WASHINGTON, D.C. – While some leaders, meeting at a national HBCU conference, depicted their schools as lagging from unequal treatment by state governments, attendees representing HBCU land grant institutions heard tough talk Wednesday about the need to improve their competitiveness for federal program opportunities.
Panel discussions and workshops concluded the three-day National Association for Equal Opportunity in Higher Education (NAFEO) 38th National Dialogue on Blacks in Higher Education. The conference was themed “HBCUs & PBIs: Tooting Our Horns a Little Louder.”
The longstanding outcry by public HBCUs over the lack of equivalent state funding and resources to compete at a level on par with predominantly White schools took center stage during a luncheon discussion titled “HBCUs & HWCUs: Still Separate & Unequal.”
“This is not a matter of incompetence of the presidents (of HBCUs),” said Dr. Earl Richardson, president emeritus at Morgan State University, one of four Maryland HBCUs taking on the state of Maryland in a pending “equality” lawsuit that challenges what the HBCUs allege are disparate funding practices.
“This is a function of a problem in our society and the problem is a function of the elephant in the room: Race,” Richardson said.
Richardson likened the funding disparities at HBCUs to a “slow death” version of the recent killing of Trayvon Martin, an unarmed Black Florida teenager whose shooting death at the hands of a neighborhood watch captain who deemed him as suspicious—and who has not yet been arrested—has sparked national protests.
Richardson said the public should protest unfair funding policies of HBCUs the same way many have protested the killing of Martin.
