{"id":176202,"date":"2020-08-09T20:34:00","date_gmt":"2020-08-10T01:34:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2020\/08\/09\/i-know-that-i-shouldnt-be-happy-at-other-peoples-misfortune-but\/"},"modified":"2020-08-09T20:34:00","modified_gmt":"2020-08-10T01:34:00","slug":"i-know-that-i-shouldnt-be-happy-at-other-peoples-misfortune-but","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2020\/08\/09\/i-know-that-i-shouldnt-be-happy-at-other-peoples-misfortune-but\/","title":{"rendered":"I Know That I Shouldn’t Be Happy at Other People’s Misfortune, But"},"content":{"rendered":"

I am unreasonably happy about Liberty University suffering from a mass exodus of athletes of color because the “university” is a thoroughly racist place<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The moron<\/strike> Moral Majority was founded as a racist reaction to integration by Jerry Falwell, so I’m thinking that being hoist by their own racist petard to be profoundly amusing:<\/p>\n

In mid-June, as the pandemic surged across the country, hundreds of students were living on Liberty University\u2019s campus. Tayvion \u201cTank\u201d Land was one of them, taking a summer math class with about 10 other students\u2014half of them his football teammates.<\/p>\n

One Thursday morning, class was partway through when the instructor told one of Land\u2019s teammates that he needed a tutor. Sensing some reticence, Land said, the instructor followed up with an attempt at a joke. \u201cDon\u2019t be scared,\u201d he allegedly told the player. \u201cI\u2019m not going to pull out my whip and hit you with it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Land and his teammate are Black, the instructor is white, and the joke came during a period of intense scrutiny of the way Black people are treated in this country, and of the unwelcoming atmosphere<\/a> Black students face at Liberty in particular. In fact, Asia Todd, a top freshman on Liberty\u2019s women\u2019s basketball team, had announced earlier that month that she was transferring<\/a> \u201cdue to the racial insensitivities shown within the leadership and culture\u201d at the school.<\/p>\n

Land had finally had enough, too. When I talked to him recently, he told me it was that moment in class that convinced him he had no choice but to transfer. He was done with the slights and general discomfort of being a young Black man on a campus where the student body, not to mention the population of professors and senior leadership, is overwhelmingly white.<\/p>\n

\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
PLEASE RESPECT MY DECISION\u203c\ufe0f pic.twitter.com\/Ljti2CJOWb<\/a><\/span><\/div>\n

\u2014 Tayvion Land (@LandTayvion) June 22, 2020<\/a><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/p>\n

Land\u2019s departure was big news at Liberty, where a year before he\u2019d been the highest-rated football recruit to ever sign with the school. His teammate, roommate, and close friend, Kei\u2019Trel \u201cTre\u201d Clark, who was also in the math class, decided to transfer as well, saying<\/a>, \u201cdue to the cultural [incompetency] within multiple levels of leadership, it does not line up with my code of ethics.\u201d On July 17, a third Black teammate announced plans to leave<\/a> but didn\u2019t specify why. <\/p>\n

\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/p>\n

Jerry Falwell Sr., the legendary televangelist and school founder, famously talked of building a football program on the Lynchburg, Virginia, campus that could someday compete against Notre Dame. \u201cThis was when all we had was a local church and rented public school buildings. Everybody thought he was crazy,\u201d Falwell Jr. once said<\/a> of his father\u2019s early aspirations. Those dreams seemed especially improbable back then, coming only a few years after Falwell Sr. founded a K\u201312 school in Lynchburg that the local paper called <\/a> \u201ca private school for white students.\u201d But Falwell Jr. has dreamed even bigger than his father, aiming to turn one of the nation\u2019s largest Christian universities into what Notre Dame is for Catholics and BYU is for Mormons: the home team for millions of believers. <\/p>\n

\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/p>\n

\u201cIn order for them to attract the kind of players they need to become a top Division I school, they need to go recruiting people, Black and white, who aren\u2019t necessarily perfect fits for a place like Liberty,\u201d said John Fea, a historian of American religion at Messiah College in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania. \u201cThey\u2019ve gotta go beyond the megachurch youth group.\u201d <\/p>\n

In our conversation just before his announcement, Land made it clear that football was never a problem for him at Liberty. The training facilities at the school were top notch. He\u2019d acquitted himself well as a freshman defensive back, playing in 11 of 13 games, including five starts, and finishing with 23 tackles. He was projected to start as a sophomore. It was everything he dealt with off the field, Land said, that made it hard for him to recommend the experience to anyone else. <\/span><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As the saying goes, when you lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas.<\/p>\n

The origins of Liberty “University” are steeped in racism, so it should come as no surprise that it remains a racist cesspool.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I am unreasonably happy about Liberty University suffering from a mass exodus of athletes of color because the “university” is a thoroughly racist place. The moron Moral Majority was founded as a racist reaction to integration by Jerry Falwell, so I’m thinking that being hoist by their own racist petard to be profoundly amusing: In …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[397,398,486,503],"class_list":["post-176202","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-education","tag-racism","tag-schadenfreude","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176202"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=176202"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176202\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=176202"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=176202"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=176202"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}