And nobody should have a problem with that.
Country music star Billy Ray Cyrus to headline Kentucky State University scholarship luncheon
FRANKFORT – Kentucky State University has experienced record enrollment growth in its freshmen class. The total number of freshmen enrolled from June 1 (194 students) to the beginning of the fall semester (510 students) showed an extraordinary surge of 162 percent.
Kentucky State University has an obligation to get its money from the places and pockets where its story is most likely to resonate. In America’s heartland, Billy Ray Cyrus is not a bad draw for that cause as country music fans around the nation are celebrating the 25th anniversary of his hit, ‘Achy Breaky Heart.’
He has resonance with those fans, and clearly some allegiance to Kentucky State as a native of the commonwealth. So why wouldn’t Kentucky’s flagship HBCU with an increasingly diverse historically black campus bridge the two realities for its benefit?
In a perfect world for many HBCU advocates, Cyrus heading up philanthropic efforts for one of our schools is a slap in the face of our missions, values, alumni, students, ancestors and likely a few other black folks.
But a bigger slap in the face to all of those groups would be to miss an opportunity for high-level advancement over race, something dangerously sacred in this country but which can be trivialized in a heartbeat when attached to the prospect of money.
About 50 HBCUs Will Survive the Next Decade. It’s Time to Start Investing in Them
It is hard to determine a worse proposition for historically black colleges; that industry, culture and finance have converged to threaten the existence of most of our schools, or that Black America doesn’t have the wealth or awareness to do anything about it.
One of the dumbest sayings in American cultural lexicon is ‘transcending race.’ The term is usually used to describe the work and acceptance of some uber talented black person, who was not held back by his or her race. In these examples, its not that a black person transcended their identity, it is that society transcended its own biases to appreciate talent and the ways in which it can be monetized.
Why ‘Transcending Race’ Is a Lie
Notebook I was born in the shadow of the 21st century, so I never knew O. J. Simpson as an athlete or as an actor. I wasn’t quite a year old on Jan. 1, 1989, the day Simpson beat his wife, Nicole Brown-Simpson, so badly that she fled their house screaming, ” He’s going to kill me!
Predominantly white institutions have been transcending race for decades now – to the tune of billions of dollars from black students who believe in the idea of racial transcendence, and who spend to match the concept.
Black Students Invested $6 Billion in HBCUs in 2014. And $52 Billion Everywhere Else.
Between 1986 and 1993, total enrollment at historically black colleges and universities increased from 223,275 students to 282,856 – the largest seven-year stretch of enrollment increase for HBCUs as recorded by the National Center for Education Statistics.
But every time HBCUs try their hand at this concept, they are attacked by black people for racial betrayal and yearning for a place in the white man’s heart. Sometimes, even fake HBCU experts join in and try to convince us to be less than strategic about advancing our own causes.
http://hbcudigest.com/there-are-no-hbcus-without-racism/
We can continue to pretend that more than one out of every ten black students is attending HBCUs, that our trustees will one day leverage their personal wealth and professional connections to help us out, that our alumni have transformational wealth, or that antiquated forms of fundraising will work.
Beyond Fish Plates and Tailgates: Steering HBCU Fundraising from Fanaticism to Support
As Director of Athletics at an HBCU who oversaw fundraising efforts for the department, I learned many important lessons about HBCU fundraising culture. Perhaps none is more important than this: HBCU have plenty of fans. What they need are more supporters.
Some of us can pretend to resent white people attending and teaching at HBCUs, while earning our graduate degrees and angling to send our children to PWIs. And we can pretend that we don’t have to broker with racists in the White House and that we’ll make it 150 years being the best-kept secret in higher education.
On Partnership with the Federal Government, it is Time for the HBCU Community to Pick a Side
In a Congress where the talk of the day is fiscal austerity, the HBCU community saw proposed increases in this week’s House-approved Omnibus bill. Just weeks after many in the community lambasted President Trump’s bill as a way-too-skinny budget proposal which didn’t deliver the goods it promised to HBCUs during the controversial fly-in, the question now is who gets to claim the potential federal funding win.
Or we can call Billy Ray.
