Editorial: UNC's hard-earned reputation shattered by lingering racism, difficult to mend

Could it be true?

They posed for videos that were posted on twitter. One of the men said: “It’d be nice” to have “a couple of slaves.”

The slow-but-steady progress toward a campus that truly embraces ALL North Carolinians has hit a tragic detour. It seems the painful struggle that too many endured to get the state and its public universities on the righteous path is being retrodden.

It is just more evidence that “white privilege” isn’t a politically-charged slogan but an unfortunate reality.

Facts are facts.

“The present generation, I am persuaded, scarcely takes note of what the Confederate soldier meant to the welfare of the Anglo Saxon race during the four years immediately succeeding the war, when the facts are, that their courage and steadfastness saved the very life of the Anglo Saxon race in the South – When “the bottom rail was on top” all over the Southern states, and to-day, as a consequence the purest strain of the Anglo Saxon is to be found in the 13 Southern States – Praise God.”

Over the last few months, the campus has been witness to a mean and bitter struggle that was much less about the qualifications and achievements of Nikole Hannah-Jones to be a tenured faculty member as it was about the degree to which the legacy of slavery and racial discrimination remains and pervades our society. The meandering tenure approval process – in stark contrast to the direct route for others in similar situations – only piled on more evidence mostly from the deniers that discrimination remains all too present.

In a case of way too little and way too late, the UNC trustees on the last day of June agreed to grant Hannah-Jones tenure – which she rejected as token and insincere.

The fallout has been devastating. Top scholars are declining offers to come teach at UNC; current faculty are departing or thinking about it; current students are looking at alternative places to continue their studies as prospective students don’t even put UNC on their list.

Less than a week after the Hannah-Jones debacle, self-avowed white supremacists are un-challenged or confronted by authorities as they desecrate a campus memorial.

Seventy years of reputation repair shattered. This is nothing for anyone to take any satisfaction from.

Acknowledge the damage now. Work to diversify the UNC Board of Governors and the individual campus boards of trustees, faculty and student bodies. Start the mending.