Sarah J. Jackson: I cannot grumble loudly enough that anti-Black and anti-activist backlash will always hurt everyone, it’s just a matter of time. the center focusing on Latine, Asian and first gen student success is also being “folded” and the administrative division of DEI closed

Just learned that my undergrad institution is “reorganizing” its student services to eliminate not just the Black Student Center, but also the Women’s Center and LGBTQ Resource Center to comply w/ a recently passed Republican DEI ban.

I cannot grumble loudly enough that anti-Black and anti-activist backlash will always hurt everyone, it’s just a matter of time. the center focusing on Latine, Asian and first gen student success is also being “folded” and the administrative division of DEI closed

University of Utah to cut centers for Black, female, LGBT students to comply with new state lawwww.ksl.com The University of Utah will eliminate cultural centers for Black, female and LGBT students as it reorganizes its diversity initiatives to comply with HB261.

Do not come here with the obnoxious “well it’s Utah what did you expect” comments. Folks do this to the south also; the most vulnerable people in red states do not deserve to be punished and have their lives put at risk because of where they were born. This is where the fight has to start.

Imagine the lifeline a place like the Black Student Cultural Center and LGBTQ Resource Center are *especially* in places like this.

Not just where people are born. --Some job markets (such as the academic one) mean you go to where the jobs are or where your company sent you --Some folks fall in love with people from red states (strange but true) Etc. We should not consign folks who are in red autocratic fiefdoms to hell.

Absolutely. I happen to be a Black first gen college student who was born in this particular state so more riffing from my own experience of no one advising me in high school to apply anywhere else (😡). That women’s resource center is how I (covertly not officially!) got birth control in college.

There is a whole lot of path dependence that people don't recognize plus also random stuff happens. The bigger thing is that tolerating oppressive red states is consigning all kinds of people to awful lives, and it is not their fault. It is the fault of the GOP and those who vote for it.

And also: this is why we have the 14th Amendment. After the Civil War, the nation (briefly) decided that one's basic rights should no longer be dependent on one's state of residence.

I find it even more dispiriting when purportedly progressive people in blue states have no interest in defending this principle than when reactionaries, who've always opposed it, attack it.

If only the writers of the 14th amendment had made their original intent clear....

I also thought that the whole separate but equal thing was shown to be problematic.

In-state tuition means that the poor go in state.

We moved to Rhode Island this year after living in Texas for many years. People forget that a cross-country move is really expensive! We’re lucky enough to have the resources to make it happen but most people just don’t.

And a lot of us who left our home red states (MT in my case) have family and friends who are taking the real hits of GOP legislatures. They and their kids deserve better, not derision.

Gotta get souls to the polls. Utah voter turnout in 2020 was 69.2%. Mississippi voter turnout in 2020 60.2% www.lgbtmap.org/img/maps/cit...

www.lgbtmap.org

It's fascinating in a grim way how they determine which programs can stay: "American Indian Resource Center, which will be renamed the Center for Native Excellence and Tribal Engagement..." "The Dream Center, ... "Its services are based on immigration status, not race or ethnicity," Walsh said."

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