Former ESPN host proposes return to segregation as revenge against white schools

In a nation founded on the principals of equality and the pursuit of happiness, we must always strive to lift one another up, not tear each other down.

Great men and great women in this country have faced some of the nation’s most vile wiles over the course of the last century, from Rosa Parks to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.  The contributions and sacrifices of these brave, uniquely-gifted Americans has made our country a better place for all of us.

Today, however, the tribalism has returned.  Our nation is full of retrograde racism where anger has prompted some to suggest cutting off our nose to spite our face.

Jemele Hill appears to be of that mindset, and her words are putting us on a return path toward the darkness that we once conquered.

Former ESPN host Jemele Hill — now a staff writer for The Atlantic — argues in her controversial first article for the magazine that black college athletes should leave predominantly white schools.

The article, titled, “It’s Time for Black Athletes to Leave White Colleges,” has drawn a range of responses — including assertions that Hill is “pro-segregation” or even “racist.”

In the article, which appears in The Atlantic’s October issue, Hill argues that black athletes help attract money and attention to “predominately white universities that showcase them,” while Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) continue to struggle.

She writes that mostly white schools’ multibillion-dollar revenues have been built on the “exertions of (uncompensated) black athletes,” claiming that an elite black athlete attending an HBCU raises awareness of the institution, whose endowments combined are less than a tenth of Harvard’s.

Certainly, there are improvements still to be made in the realm of student athletics, but a reactionary, revenge-laden return to segregation is an undeniable overreaction to the problem.