me that they were being singled out
and treated differently than other students. When on our campus, they felt
unfairly labeled as trouble. Neither lived in the dorms, but when they would
visit friends who did, the Resident Assistants would tell them to leave or security
would be called to have them removed. They had both been threatened with arrest
on multiple occasions.
The two athletes claimed that
their behavior when on campus was appropriate, but had been told that dorm
residents, especially female residents, were “uncomfortable” with their
presence. They related to me that white visitors were never asked to leave,
disregarding and despite the constant overt (drunken) actions of many of these
white non-residents, behaviors in obvious violation of dorm rules. “All we are
doing is hanging with friends between classes,” one told me.After I confirmed with other students – both white and black - who lived in the dorm in question that this type of unfair treatment of these two young men was indeed occurring, I requested a meeting with the Dean of Students and the Dorm Supervisor. They invited one of their flunkies, whose title was Head Resident Assistant, to join us.
At the beginning of our meeting,
it was made very clear to me by the Dean of Students, and angrily so, that no
one on the dorm staff was a racist and no student would ever be treated in a
negative way based on their race or appearance. This was before the particulars
of concerns of these two young men had even been addressed or discussed.
Paul Pendler
and Phillip Beverly co-authored “The Racism Root Kit: Understanding the
Insidiousness of White Privilege.” In their work they identify the defensiveness
that this liberal Dean was now using to stonewall my inquiry into what was to
me obvious racist behavior on the part of the University staff. The authors hit
below the liberal belt: “This response to confrontation happens all the time. A white person reminds
black people that they personally owned no slaves, their relative marched with
Dr. King, and they were into NWA before they got big - so obviously they're in
the clear regarding racism. Defensiveness is intended to end the discussion,
absolve him or her, and quiet accusations surrounding white privilege.”
This is a perfect description of the rhetorical brick wall I had just hit
with Ms. Liberal Dean. There is a problem when those who proudly and loudly
declare themselves the champions of racial benevolence, then hide from it when
it hits home, where it really counts and where they can really do something
about it.
When I asked the three what the
two black students had done to receive such a harsh unwelcome, I was told “they
make some of the (white) girls uncomfortable.”
I asked how? I was told one of
the girls heard a rumor that one of these two athletes had stolen an IPod at an
off campus party. I was shocked. That was it? That was the justification for
being ordered to leave university property or face arrest? The Head Resident Assistant told me, “they
don’t fit in here,” and “they don’t belong here.” I found hard to believe that
any educational leader in the 21st century would be dumb enough to state this –
even if they believed it. It only got worse.
I was told by the mid -20ish Head Resident Assistant that he had turned me in to the University’s Athletic Director for an NCAA rules violation for paying for the lunch of one of these young men. I denied paying for any athlete’s lunch and asked where he got this information. He proceeded to tell me that he watched this particular young man every day when he went through the cafeteria line, and twice he had seen him not pay for his meal and later he had seen me go through the line and assumed I had paid for both mine and the athlete’s lunch bill. He turned this “information” over to the Athletic Director to “protect this institution.”
This explained an earlier meeting
I had endured with an angry Athletic Director who told me it was “all over
campus that you have broken NCAA rules” in order to recruit athletes of this
caliber. He didn’t say “black” athletes, but we both knew whom he was referring
to.
The Head Resident Assistant also
confirmed that he watched me every time I ate lunch, when the black athletes I
coached were present, to see if and how much I was paying when I handed over
money to the cashier. This young man, who had majored in Theatre as an
undergrad at a $50,000 a year private college, proceed to lecture me that, “You
have to understand how to handle these types.”What an ass.
I angrily confronted him, “You
watch every student and coach who goes through the line, or just the black kids
and the coaches who have black kids on their teams?” Although unanswered, his biased
assumption was crystal clear: black city kids couldn’t afford to pay for their
own lunch, especially if they also happen to be good athletes.
