The “Real World” Myth: How Sending African American Children to PWIs Undermines African American Institutional Power

Posted on September 19, 2025 by | Leave a comment

“When you control a man’s thinking you do not have to worry about his actions. He will find his ‘proper place’ and will stay in it. You do not need to send him to the back door. He will go without being told; in fact, if there is no back door, he will cut one for his special benefit.”
— Carter G. Woodson, The Mis-Education of the Negro

For generations, African American families have been told a myth that has become so pervasive it often passes without challenge: the idea that sending their children to predominantly white institutions (PWIs) of higher education better prepares them for the “real world.” On its surface, the reasoning sounds practical. Parents believe that if their child learns how to navigate white spaces, acquires the habits and codes of those spaces, and builds networks with white peers, they will be more successful in corporate America and society at large. It is a calculation born of centuries of survival in a society structured against African Americans.

But this calculation, when examined deeply, does not hold up to scrutiny. Instead of preparing African American students for the “real world,” the widespread preference for PWIs undermines the institutional power of African Americans and deprives HBCUs of the very human and financial capital they need to thrive.

The “real world” itself is not a fixed entity. It is not a monolith that African Americans must prepare to join on white terms. The real world is what a group of people make it. White Americans have defined their world and fortified it through their institutions such as universities, banks, hospitals, corporations, and foundations. Asian Americans, Jewish Americans, and other groups have done similarly, leveraging their educational and economic institutions to shape their reality. Yet, African America, too often, has internalized the belief that its institutions are insufficient, opting instead to send its brightest students and most valuable tuition dollars into the coffers of PWIs.

This is not simply a matter of personal choice. It is a collective decision with collective consequences. The more African American families buy into the “real world” myth, the weaker HBCUs become, and the less capable African America is of shaping its own real world.

The PWI Path and Its Assumptions

African American parents who choose PWIs for their children often do so with good intentions. They want their children to access elite resources, prestigious networks, and the perceived stamp of approval that comes with a degree from a PWI. They assume that because the U.S. labor market is majority white, exposure to that environment early on is critical to future success.

But these assumptions reveal several contradictions. White students do not consider attending an HBCU to balance their cultural experiences. They do not think, “I’ve had too much whiteness; I need a more balanced education.” Instead, they progress from a PWI undergraduate degree to a PWI graduate school, then into PWI-dominated corporate and institutional spaces. Their cultural immersion is never questioned, because their institutions define normalcy.

Meanwhile, African Americans alone have been conditioned to believe that too much African American immersion is dangerous, insular, or unrepresentative of the “real world.” The irony is sharp: a student may attend an HBCU, which is itself a diverse universe of African American culture, class, geography, and ideology, and still be told they have not had enough “exposure.” Yet a white student who grows up in an all-white town, attends an all-white PWI, and joins all-white firms is never told they lack “diversity of experience.”

This asymmetry is not accidental. It is a reflection of who controls institutional narratives in America. African Americans who absorb the “real world” myth are effectively outsourcing their children’s futures to white institutions, all while their own institutions wither from neglect.

The Diversity Within HBCUs

Another overlooked dimension of this myth is the assumption that HBCUs are homogeneous, insular spaces. This could not be further from the truth. The African American experience itself is vast. It includes children of Caribbean immigrants, descendants of enslaved Africans, first-generation college students from rural Mississippi, affluent families from Washington, D.C., African students from Nigeria and Ghana, Afro-Latinx students from Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic, and more.

To attend an HBCU is not to encounter “less” diversity; it is to engage with the broad spectrum of the African Diaspora in concentrated form. These institutions are living laboratories of cultural exchange, intellectual competition, and class interaction.

By contrast, a PWI often provides African American students with only a sliver of diversity: they are frequently tokenized, expected to represent their entire race, and shuffled into diversity programming that centers their marginalization. Their peers may never learn about African American life beyond stereotypes, because the institution itself was never designed to illuminate African American experiences.

Thus, the African American student at an HBCU receives not just an education, but an immersion in African American pluralism is a preparation for engaging the world on African American terms. The PWI student, meanwhile, often internalizes the idea that their presence is conditional, exceptional, or peripheral.

Institutional Power and the Capital Flight from HBCUs

Every African American student who chooses a PWI over an HBCU represents more than an individual choice. It is the redirection of tuition dollars, alumni loyalty, and future endowment contributions away from African American institutions.

Imagine if even half of the African American students currently enrolled at PWIs redirected themselves to HBCUs. The financial impact would be transformative. Endowments would grow, faculty recruitment would expand, research capacity would increase, and the prestige of HBCUs would rise proportionally. These gains would compound over decades, creating a feedback loop of institutional strength.

Instead, what we have is a leakage of capital and talent into institutions that do not prioritize African American empowerment. PWIs benefit from African American enrollment statistics, which they parade as evidence of diversity, while offering little in terms of institutional reciprocity. They gain the reputational boost, while HBCUs lose the enrollment and financial stability they desperately need.

The result is predictable: HBCUs remain underfunded, under-endowed, and under-appreciated, not because they lack quality, but because too many African American families believe the myth that their children will be better off elsewhere.

