Tulane University’s Black Student Union (BSU) has joined the growing list of those demanding the payment of reparations to the descendants of slaves — with a twist. The activist group also demands that the university provide funding to track down the descendants — and toss in free tuition and room and board for good measure.
As the BSU sees it, reparations are justified because Tulane University was built on land that was originally used as a plantation. Hence, the BSU rationalizes, university administrators should track down the descendants of slaves who worked on the “Tulane plantation” — more than 200 years ago — and pony up reparations, tuition, and more.
The BSU issued its demands in an Instagram post, which reads, in part:
We demand that Tulane allocates funding to track down the descendants of the enslaved people who labored at the Tulane plantation and offer them full tuition and room and board scholarships that include a living stipend each semester of attendance at Tulane.
Tulane must first acknowledge the trauma it has inflicted on black community members. It is Tulane’s responsibility to recognize their longstanding history of racism and take actionable steps to reconcile those practices.
Got it. Full tuition, room, and board, and a “living stipend.” What else? As reported by The Washington Free Beacon, the BSU’s demands for payment are not limited to the descendants of slaves.
The group also said the university must offer financial assistance to students who suffered “emotional damage and trauma” by the on-campus presence of the “Victory Bell” after the university discovered in February that it was used to direct the movement of enslaved Africans in 1825.
The 1960s-era campus landmark — dubbed the McAlister slave bell by activists — was removed after the university discovered its ties to slavery. The group now demands reparations and apologies from past Tulane presidents — dead or alive — who allowed the bell to represent the campus.
Given that dead presidents cannot apologize for anything, the BSU demands that relatives of deceased Tulane presidents apologize in their stead, including to all black alumni and the current student body.
We demand reparations for the emotional damage and trauma of the McAlister slave bell due to racist tradition of touching the bell for ‘good luck’ for generations.
We demand every living president of Tulane University since the bell was obtained, or a relative of the presidents if deceased, apologize to their black alumni and current student body for their negligence in addressing the slave bell’s history.
“With Radical Love.” How peaceful.
The BSU cited several other black organizations with which it “stands in solidarity,” adding that the following groups have provided statements that are included in its list of demands.
- the Black Queer Collective (@blackqueercollective)
- the National Society for Black Engineers (@tulanensbe)
- the Alliance of Black Business Students (@tuabbs)
- the African American Women’s Society (@aaws_tu)
In addition, the BSU asked individuals and organizations alike to fire off emails to university officials, the Board of Trustees, and others, explaining (“justifying”) why its list of demands is legit. “We do not want reform,” the activist group said, “we want revolution.”
“We’re all in this together.” Not so much.
At least as Tulane senior and Libertarian activist Rachel Altman sees it, the BSU’s demands smack of authoritarianism — North Korea style. Altman told the Free Beacon, in part:
“I think it would be very hard to find a consistent policy for offering reparations to the students for emotional trauma because it is so easy to falsify and it is so hard to quantify.
Personally, I don’t think that it’s reasonable to expect the relatives of people who apparently were complicit in something to apologize for it. That’s what’s done in North Korea, not the United States. That is absolutely a culture of authoritarianism.”
In addition, Altman said, the playing of the “bigot card” by the BSU and others is subjective. The Libertarian also shared a few thoughts on the popular notion on the Left that capitalism is “racist.”
“We know that the left has a habit of calling things bigoted that is very subjective … and what they consider ‘bigoted’ can change day to day. So, unless there’s a consistent policy for how they’re going to enforce that or how they’re going to define bigotry, it can be used to suppress the speech of conservative and libertarian students.
I’ve seen many of my peers sharing these graphics from social media saying that capitalism itself is racist and patriarchal and bigoted. I refuse to accept a policy that will shut down my speech if I’m advocating for capitalism.”
Obviously, “he” (I) opined, not all student activists march to the beat of the same drummer. Speaking of different drummers, as we reported in August 2019, former NAACP Assistant Director Michael Meyers told Fox News host Dana Perino that the demand for reparations to the descendants of slaves is nothing more a “scam.”
“My position is that this reparations debate is old. It’s passe. It’s a scam. It’s a hustle. It was brought up in the 1960s by people who wanted reparations from the churches. And then again from political leaders, from government. It’s fake.
I remember in 1990, there was a ‘million youth’ march in Harlem. There weren’t a million people there. Reparations — they call for reparations. They had maybe 20, 25 people there.”
Meyers was right, of course — particularly as it relates to the Democrat Party. While black activist groups and others — in the wake of George Floyd’s death — have rekindled the demand for reparations, Democrats for decades have supported the “hustle,” as Meyers calls it.
Shocked? Me, neither.
Anything and everything Democrats propose or oppose can be connected to the ballot box with no more than two dots.
After all, the Democrat Party has been exploiting black America for nearly sixty years. More than $33 trillion (and counting) later, Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty has only served to exacerbate the problems Democrats have told blacks for six decades it would rectify.
The bottom line:
Unwittingly or otherwise, the Tulane University Black Student Union is simply another useful tool of the Democrat Party. And what a target-rich environment post-George-Floyd America has become for the Left.
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