Due to this clandestine
operation, I now had a firsthand understanding of the hostility these two young
men felt when on the University’s campus. I seldom - if it could be at all
avoided - ever ate in that cafeteria again. I felt uncomfortable knowing that a
Head Resident Assistant, obviously dripping with white privilege, who had
anointed himself as head of the University’s NCAA compliance efforts in regard
to its black athletes; was staring suspiciously at me as I ate my lunch. I informed the Dean of Students that I was appalled at what I had just heard and now held a certainty that these two young men were being subjected to a hostile environment based upon their skin color. I informed her that if they were, “two of my white cross country runners from the suburbs, instead of two kids with dreadlocks from the inner city, we would not be having this discussion about their presence making white girls uncomfortable, nor would they be ‘eyeballed’ in the cafeteria to ensure NCAA compliance.”
Unleashed was a fury I had not
anticipated. I was immediately told that my comments were “personally
insulting” to her (the Dean). She made not one inquiry of the ass sitting right
next to her as to why these young men were being subjected to this type of special
scrutiny and treatment, nor what could be done to make them feel less harassed
and more at ease on campus; only that she was insulted. I told her that with
all due respect I really didn’t care if she took my words as a personal affront
or not, my concern was for my athletes and how they were being treated.
At the time of our meeting, the
Jena Six situation in Louisiana, where six young African American males had
been charged with assaulting a white student and were given what many felt were
disproportionate punishments based on their race, was a hot issue on college
campuses across the nation. Student organization on the Fontbonne campus had taken
up the call for support. “Free the Jena Six” posters and t-shirts were all the
rage in the dorms and on campus bulletin boards. A poster even hung on the wall
in the Dean’s Office where we met on that afternoon. Never one smart enough to
know when to quit, while leaving her office at the conclusion of our meeting, I
fired one final parting shot across the bow, “maybe instead of worrying about
the Jena Six, we ought to take a look at what is happening right here on our
own campus,” I said. Needless to say, that comment did not endear me any to
this now “insulted” Dean. As we walked across the parking lot back to his office, the Athletic Director told me “you are in her sights now and she is ruthless. Watch your back because no one else here has it.”
The entire meeting was, to say
the least, disconcerting.
Shortly after my meeting with the
Dean, I received a letter from the Athletic Director informing me that I had
made false statements in regard to the treatment of minority athlete. If I did
not cease, I was told, my job would be in jeopardy. The AD signed the letter, but
I suspected who had written it, his immediate supervisor, my friend, the Dean
of Students. The AD did not deny my assumption.I did not “cease”, instead I took the issue one step further, ratcheting up the stakes.
My research showed that not one black recruited athlete had graduated from Fontbonne University in at least 8 years. Being a small university and athletic department, it was not hard to get access to the records I needed to back this claim: past team rosters, current enrollment status and graduation lists. My co-conspirators included a couple of other coaches in the Athletic Department. We counted almost 100 black athletes who had entered as freshman over the last 8 years and had been listed on athletic rosters, but were no longer enrolled in the university and/or had never received a diploma.
I forwarded my findings to both
the Athletic Director and a very irritated Dean of Students. I asked for a
meeting with both. The Dean of Students refused to meet with me. Instead, I
received another letter threatening termination. The AD told me that my
research was flawed, that some black athletes had graduated in recent years.
“Bull shit,” I said. I asked for names.
We will get you a list, I was told. I never did get a list. I informed the AD
that he had on his hands the making of a PR nightmare for a liberal urban
university. “This is being said as a friend,” he told me, “you better back
off.”
Over the next six months I initiated
meetings with the minority placement office, the admissions office, the highest
ranking black administrator on campus and the academic dean; in an attempt to
set up a program of mentoring to help our minority student-athletes. I pleaded
for not only academic support for the black athletes, but also social support;
try to make them feel welcome here, I suggested. This was all done on a very
low key and quiet basis. I wanted no credit or role in running any such
program. To the contrary, my research was overwhelming in that for these types
of minority mentoring programs to succeed they had to be led by minority role
models. I can help, I offered, but I cannot lead.
I sent the following memo to the
highest ranking black administrator on campus. She had over 20-years tenure at
the university. I hoped her longevity would give her the security to help me
rock the boat. I had also developed the opinion, from discussing this issue
with her, that she was one of the few listening. I have eradicated identifiable
personal information.