The Real World Is What We Make It

The central flaw in the “real world” argument is the assumption that African Americans must adapt to a world built by others rather than shape their own. The real world is not an objective standard but it is the result of group will, institutional building, and cultural reinforcement.

White Americans shaped their “real world” through the sustained investment in Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and thousands of other institutions that center their history, culture, and power. Jewish Americans created their “real world” through a network of universities, foundations, and cultural centers that prioritize their collective survival. Asian Americans are building their own “real world” through business networks, educational pipelines, and capital flows that stretch across the Pacific.

If African Americans accept the premise that their children must be trained in white institutions to succeed, they have already conceded that they cannot or will not shape their own real world. They have abandoned the project of institutional power in favor of individual adaptation. This is not preparation; it is surrender.

Psychological Implications: Internalizing Inferiority

Beyond the economic impact, the myth has deep psychological consequences. African American students raised on the belief that HBCUs are not “the real world” internalize a subtle but corrosive idea: that their own culture is insufficient. They may carry degrees from elite PWIs, but the cost is often an alienation from African American institutional life.

The psychological message is clear—white spaces are the pinnacle of preparation, while African American spaces are something to escape. This creates a generational feedback loop where each successive cohort of African American parents pushes harder for PWIs, believing they are giving their children an advantage, while in reality they are weakening the very institutions that could make African America self-sufficient.

It also distorts identity. An African American child who grows up believing they must leave their community to succeed will often view their success as individual rather than collective. They may become comfortable being the “only one in the room,” rather than building the rooms where African Americans are not tokens but owners.

The Comparative Case: No Other Group Thinks This Way

No other racial or ethnic group in America sends its children away from its own institutions to gain “real world” experience. White families do not think Harvard students lack preparation because they have spent too much time around other white students. Jewish families do not believe their children need to avoid Jewish institutions to be competitive. Chinese Americans do not view Chinese language schools or cultural institutions as a liability to their children’s preparation.

It is only African Americans who accept this self-defeating logic. This uniqueness underscores the lingering effects of centuries of racial conditioning. From slavery to Jim Crow to modern structural racism, African Americans have been taught that their own institutions are inferior. The “real world” myth is simply the modernized version of this lesson.

By contrast, when other groups send their children to institutions, they do so with the understanding that these institutions will strengthen their cultural identity while equipping them to engage broader society on their own terms. For African Americans, the task must be the same: build HBCUs into the kind of institutions that define, rather than defer to, the real world.

Rethinking the “Preparation” Narrative

If the goal of higher education is preparation, then the question is: preparation for what? For African Americans, preparation should not simply mean being employable in someone else’s institution. It should mean being capable of building, leading, and sustaining African American institutions.

An HBCU graduate is not less prepared for corporate America than a PWI graduate; in many cases, they are more resilient, more culturally grounded, and more aware of systemic barriers. The difference is that the HBCU graduate, if supported by their community, is positioned to reinvest in African American institutional life.

The narrative that PWIs uniquely prepare African Americans for the “real world” ignores the fact that many HBCU alumni have gone on to excel in every imaginable field from politics, science, business, culture while also strengthening the institutions of African America. The preparation HBCUs offer is not narrow; it is holistic, rooted in both academic rigor and cultural affirmation.

A Call to Reclaim Institutional Power

For African Americans to continue believing in the “real world” myth is to ensure that the next century looks much like the last: individual success stories amid collective institutional weakness. To break this cycle, African American families must reorient their thinking.

Sending a child to an HBCU is not a limitation; it is an investment in collective power. It is a statement that African Americans will not only participate in the real world but will define it. It is a recognition that every tuition dollar, every alumni donation, and every student enrollment strengthens the institutional backbone of African America.

The time has come to retire the myth once and for all. The real world is not something African Americans must be prepared for by others. It is something African Americans must build for themselves, through the strengthening of HBCUs and the rejection of narratives that undermine them.

Until that shift happens, African America will remain trapped in a paradox: sending its children to PWIs in search of preparation, only to find that the institutions that could truly empower them are being starved of the very resources they need.

The “real world” is not out there waiting. It is in our hands to create.

 Disclaimer: This article was assisted by ChatGPT.

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While Howard Is Chasing Harvard, What Public HBCUs Are Chasing UTIMCO?

Posted on September 16, 2025 by | Leave a comment

“I make no apology for the love of competition.” – John Harbaugh

In the world of higher education finance, few numbers turn heads quite like endowment size. It is the ultimate scoreboard for institutional power—a metric that signals not only a university’s wealth but also its capacity to shape research, drive innovation, support students, and influence national policy. In this rarefied air, Howard University has made history, becoming the first Historically Black College or University (HBCU) to surpass the $1 billion endowment mark. According to HBCU Money’s 2024 rankings, Howard’s endowment now stands at $1.03 billion.

Spelman College, long regarded as Howard’s fiercest private competitor, received a record-setting $100 million donation in 2023. Yet even with that windfall, its endowment reached $506.7 million—leaving it more than $500 million behind Howard. Nevertheless, Spelman’s donor base remains one of the strongest in Black higher education, and it may still overtake Howard in the race to $2 billion. But the $1 billion baton has already been passed.

If Howard is chasing Harvard, and Spelman is setting its sights on Yale, then who among public HBCUs dares to chase the Goliath of public university endowments—UTIMCO?

