by Dubian Ade
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| Image source: campuslately.com |
He has no shame
his dry mouth
talking empty things as
if reading from a teleprompter
his commitment to diversity.
He is a string of arbitrary
alibis hastily put together
Posture bent to one side
wringing his hands he
wipes his forehead
with the Klan hood
stuffed in his back pocket
He dresses himself well.
Eats well. Lives in a house
owned by the institution.
Drives
a car that is owned by
the institution. Swipes with a
credit card owned by the
institution.
Makes over 500,000 dollars a
year.
Adjunct faculty make less
than 20,000 a year. Can't even
afford the roof over their
heads. Staff work overtime to
feed hungry families.
Hand to
mouth
students pay 60,000 to be at
the college. Tomorrow it will
be 70,000. It is not unusual to
see them struggle.
Students of color can barely
afford this institution at
all.
Meanwhile, he lives
comfortably.
In his spare time he enjoys
structural racism and white
supremacy.
When he is not busy, he is
finding new ways
of domination.
Appoint new
trustees. Change the provost.
Silence the newspapers.
Punish the
faculty.
You can find him re-imagining
blue skies.
Still hasn't apologized to Tatiana
Sy
A body of lies
he doesn't give a shit about
people of color.
His favorite word is "dialogue"
As in "listen to me talk about
bullshit"
His favorite color is money
When he grows up he
wants to
be an obnoxious, wealthy,
incompetent, white supremacist,
president of
a college institution.
He has two jobs. The first is
president of Ithaca College.
The
second is as chairman of
Tompkins County Financial, where
he makes another
60,000 a year.
When he speaks to the campus
body, his fly is generally
showing.
He is generally fearful. He wrings
his hands. He stands awkwardly.
He
is white fragility.
sweat patches under his arms
he makes a fool of himself.
The campus body is humiliated for him.
Once he compared racism to having a bad hair
day.
He is the inside joke among students and
faculty
He is the kind of person who tries
To sneak out of the front entrance
of the administrative building to avoid student
protesters.
When he comes to work in the morning, he
sneaks in through
the side door to avoid
people.
Not a people person.
Ask him a question about structural racism and
he will run
circles around you like a wet dog
chasing his tail.
Ask him if he cares about Black lives
and he will let you know that Black lives are
your issue.
He will infiltrate a Black church because he
wants
"dialogue" and desecrate it with his
whiteness
They say he studied social movements in order
to suppress
and ignore them.
He happily signs off on every microaggression
that runs by
his desk
He thinks that an institution of higher
education should run
like a business.
He is a puppet who sits in the lap of the board
of trustees.
He refuses to resign.
He has no shame.
THE DECOLONIZER
December 2015
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