From: Dave Almany Sent: Sunday, May 17, 2009 11:30 PM
To: Subject: African American Academics
Hi
Now that track is over and I have had a chance to catch my breath, I want to revisit an issue I brought up last fall, the lack of graduation of African American athletes at Fontbonne. No one I have talked to, including AD , can remember the last time a black athlete received a diploma from this institution. I know of none in the five years I have been around here. I think that should be an embarrassment to us as coaches. I have attached the data I compiled first semester on my 39 recruits from my first two years here. The disparity is dismal and to deny its existence is putting your head in the sand. 73% of the African American Athletes I have recruited have been declared ineligible due to poor academic performance.
I don’t feel it is ethical for us to continue to recruit African American athletes when none of them graduate. To have these students take out huge loans and then cast them aside with nothing to show for their time and money, then bring in new batch every year is what I see has been happening. The Administration is not happy with me for bringing this issue up, but it is what it is and should be a major concern of the athletic department; and I am not going to drop it.
The research I have done has three consistent themes for successful tutorial programs for African American athletes in predominantly white universities.
1) It needs to
be led by an African American (upperclassman or professional) that can serve as
a role model to incoming freshman and transfer students. The research is pretty
clear, that for someone like me to try to lead such a program does not work.
This White Shadow stuff doesn’t cut it. I have four young men that I recruited
to Fontbonne that will be either juniors or seniors next academic year and all
are on course to graduate
.
have spoken to and and would be interested in
serving as tutors to incoming freshman and transfer African American
athletes. Unfortunately, I have not been able to keep a female black
athlete around long enough to have any upperclassman females; yet.
2) The program
needs to be one on one and very study specific. In other words: “You have a
test tomorrow in Government. Bring your study guide and class notes and let’s
study the material you will be tested over”; as opposed to a freshman seminar
type of “so how is school going”. Opening a book and staring at it for two
hours like our attempts at Athlete Study Halls, is a waste of time and I am
glad it finally was laid to rest.
3) The program
must also address social issues. I really see that as a problem at Fontbonne,
even with the kids who live in the dorms. I know with she really felt out of
place. She was always alone. She has recently become friends with several of
the girls on the track team in the last month and I have seen a real change for
the better in her demeanor. She has been much more upbeat. She was
hanging by a thread emotionally last winter. She has a boyfriend on campus now
as well. Great kid. If you are not socially adjusted and happy, you are
not going to reach your maximum level, I don’t care where you go to school. And
I think that is a big problem with our African American athletes here. They
will tell you, if you ask them, that they do not feel connected.
My Masters and Specialist Degrees were both in Curriculum and
Instruction so I have a real interest in learning styles. I don't need to be
the point man on this, but I would be glad to try and help set up the
learning and instruction areas as a model for next fall. The social
issues, I would leave to someone else’s expertise.
Let me know what you think.
Dave Almany
Head Men’s and Women’s Track/CC Coach
I was working at Fontbonne for beer money and in a normal year spent more money out of my own pocket on uniforms and meals for our kids than what my salary totaled. For me this gig was for fun and a nice tax write off. Colleagues I was now asking to join me in this controversial crusade would be risking their jobs and their futures. Most balked at getting involved. I understood why.
The highest ranking black administrator on campus finally made me realize I was tilting at windmills. At an off campus Applebee’s lunch we shared she told me, “Dave, I admire what you are doing, or at least trying to do, but you are wasting your time. They just don’t get it here and they are never going to admit they just don’t get it or that they have a problem. I have been here a long time and I have learned to settle for small victories. I have watched this for years and nobody sees that we have a problem. I am two years from retirement.”
Finally, feed up and frustrated, I informed both the Dean of Students and the Athletic Director that my intent was to stop recruiting African American athletes to Fontbonne University. I felt it unethical to encourage these students to take out student loans when past performance showed they had little or no chance of ever graduating from a University that refused to acknowledge or address this problem. I was told by the AD I was racist. To the contrary, I countered, I am a realist. “You do nothing to help these kids,” I said. “So, I refuse to be a part of any further exploitation of minority students. You put in place the programs these kids need to survive here and I will start again to recruit African-American students. Until then, I will be the only track coach in the nation who will have an all-white track team by university design.”
I was sent to meet with the
University Vice President who informed me that Fontbonne had been a long safe
haven of enlightenment for St. Louis area black college students. “Have you
seen our Options Program,” he asked me? “See how many black residents we have
taken off the street?” Options was a mostly off campus and on line program that
the University marketed to working adults, most of them African-Americans. The
curriculum was notorious for its simplicity. The few blacks who were on campus
during the day as traditional college students scoffed at the Options program
as a watered down form of apartheid education.