The Silent Behemoth in Texas

UTIMCO—the University of Texas/Texas A&M Investment Management Company—is not just large; it is colossal. As of 2024, UTIMCO manages a staggering $64.3 billion in assets across the University of Texas and Texas A&M university systems. That figure is nearly $15 billion more than Harvard’s own endowment and more than three times the size of the second-largest public university endowment at the University of Michigan.

This financial empire is largely invisible to the public eye. Few outside of elite Texas financial and political circles are even aware of UTIMCO’s existence, let alone its scale. It quietly funds a wide spectrum of research, real estate development, and private equity plays that influence state and national agendas.

If an HBCU—or group of HBCUs—is ever to rival that level of public endowment control, it will not happen by accident. It must be built. And it will most likely be built collectively.

HBCUs and the Endowment Gap

The endowment disparity between HBCUs and Predominantly White Institutions (PWIs) has been well-documented. HBCUs represent around 3% of America’s colleges, yet account for less than 1% of total U.S. endowment wealth. According to a McKinsey report, HBCUs would need $12.5 billion in incremental funding to achieve endowment parity with similarly sized PWIs.

While private HBCUs like Howard and Spelman appear to be making some headway, public HBCUs remain largely behind. Most of them are tethered to state systems that have historically underfunded them and which rarely—if ever—extend the full benefits of their system-wide endowment strategies.

Consider the University of North Carolina System. It includes North Carolina A&T, the largest HBCU by enrollment, and North Carolina Central University. Yet both institutions have endowments under $200 million. Meanwhile, UNC Chapel Hill boasts an endowment exceeding $5.4 billion. Similarly, Florida A&M University has an endowment of less than $200 million, while the University of Florida’s soars above $2 billion.

The Case for a Public HBCU Endowment Challenger

In identifying a public HBCU capable of mounting a challenge to UTIMCO’s financial supremacy, the most promising strategy does not lie in the strength of one institution—but in the collective power of several. States that are home to multiple public HBCUs present the most viable path to establishing a unified, independently managed investment entity that can leverage scale, pooled capital, and institutional collaboration.

Virginia, Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Mississippi all house two or more public HBCUs, each with proud legacies and strategic regional influence. A coordinated financial framework across these schools could form the foundation of a “Black UTIMCO”—a professionally managed, state-based consortium endowment capable of rivaling small PWI systems in both return and influence.

The most likely candidates must share a few key characteristics:

  1. State-Level Endowment Consortium Model – States with two or more public HBCUs, such as Virginia (Virginia State, Norfolk State), Georgia (Albany State, Fort Valley State, Savannah State), or Alabama (Alabama A&M, Alabama State), are uniquely positioned to pioneer a collective endowment strategy. Rather than relying on marginal support from broader university systems, these HBCUs could form a joint investment vehicle modeled on UTIMCO—pooling their endowments under a professionally managed, independent investment company. Such a fund would enable economies of scale, competitive asset management, and unified long-term planning, boosting their ability to generate investment alpha and philanthropic leverage.
  2. Flagship Status Among HBCUs – Institutions with strong alumni networks, national reputations, and federal research capabilities are better positioned to attract major philanthropy.
  3. Strategic Location – HBCUs located in fast-growing economic zones can leverage regional corporate ties for private partnerships.

However, creating such a financial architecture is not purely a technical endeavor. It is inherently political—and often fraught with social resistance.

The Political Geography of Resistance

Many of the states that host multiple public HBCUs are governed by conservative legislatures and state boards of regents that have long resisted equitable funding for Black institutions. Despite proclamations about diversity, equity, and inclusion, these power structures often withhold support from Black-led entities that could challenge traditional hierarchies.

  • Alabama, with Alabama State and Alabama A&M, underfunded its HBCUs by over $527 million between 1987 and 2020, according to the U.S. Department of Education.
  • Georgia’s consolidation of HBCUs like Albany State into broader system structures has often diluted their financial and governance autonomy.
  • Mississippi has repeatedly neglected basic infrastructure and funding needs at its three public HBCUs—Jackson State, Alcorn State, and Mississippi Valley State—despite allocating surpluses elsewhere. It is also no secret that Mississippi has purposely constructed a singular board of trustees for all of its public higher education institutions across the state with Ole Miss and Mississippi State unabashedly dominating the board.

Even in Virginia, perceived as more moderate, a move by Virginia State University and Norfolk State to pool their endowments might be seen as too bold a play in a state that still subtly resists Black institutional consolidation.

Social Impediments and Institutional Fragmentation

Beyond politics, there are intra-HBCU dynamics that complicate collaboration. These institutions have historically been forced to compete for scraps, which can breed a zero-sum mentality. Trustees, alumni, and administrations often prefer complete local control over modest assets rather than shared governance over substantial ones.

Convincing institutions to pool their endowments requires cultural alignment and a long-term vision of shared prosperity. Donors, too, may resist giving to multi-institutional funds, preferring the emotional appeal of a singular alma mater.

Nonetheless, this mindset must change. The math is clear: five public HBCUs each contributing $100 million can produce a $500 million investment base. That scale opens doors to private equity, hedge funds, and other vehicles that outperform the conservative allocations typically used by smaller institutional portfolios.

