Liberty University Poured Millions Into Sports. Now Its Black Athletes Are Leaving.

[pstokely]

Last edited Mon Aug 3, 2020, 03:10 AM - Edit history (1)

https://slate.com/culture/2020/08/liberty-university-falwell-black-athletes-football-sports.amp?

"One Thursday morning, class was partway through when the instructor told one of Land’s teammates that he needed a tutor. Sensing some reticence, Land said, the instructor followed up with an attempt at a joke. “Don’t be scared,” he allegedly told the player. “I’m not going to pull out my whip and hit you with it.”

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 Black students face at Liberty in particular. In fact, Asia Todd, a top freshman on Liberty’s women’s basketball team, had announced earlier that month that she was transferring “due to the racial insensitivities shown within the leadership and culture” at the school.

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.

“We just walked out of class,” Land said of him and a few of his teammates. “It was over with.” He made his announcement on Twitter the following Monday, saying he wanted to transfer somewhere “that respects my culture and provides a comfortable environment.”

[Wounded Bear]

1. Somehow, I don't find it surprising at all...

that LU would be riddled with racists.

[pstokely]

2. but they allow negroes

at least if they can throw, catch, or dribble balls and don't kneel except to pray

[Demovictory9]

3. more from the article. Liberty U had the idiot candace Owens speak there

It didn’t take long for Asia Todd to understand her father’s concerns. She specifically recalled a convocation in September when the speakers were conservative commentator Candace Owens and her husband. Falwell and his wife, Becki, joined them onstage while Owens talked about “Blexit,” her proposal for Black voters to abandon their support of the Democratic Party. Her goal was to “challenge Black Americans to consider what Trump actually asked of [them],” Owens told the crowd. She said concerns about police officers shooting unarmed Black men were overblown and repeated a false claim that “police officers were 18 and a half times more likely to be shot and killed by a Black man than the other way around.” She also called modern feminism “a scam.”

Todd and her friends—most of them Black—looked around the arena that morning, taking in the scene of the overwhelmingly white audience applauding and nodding along with Owens.

“I can say that my parents did warn me about some of their ideology and that it didn’t align with things that they raised me and stuff they stood for,” Todd said. “I definitely should’ve listened. I feel like if I did know more about [Falwell] and what he stands for, I don’t know if I would’ve gone there.”

[oasis]

5. Owens has a proposal for Black voters??She needs to explain the GOP

national effort designed to stop them from voting.

[SunSeeker]

4. Liberty University is a hate group. nt

[malaise]

6. Is it actually a University? n/t

[SunSeeker]

7. It's accreditedby the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges.

But I'm with Bill Maher on this one:

Bill Maher: Liberty University Is Not A Real School

Maher noted that Liberty teaches “creation science,” and the idea that earth was created 5,000 years ago. “This is a school you flunk out of when you get the answers right,” he joked.

Much as conservatives believe gay marriage cheapens their own vows, “I think a diploma from Liberty cheapens my diploma from a real school,” he continued. “I worked really hard for four years and sold a lot of drugs to get that thing.”

Liberty’s diploma may look real, Maher said, but “when you confuse a church with a school, Maher went on, “it mixes up the things you believe — religion — with the things we know — education. Then you start thinking that creationism is science, and gay aversion is psychology, and praying away hurricanes is meteorology.”

https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_1530400