Holy cow.
Jamie R. Riley — assistant vice president and dean of students at the University of Alabama — has resigned.
The administrator made his official exit Thursday after hubbub over racial tweets from 2016 and ’17, one excoriating the flag of the United States of America.
In ‘Bama, that doesn’t…fly.
Earlier this week, Breitbart News published the posts. Here’s what they said.
From September 2017:
“The [American flag emoji] flag represents a systemic history of racism for my people. Police are a part of that system. Is it that hard to see the correlation?”
And the following month:
“I’m baffled about how the first thing white people say is, ‘That’s not racist!’ when they can’t even experience racism? You have [zero] opinion!”
So concludes Jamie R. Riley, PhD.
The latter post contained the hashtag #missmewithyourprivilege.
In October of 2016, he asked the webiverse a poignant question:
“Are movies about slavery truly about educating the unaware, or to remind Black people of our place in society?”
Back to present day, on the 5th, school paper The Crimson White quoted Student Government Association Press Secretary Jackson Fuentes as conveying, “For us right now, basically all I can tell you is that the University and Dr. Riley have mutually agreed to part ways. So yeah, that’s true, and we do wish him the best.”
As reported by The Daily Wire, Assistant Director of Strategic Communications Chris Bryant also confirmed with no further information:
“Dr. Jamie Riley has resigned his position at The University of Alabama by mutual agreement. Neither party will have any further comments.”
Jamie is really, really into race.
Before ascending to his until-Thursday position, he served as executive director and COO of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc. and in roles at Johns Hopkins University, The University of California-Berkeley and Morehouse College related to diversity and inclusion.
When the erstwhile Bama man became executive director for Alpha Phi Alpha, the fraternity introduced him, in part, thusly:
Brother Riley has focused his research and administrative practice on addressing the impact of culturally oppressive campus climates on the success of African-American and black male college students attending predominantly white institutions. Jamie’s doctoral dissertation, titled; Racism, Discrimination, and Prejudice: Through the Voices of Black Men on Predominately White College Campuses, investigated the impact of race and racism on African-American and black male students ability to thrive academically, socially, and developmentally.
My, how varied the world can be — in 1991, Michael Jackson gave the world a rap ending with, “I’m not gonna spend my life being a color.”
Some people seem to want to devote the entirety of their lives to that very thing.
-ALEX
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And please follow Alex Parker on Twitter and Facebook.
Thank you for reading! Please sound off in the Comments section below. For iPhone instructions, see the bottom of this page.
If you have an iPhone and want to comment, select the box with the upward arrow at the bottom of your screen; swipe left and choose “Request Desktop Site.” If it fails to automatically refresh, manually reload the page. Scroll down to the red horizontal bar that says “Show Comments.”
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