Institutions Poised for Leadership

  • North Carolina A&T State University, with an endowment of $201.9 million, remains the largest public HBCU endowment. With deep ties to tech and defense industries, it has both alumni momentum and industry leverage.
  • Florida A&M University, despite setbacks surrounding its pledged $237 million donation, has an official endowment of $124.1 million and stands to benefit immensely from partnership with institutions like Bethune-Cookman or Edward Waters.
  • Virginia State University and Norfolk State University, with $96.5 million and $88.2 million respectively, could combine to form the financial cornerstone of a Virginia HBCU Investment Company—managing nearly $185 million in assets at inception.

The Need for a “Black UTIMCO”

Rather than wait for state systems to share the wealth equitably, some in the HBCU policy space are advocating for the creation of a consortium endowment fund — a kind of “Black UTIMCO.” This collective endowment manager would pool assets from willing HBCUs, allowing them to negotiate better investment terms, lower fees, and generate alpha through scale.

Such an initiative would require governance innovation, donor transparency, and trust between institutions that are often underfunded and overburdened. But it may be the only viable path forward for public HBCUs to compete against mega-managers like UTIMCO, MITIMCo, or the Yale Investments Office.

A $5 billion consortium fund, even divided across 25 HBCUs, would be transformational. It could fund scholarships, capital improvements, faculty chairs, and technology upgrades, while giving HBCUs the financial leverage to attract major federal research grants.

A New Competitive Mindset

In American higher education, the metaphorical arms race is very real. Endowments are the stockpiles. Harvard and Yale are the gold standard in the private arena. UTIMCO is the titan in the public sector. And HBCUs, despite their contributions to Black excellence, continue to be locked out of the upper tier.

John Harbaugh’s quote about competition resonates because it points to a deeper truth: love of competition does not require parity at the outset, only the will to chase. Howard is in the final lap toward $1 billion, setting a new bar for Black institutional capital. Spelman may outdistance them on the next lap to $2 billion. But in the public sphere, the silence is deafening.

Where is the public HBCU that dares to dream of beating Michigan, surpassing UNC, or even challenging UTIMCO?

The Race Begins with Vision

Howard is chasing Harvard. Spelman is perhaps chasing Yale.

But no single public HBCU can chase UTIMCO. The scale is too vast, the machinery too entrenched, and the rules too uneven.

What public HBCUs can do, however, is combine. They can look across their borders, past their rivals, and toward a shared future. They can imagine a world where collective African American endowment power reshapes not just education, but the broader economy and policy landscape.

It is not a failure of ambition that no public HBCU has reached $1 billion. It is a failure of coordination and imagination.

The first African American UTIMCO will not be built by a single school. It will be built by a desire for compeition. A desire to win.

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Dr. King’s Dream is Dead: African America Must Focus On Its Own Institutional Sovereignty and Survival

Posted on September 15, 2025 by | 1 comment

“I fear I may have integrated my people into a burning house.” – Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

By William A. Foster, IV

For my parents and grandparents not many years ago, it was the White Citizens Council, Ku Klux Klan, Bull Connor, George Wallace, and more. Today, it is MAGA, ICE, Donald Trump, Charlie Kirk, and more. African America long held out hope that we would be in someway accepted into America’s fabric. We contributed centries of free labor capital, centuries of cultural capital, and did it all under an umbrella of racial terrorism. This hope was held without so much as an apology or reparation. The Civil Rights Movement of which much of my family was a part of from my mother’s letter to Dr. King himself that now sits in the archives of Boston College to part of our family that was forced to relocate to Jamaica by the US government, likely Hoover’s FBI. They fought for equal protections and equal opportunities, but it was and has always been a fool’s errand. A group in power will never voluntarily relinquish that power and European Americans are no exception to that rule. The problem is and has always been that only African America was fighting for reconciliation. It has been a dance between two dance partners where one is constantly stomping on the feet of the other, stealing money out of our pockets as they swirl us around, and smiling at us while putting a knife nine inches in our back and pulling it out six inches while calling it progress.

As a child, my sister and I had the privilege of attending Wee Care, an African American primary school in Prairie View, Texas in the town where our family’s illustrious HBCU, Prairie View A&M University is located and where my mother has taught students, developed faculty, and served in leadership for almost five decades. Unfortunately for us, the school only went up to the first grade at which time my mother was forced to choose her “best” option. My mother’s best option was an overwhelmingly European American Catholic school in the heart of Tomball, Texas, at the time a fairly known small Texas town – with all of the small town Texas dynamics when it came to race. Only my second and fifth grade teachers were nice to me. One was really young and the other a hippy. In sixth and seventh grade at another predominantly European American Catholic school I would experience the first time being called the N word by a fellow classmate. Even in the resulting aftermath of the fight I was blamed by the principal for being violent. Imagine that. The African American private schools were limited and given the distance from where we lived almost impossible for my mother to change us to an African American school where we would be culturally safe. That though was not the whole story. You see my classmates through elementary in particular were thought to be lifetime friends, but in my later years I would learn a valuable lesson from a graduate program I would attend in Boston at a Jewish institution. Do not confuse friendship and loyalty. I am thankful to this day for the lessons from that institution because it opened my eyes to so much in the world of navigating power dynamics. It was in those lessons that I realized that many of my so called friends from elementary were also loyal to causes that would see me and my family back on a plantation if the winds blew in the right direction and they saw no moral or ideological conflict.