One of my black runners who lived
on campus as a traditional student told me, “they don’t want us up here on the
main campus but they brag about all the blacks in the Options Program. It is a
joke and the classes are a joke. The degrees they give out are a joke. I want
an education, not just a diploma. I want to learn. The attitude of Options is
to make black enrollment look good on the books but keep all those with color
out of sight of the regular students. Go down to the (off campus) Options
Center on Big Bend some night around 8 pm and tell me it don’t look like a
Tarzan movie.”
“Suppose we expose you to the
media as a racist coach who will not recruit blacks,” the AD asked me? “Suppose
I tell them why,” I countered. “I don’t care about making a political
statement. I have tried to work low key on this problem and all I get from
these overpaid assholes over in that Administration building is ‘quit rocking
the boat or else’ memos. You want to fire me, fire me.”
For the sake of transparency, I
will admit with 20/20 hindsight, that I went out of my way to irritate my
friend in the Dean’s Office. It took her a while to get the knife sharp enough,
but that spring Fontbonne did fire me; or at least tried to.
It blew up in their face.
In a mere four years we had from
scratch built a track program that had won two consecutive conference
championships. A winning team in any sport was and is to this day a rarity at
Fontbonne. More impressive than our running performance were the people who
wore our uniforms; forty student-athletes with strong character and convictions.
The best students on this campus were my athletes; the scholars and the leaders,
a group I was defiantly proud of - not a group for the meek or simple to trifle
with, as they would soon prove.
Fontbonne loved to fire coaches
with a small part of the season left and then not pay them the remainder of their
season’s salary. Earlier in the week of my demise the peerless paragons who ran
this circus had fired in mid-contract the women’s soccer coach and the women’s
lacrosse coach. Neither dismissal raised even a ripple of discontent from their
athletes. So why not just add one more scalp to the lance, they must have
figured? It would make a suitable ending for a good week of hunting and save a
little money.
On a beautiful early spring
Friday afternoon, I was told by a very unpleasant bumbling and blathering lady
from Human Resources that I was being terminated for violating “Fontbonne
polices.” There was no appeal, she said, the decision was final and I would not
be paid the remaining 3 months of my contract (I was making the whopping sum of
$10,000 a year – cheap bastards). The AD sat next to me the whole time with his
eyes downcast, like a man who knew his head was next on the chopping block. At
the time, strangely, I remember feeling more pity for him than I did anger at
the fools running this University, who in one afternoon had destroyed what it
took us four years to build.
I asked for specifics of policies
I have violated. I was told by Ms. HR that the previous weekend an accident at
an indoor track meet with a school rental van had occurred. I was told I had
allowed an assistant coach to transport students in the school rental van.
Fontbonne policy, she smugly told me, states that only the person whose name is
on the rental company contract can drive the van. She had discovered the name
on the wrecked van’s lease was mine but I had not been the driver listed on the
accident report. “Now isn’t that right, David,” she smugly informed me as she
moved in for the final kill? Well, I replied, as she waited for me to climb the
steps to the gallows, “then we always violate this policy because the Athletic
Department Secretary makes the arrangement with the rental company when we rent
two vans, as we do for all trips, and she has for four years always lists my
name for both vehicles. So, you people have thought for the past four years I
was driving both vans at the same time? After gunning for me for so long, this
is the best you can come up with,” I asked mockingly?
“First, no one but my mother
calls me David. Second, I would love to see this ‘violation of Fontbonne
policy,’ whatever the hell that is, defended in court,” I said as I stood to
leave. I parted with a prediction I would have bet my life on; “But I don’t’ think
it will come to that, because lady you might have already thrown two coaches
under the bus this week, but you are screwing with the wrong team this time. You
have no idea of the huge shit storm that is getting ready to hit this campus.”My faith in my kids was validated when simultaneously across campus, as a team, all 40 walked out of a meeting with the Dean, the University Vice President and a couple of lower level athletic department members. The meeting was called to inform the track team of my termination and to assure them, that although the college was not at the liberty to explain why, that my removal was being done for “your protection.” My athletes in unison stormed out with a promise of imminent campus protest and a mass transfer by the entire team, as well as a request from our team bad boy that the University Vice President, “shove it up your ass, buddy.”
