UNC-Nikole Hannah-Jones: They’re coming for you, too

UNC-Chapel Hill has sullied its reputation again, this time by giving into white conservative fears about a powerful black woman. And make no mistake, the decision to deny tenure at the Hussman School of Journalism and Media to Nikole Hannah-Jones, one of the most influential, decorated and important journalists of our era, was in large part about race. About her race. About her ability to speak truthfully and unapologetically about racial issues that have been with us since before our founding. About her unflinching dedication to raising the bar on what this country should expect of itself – what Americans should expect of each other – on subjects many would rather deny or tiptoe around.

Hannah-Jones was slated to become the school’s Knight Chair in Race and Investigative Journalism. It was supposed to be a tenured position, but after numerous conservative groups and outlets began complaining about the hire, the school instead offered a five-year fixed position as Professor of the Practice. A genius award-Pulitzer Prize winning journalist was treated poorly because of conservatives who don’t want their blinkered view of history, or how it is taught, to be disrupted.

This isn’t just about this one hire. It’s bigger than that. It’s the latest sign that everyone serious about issues of diversity, inclusion and equality best steel their spines. It’s clear they will be targeted, their reputation tarred by those who insist upon sticking to a status quo that has left numerous racial and other forms of inequalities in its wake. They will be demeaned as “woke.” They will be said to want to “indoctrinate” children. They will be called un-American and disloyal. They will have their words and philosophy twisted into caricatures that conjure up visions of scary black and brown people and their apologists wanting to undo all that’s good about North Carolina and the United States.

How do I know this? Because that’s already begun. It’s the rationale used by those who have attacked Hannah-Jones over her much-celebrated and controversial 1619 Project, which has forced this country to grapple with the days Africans arrived on these shores as the enslaved rather than simply worshiping the founders who “owned” them. It’s also what’s behind a growing number of people and legislators who likely know little about Critical Race Theory, or CRT, allowing their fears of a changing nation to be used to threaten real progress that has been made the past few decades.

This week, a group of white conservative graduates of Davidson College, where I teach and also graduated, sent out an email blast email. In it, they decried recent moves by the college to allow more religious diversity on the school’s board of trustees and in the president’s office as political correctness run amuck. The signees of the letter included James G. Martin, a former governor of North Carolina, as well as Greg Murphy, a Republican member of Congress who claimed Kamala Harris’s success was largely the result of her race and gender.

In my career as a professor, I’ve felt more pressure to be fair to Trump supporters and other conservatives – as though I wouldn’t have anyway – than I have been told to adopt “woke” beliefs about race or try to force my students to. I’ve even had conservative outlets distort my words to attack me, leading to death threats and conservative students who came to class to video me without notice. All of this is happening as conservatives and even moderates claim there is a moral panic about race in this country fueled by the left.

Their aim is clear, to silence any and everyone who refuses to give into their demands that we only see, write or talk about this country in the way that comforts them. That’s why those serious about no longer being beholden to pernicious racial and other myths that have harmed vulnerable people for generations better check their spines. Because they are coming for you, too.

This story was originally published May 20, 2021 at 9:46 AM.