From that point on, I realized that what I must lean into is the institutional development of my own people. From African America to the African Diaspora and that the connectivity of our institutions would be our strength and saving grace. But alas, many of us still yearned for acceptance into PWIs, European American corporations even though we do not think of them as such that is exactly who they are owned by when you examine their ownership, and predominantly European American neighborhoods. To access whiteness is seen as progress and success. In every place we lived, I largely remember us always being the only African American family in the neighborhood. Something I know that none of my childhood “friends” ever thought about or crossed their mind. Their families would never move into an African American community and be the only one. They saw our spaces as hostile even though we have always been overly welcoming even to our detriment, but as I said being the only African American family in a predominantly European American community was often seen as “progress” for many in our community. It was a mistake, a violent psychological mistake that still harms many of us to this day. The same way Ruby Bridges, a six-year old child, had to be escorted by Federal agents into a school because we assumed the fight for desegregation was making America true to its values. We were wrong then and we have been wrong about what Ameria’s values actually are.

Dr. King said in his famous speech, “I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed. We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal. I have a dream that one day out in the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slaveowners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood. I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice. I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by their character. I have a dream today. I have a dream that one day down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification; that one day right down in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers. I have a dream today.”

The dream is dead. It was a dream that required two parties to reconcile their past with only one willing to do so while suffering the brutality that has persisted since 1619. Dr. King’s speech was given on August 28, 1963 and two weeks later on September 15, 1963, the KKK bombed 16th Street Baptist Church and killed four African American girls: Addie Mae Collins (age 14, born April 18, 1949), Carol Denise McNair (age 11, born November 17, 1951), Carole Rosamond Robertson (age 14, born April 24, 1949), and Cynthia Dionne Wesley (age 14, born April 30, 1949). My mother was born in 1949. It could have easily been her. There are countless African American deaths at the hands of racial terrorism that we will never know about. The Red Summer of 1919 when the most African Americans (on record) were lynched. An entire Civil War just decades prior was waged over whether or not the United States should or should continue to be a country rooted in the slave economy. The complexity by which the North and South were guilty of profiting from – looking at you Harvard and others and have never rectified. The bloodshed, terror, and violence has been endless and it has not receded.

“I wouldn’t give it no more thought than wringing a cat’s neck! And there ain’t a court in Mississippi that’d convict me for it.” Frank Bailey’s, a character in Mississippi Burning, quote in regards to killing African Americans. This is and has been America’s attitude towards African America in its entirety. Not just individuals, but our institutions and communities as well. The underfunding of HBCUs or the burning of countless towns from Rosewood to Tulsa, our death and demise is sport and entertainment. African America has constantly believed that we could appeal to the morality of fellow Americans and “Christians”. We could work hard enough and show them our humanity. Imagine us thinking we need to prove to them we were hard working, civil, or human. It is both comical and insulting. But like many centuries ago, we have since the end of the Civil Rights Movement returns to working hard for everyone but ourselves and our institutions. That time needs to be over and we need to return to the principles and efforts that built towns like Rosewood, Greenwood, 100 HBCUs, 100 African American boarding schools, and over 500 African American owned hospitals. It is time to abandon any hope that peace can be achieved. Our sovereignty and survival is all that matters going forward. There are no more olive branches to be had. Not even from those that call themselves moderates or liberals because far too often we have seen them fall silent or pushed us to assimilate into spaces that did not empower us, did not provide institutional ownership to us, and often were spaces that were paternalistic and just as hostile to us as their conservative cousins. No, there are no more olive branches to be had because our survival depends on it.

Dr. John Henrik Clarke, a noted Pan-African historian, and someone who I consider an unofficial mentor said that any African American who is looking to devise a plan must look at our communities as nation-states and therefore must consider these fundamental pillars:

How will my people be housed?

How will my people be educated?

How will my people be fed?

How will my people be defended?

The answers to these questions can no longer be grassroots, they have to be institutional and they have to be thought about in a way that recognizes that our sovereign nation-state is adjacent to an adversary who has and will invade us. It is not a question of if they will, but when will they because they have so many times before. Unfortuantely, we cannot ask Dr. King what his thoughts about his “Dream” for America would be today because at the age of 39 he was assassinated. He was assassinated three years after his contemporary Malcolm X was assasinated and five years after Medgar Evers was assassinated in his driveway. Medgar Evers just two months before the “I Have A Dream” speech would take place. He was not blind to what America was for African America and he was certainly not blind to how our adversaries saw us or the lengths they were willing to go to in order to silence us. For the last 50 plus years since Dr. King’s passing African America has tried to make a peace that we should now see is not possible. It is time for the Dream Redefined and that dream should start and stop with actions that provide for the institutional sovereignty and survial of African America period.

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Give Black App: A Digital Gatekeeper For African American Philanthropy & Institutional Capital

Posted on September 12, 2025 by | Leave a comment

“We must invest in ourselves. Without our own institutions, we will always be at the mercy of others.” – Mary McLeod Bethune

In the long arc of African American economic life, a recurring pattern emerges: the institutions most critical to our survival are consistently starved of capital, while the broader society thrives off of our labor, culture, and creativity. From Reconstruction-era mutual aid societies to the undercapitalized HBCUs of today, the struggle has never been whether African Americans are generous, but whether that generosity is systematically directed into institutions that can build durable power.