Both high ranking officials sat
open mouthed, I was told later by another coach who was there, as $1,000,000 of
tuition over a four-years period walked right out the front door. That got the
attention of the University President, who knew nothing of my termination. A
deluge of e-mails and phone calls that evening from my athletes and their
parents clued him in even further. The President spoke by phone with our team captain,
who was also student body president, and ask that everyone calm down. He was
flying in from Boston that night and would first thing in the morning, he
promised, find out what was going on.
I had always found the President
of the University to be a fair man and one who had been very supportive of both
our program’s success and the quality of student-athletes we had brought onto
his small campus. When I was finally allowed to state to him directly my
concerns with black athlete graduation rates and the lack of support within the
school for them and that this policy violation charge was a mere smoke screen to
railroad me for not caving in, I had finally found a sympathetic ear. I received a call at home that next morning, a Saturday, from a friend who was a janitor in the Administration Hall. “Man, the President has had ‘em all in his office for a half an hour and you can hear him chewing ass all over the building. Man, you got ‘em stirred up this time, brother, for sure.”
Later that afternoon, I was contacted by the head of the Human Resources Department. She was very congenial, as least as compared to our initial meeting the day before. I was told that my termination had been a “miscommunication.” Of course my concerns were very important to the University and had of course now been heard and noted. I complimented her dedication indicative of her working on this beautiful spring Saturday.
I was asked to come in for
another meeting. On a Monday morning I was presented with a letter that I was
told I would have to sign stating that I had intentionally violated University
policy, “then we can get you back to your team.” I am not signing this because
it is not true, I said. “No problem,” I was told, “we will just take that part
out. See how easy we are to work with. Good luck with the rest of your season.”
We all stood, dropped our guns
and shook hands. All we were now lacking was a warm group hug to the back
ground strings of “Don’t Worry, Be Happy.”
So, in true Alice in Wonderland
fashion, I went back to practice that Monday evening as if nothing had really
happened at my Friday “miscommunication” hearing, life now back to normal.
I told the President that
afternoon in an e-mail, “I have never been prouder of a group than I am of the
40 athletes who today represent Fontbonne’s Cross Country and Track teams.
Their reaction to the difficult circumstances of the last weekend is proof
positive of their character, their faith, and most importantly, their commitment
to truth and justice. They have done themselves, their parents and this
University proud. It is an honor for me
to say I have brought these individuals to this campus.”
When I walked into practice that
evening my kids gave me an ovation. Not a word was said, there was no need. I
have never cried in public; not at a funeral, a wedding, a sad movie; not at an
awards assembly, after a tough loss, a big win; never. That evening I almost
did, but I hid it damn well.
I stayed at FU, as we aptly liked
to call it, one more year. My friend the Dean was retired shortly after. My
kids are all doing great as they transition into adult roles. We still get
together a couple of times a year. We have some great stories to reminisce on. I
am very proud of all of them.
Herein lays the real problem with
the liberal hypocrites who run modern higher education: The “good ole boy” red
neck who yells racial slurs as he drives by in his pickup truck slobbering his
tobacco chew is a fool, but a dying breed with no real standing in today’s
society, a fading powerless outcast. But, to bring students of color into a
higher education setting such as the leaders of Fontbonne University did, then
to stand ideally by as they fail in unison while doing nothing to either
acknowledge or address the problem, is subtler, but so much more damaging a form
of racism.
The liberal college administrators
of today have the power to bring about positive racial change on our college campuses,
but by refusing to acknowledge the racism that festers right outside their wood
paneled offices, they fail those of color who struggle in an alien environment.
Call it White Privilege if you wish, but by any name it is a form of racism
much more damaging to the soul of a society than a confederate flag flying dumb
ass yelling racial slurs.
Both of the young black men from
Arkansas whom I had recruited to Fontbonne returned to their homes at the
Christmas break of their freshman year, 2007. Neither ever came onto our campus
again. I cannot say I blame them.
I don’t know if Fontbonne
University ever did improve on the graduation rates of its’ black athletes. I
hope they have. However, I am sure their liberal leaders still hang diversity
posters all over their beautifully manicured tree lined campus, finding
contentment in the righteousness of the enlightened few, those born of
privilege.