The Give Black App, founded by David C. Hughes, Alexus Hall, and Fran Harris, positions itself at this inflection point. It is not simply an app but a digital strategy—one attempting to reshape the flow of African American philanthropy and donations by curating, centralizing, and amplifying support for Black-led institutions.

The Context of Underfunding

African American nonprofits receive disproportionately less funding compared to their White counterparts. A 2020 Bridgespan study found that unrestricted net assets of White-led nonprofits were 76% larger than those of Black-led nonprofits, while revenues were 24% higher. These disparities compound over time. For HBCUs, the story is even starker: the endowments of all 100+ HBCUs combined is less than 1/10th of Harvard University’s alone.

Despite African America’s estimated $1.8 trillion in annual buying power, only a fraction is captured by its own institutions. Much of African American giving remains individual-to-individual or church-centered, providing immediate relief but not the kind of long-term institutional scaffolding needed to compete with White or global capital. Platforms like Give Black attempt to redirect that generosity into a framework where dollars reinforce permanence.

Building the Infrastructure of Giving

Give Black’s strength lies in infrastructure, a word often overlooked in philanthropy. The app operates as a digital gatekeeper, cataloguing Black-led nonprofits and enabling donors—whether individuals, alumni associations, or grassroots organizations—to find and fund them with ease.

This may seem simple, but its implications are profound. In an environment where discoverability is one of the greatest barriers for Black-led organizations, Give Black centralizes attention. For the countless nonprofits that lack robust marketing budgets, development officers, or national visibility, the app provides a seat at the table they would otherwise be denied.

The team itself reflects intentional design. Hughes, a Morehouse and Prairie View alumnus, carries the academic gravitas to engage institutions; Hall, with a background in cybersecurity and software sales, grounds the platform’s technical operations; Harris, a lifelong advocate of Black love and economic empowerment, provides the cultural grounding and marketing voice. Alongside them stand directors rooted in community engagement, finance, athletics, and science. Together, they represent a cross-section of African American life that mirrors the very community the app seeks to serve.

Philanthropy Meets Technology

Unlike GoFundMe or Benevity, which serve broad audiences, Give Black narrows its focus: African American-led institutions. This specificity is both its greatest strength and its potential vulnerability. By making African American philanthropy visible and trackable, the app attempts to normalize institutional giving within the community itself.

African American donors, long used to personal giving—funeral funds, tuition help, emergency assistance—are now asked to see their dollars not just as charity but as investment. An app that allows for transparency, accountability, and impact measurement may finally bridge the gap between intent and sustained institutional support.

Technology also democratizes giving. Younger generations, accustomed to digital wallets and mobile donations, are unlikely to write checks or mail contributions. By existing where they already transact, Give Black normalizes philanthropy as part of daily life. With proper marketing, it could serve as a digital equivalent of the collection plate—except one that sends dollars to Black think tanks, schools, health clinics, and endowment foundations rather than solely to Sunday offerings.

The Role of Fran Harris

Much of the initial confusion about Give Black’s leadership arises from Fran Harris’s name. She openly jokes about it—she is not the Fran Harris who was a WNBA champion or Shark Tank winner, though many assume otherwise. Instead, she distinguishes herself as someone whose “entire life has been about Black love and economic empowerment.”

That distinction matters. Whereas celebrity often drives visibility in African American philanthropy, Harris positions herself not as a star but as a steward of a broader vision. Her work focuses on the storytelling and cultural marketing needed to align African American giving with institutional capital. In a sense, her humor in addressing the name confusion underscores the seriousness of her actual role: grounding the app’s message in authenticity rather than celebrity.

The Gaps in the Strategy

Despite its promise, Give Black faces hurdles. First, fundraising expertise at the highest level appears limited within the core team. Major philanthropy is an industry of its own, requiring seasoned development officers capable of cultivating seven- and eight-figure gifts. Without this, Give Black risks becoming a platform for small-dollar giving—important, but insufficient for closing institutional capital gaps.

Second, technological depth must match ambition. While Hall’s cybersecurity background provides operational credibility, scaling a fintech-style platform requires CTO-level leadership. Issues of compliance, data integrity, and user trust are not optional—they are the foundation of sustainability.

Third, policy and compliance matter. Donations intersect with financial regulations, nonprofit law, and IRS oversight. To become the definitive gateway for Black giving, Give Black must not only build a sleek front end but also a back-end architecture that can withstand regulatory scrutiny and instill donor confidence.

Where the Opportunities Lie

The greatest opportunities for Give Black lie in institutional self-reliance.

One clear pathway is through alumni networks. HBCU alumni giving rates remain in the single digits, compared to 20–30% at elite PWIs. If Give Black positioned itself as the official conduit for alumni donations, it could help double or triple those rates over time. That alone would shift millions into endowments and operating budgets across the HBCU ecosystem.

Another opportunity lies in membership-based organizations—from professional networks to civic associations. Instead of dues going solely toward programming, portions could be funneled into long-term institutional giving through Give Black, creating a culture of collective philanthropy.

The Pan-African Diaspora represents yet another opening. African and Caribbean communities abroad are increasingly connected digitally. Give Black could expand to become a Pan-African philanthropic bridge, enabling solidarity between African Americans and global Black communities. Diaspora donors, often seeking trustworthy channels for giving, could find in Give Black a centralized, transparent platform.

Finally, the most transformative opportunity is to integrate endowment-building features directly into the app. Too much African American giving is trapped in the cycle of operating expenses. By redirecting portions of donations into permanent capital funds, Give Black could help institutions create reserves that outlast political climates and economic downturns.

Lessons from History

The urgency of Give Black’s mission must be seen against history. During the early 20th century, White-controlled philanthropy dictated the survival of many HBCUs. Institutions like Hampton and Tuskegee often relied on Northern industrialists whose donations came with ideological strings attached. The absence of African American-controlled philanthropic infrastructure meant dependency—and dependency always meant vulnerability.

Today, African American institutions still operate under the shadow of that dependency. Foundation funding remains racially skewed, and government support is often politically weaponized. Give Black, by offering a decentralized and community-driven alternative, challenges that cycle.

But history also warns: movements that lack discipline or scale are easily absorbed or ignored. Just as the Negro Leagues produced baseball talent but lacked the capital to maintain independence, so too can African American philanthropy generate excitement but fail to sustain institutional life if it is not channeled strategically.

The Verdict

Give Black App is not merely a digital donation tool. It is a test case: can African America leverage technology to redirect its wealth into its own institutions? The team’s composition, heavy in HBCU roots, marketing authenticity, and community engagement, suggests it understands both the stakes and the culture.

Still, the app must avoid the trap of becoming a feel-good project without measurable institutional outcomes. Its long-term success will be determined by whether it can:

  1. Secure partnerships with HBCUs, alumni associations, and membership-based organizations.
  2. Develop deep fundraising and compliance infrastructure.
  3. Normalize institutional giving across African American households.

If it does, Give Black could evolve into a cornerstone of African American institutional development—a kind of digital Freedman’s Bureau, redistributing not charity but power.

For African America, the stakes could not be higher. In an era where White nonprofits sit on multibillion-dollar endowments, while Black nonprofits scrape for survival, the question is not whether we are generous. It is whether our generosity is building the kind of institutions that ensure survival for centuries, not just survival for today.

Give Black, if scaled with vision and discipline, may finally provide the infrastructure to answer that question with a resounding yes.

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HBCU B-Schools’ Leadership Still Embarrassingly Lacking In HBCU Alumni

Posted on September 9, 2025 by | Leave a comment

The most difficult thing in life is to know yourself. — Thales

The Graham Principle: Why HBCU Business Schools Must Lead From Within

Warren Buffett’s rejection by Benjamin Graham is more than a quaint footnote in the history of American finance. It is a parable about institutional loyalty, strategic insulation, and the deliberate construction of parallel economic power. Graham, the architect of value investing, declined to hire the future Oracle of Omaha not for lack of qualification but for reasons of principle. At a moment when Wall Street’s doors remained firmly closed to European American Jews, Graham made a conscious decision to build from within his own community. His hiring practices were not sentimental. They were strategic—an act of institutional self-preservation in a market structured against him. He understood that talent required more than identification; it required cultivation, protection, and deliberate positioning within institutions the community itself controlled.

A decade has passed since anyone undertook a comprehensive examination of leadership trends within HBCU business schools. The intervening years might reasonably have produced a renaissance of internal cultivation—an era defined by deliberate succession planning, alumni-led governance, and a clear institutional commitment to developing leadership from within. That hope has gone largely unrealized. Across the landscape of HBCU business education, the preference for external hires persists, the pipeline for internal leadership development remains thin, and the governing logic of these schools continues to defer, implicitly or explicitly, to standards of excellence defined by the very institutions that historically excluded Black scholars from full participation.

The appointment of deans and senior faculty from predominantly white institutions is routinely framed as a commitment to excellence—the familiar rhetoric of meritocracy dressed in the language of best practices. What this framing systematically obscures is the structural disadvantage HBCU graduates face in academic and professional labor markets, disadvantages produced not by deficiency but by decades of underfunding, network exclusion, and credential discrimination. When HBCU business schools accept this framing uncritically, they do not rise above structural inequality; they reproduce it within their own walls. The result is a business education ecosystem that remains institutionally disconnected from the communities it is chartered to serve.

Of the 85 accredited HBCU business schools and departments operating under the latest available data, fewer than 20 percent are led by HBCU alumni. Of that minority, fewer than half hold both undergraduate and graduate degrees from HBCUs, further attenuating the institutional knowledge that might otherwise be reinvested across the ecosystem. The contrast with elite PWI practice is clarifying. Approximately 75 percent of business school deans at Ivy League institutions hold at least one degree from an Ivy League school. This is not coincidence. It reflects a deliberate institutional philosophy that prizes continuity, internal network loyalty, and cultural capital accumulated within the institution itself. These schools understand that leadership is not merely a management function. It is an expression of institutional identity and a mechanism for transmitting values across generations of students and faculty.

HBCU business schools have not absorbed that lesson with equivalent seriousness. The absence of a deliberate succession strategy—one that identifies, mentors, and elevates internal talent over sustained periods—constitutes a structural failure that compounds over time. When young Black scholars do not see themselves reflected in the senior leadership of their own institutions, the implicit signal is that the path to authority runs elsewhere. And so it does. Promising scholars educated at HBCUs routinely migrate to PWIs for higher compensation, greater prestige, or more robust professional infrastructure. When those scholars eventually ascend to positions of institutional leadership, their loyalty and networks do not reliably return. The brain drain becomes self-reinforcing, and the institutions that initially formed these scholars see little of the compounded return on that investment.

This pattern might be called institutional amnesia—a collective failure to study, internalize, and replicate the strategies through which other minority communities have built durable institutional ecosystems. Jewish, Catholic, and Mormon institutions have each constructed powerful networks by systematically aligning leadership selection with community identity, concentrating institutional resources within their own structures, and maintaining cultural continuity across leadership transitions. They benchmark their performance against their own historical trajectories and communal objectives, not against the preferences of institutions oriented toward different communities and different purposes. HBCU business schools, by contrast, frequently evaluate themselves against ranking systems and accreditation frameworks built around metrics that reflect neither their mission nor the specific market failures their students are positioned to address.

The strategic costs of this posture are substantial and compounding. Recruitment searches for business school deans, when conducted through executive search firms, routinely exceed $250,000 in direct expense. When that investment produces a dean with limited institutional loyalty and no deep roots in the community the school serves, the organization is exposed to the further costs of short tenures, strategic discontinuity, and misaligned fundraising. Business schools function as economic engines—engines that generate networks, direct student talent toward particular career paths, shape research agendas, and produce or fail to produce the intellectual infrastructure that sustains community-level economic development. Leadership that lacks genuine cultural and strategic commitment to the HBCU mission cannot be expected to operate that engine in the community’s interest.

The curriculum consequences are equally significant. HBCU business schools exist in a moment when the structural dimensions of Black economic life—persistent wealth gaps, discriminatory access to capital, the collapse of Black-owned financial institutions, the chronic underdevelopment of Black neighborhoods—constitute some of the most pressing and tractable problems in American political economy. Addressing those problems requires not merely academic competence but institutional orientation. Who is designing curricula around cooperative economics and community wealth retention? Who is building research programs on Black entrepreneurship, the historical function of Black banking, and the mechanics of financial exclusion? Who is developing partnerships with Black-owned financial institutions, investment funds, and real estate developers that would allow students to graduate with network capital as well as intellectual credentials? These priorities require leadership that has been formed within the ecosystem, that understands its history, and that has a personal stake in its long-term trajectory.

The Graham analogy holds at precisely this level of analysis. Graham’s decision to hire from within his community was not a concession to sentiment. It was a calculated judgment that institutional effectiveness depended on leadership whose values, networks, and long-term interests were structurally aligned with the institution’s mission. He was not interested in demonstrating that his firm could attract talent validated by mainstream institutions. He was interested in building something that would compound over time within his own community’s orbit. The question for HBCU business school leadership is whether a comparable institutional logic is possible—and whether the will exists to pursue it.

The remedies are neither mysterious nor beyond reach, but they require deliberate institutional action sustained over years rather than episodic declarations of intent. HBCU business schools must establish formal succession pipelines that identify promising alumni early, support their doctoral training and early-career development, and create structured pathways back into institutional leadership. Mentorship programs, leadership fellowships, and transparent internal promotion tracks are the instruments through which this pipeline is built and maintained. Without them, talented HBCU alumni will continue to be absorbed by institutions with superior infrastructure, and the cycle of external dependence will continue.

Boards of trustees and presidential leadership must also reckon honestly with the hiring criteria that have produced current outcomes. Cultural alignment, mission literacy, and demonstrated investment in HBCU communities should carry weight commensurate with academic credentials in dean and faculty searches. These are not competing values. They are complementary ones, and institutions that treat them as such will find that the pool of qualified, mission-aligned candidates is larger than conventional search processes have suggested.

The benchmarks against which HBCU business schools measure their progress require reconstruction as well. Chasing rankings defined by and for PWIs produces strategic mimicry rather than institutional distinctiveness. The appropriate comparators are institutions that have used internal leadership and community alignment to produce durable economic outcomes for the communities they serve. The relevant question is not whether an HBCU business school resembles Wharton. It is whether that school is building the human capital, research infrastructure, and network density that the African American institutional ecosystem requires to become economically self-reinforcing.

Alumni hold a particular form of leverage in this process that has been insufficiently exercised. Philanthropic capital directed toward HBCU business schools carries with it the legitimate expectation of institutional integrity. Alumni who fund these schools are entitled to ask whether the institutions are investing in their own—whether succession planning exists, whether internal candidates are being developed and promoted, whether the school’s research and curricular agenda reflects the community’s strategic needs. These are not hostile demands. They are the expressions of institutional ownership that any serious donor community directs toward the organizations it sustains.

The broader HBCU ecosystem has long understood, at least in principle, that institutional density is the precondition for community resilience. Strong communities are not produced by exceptional individuals operating in isolation. They are produced by networks of reinforcing institutions—universities, banks, hospitals, media organizations, research centers—that retain capital, concentrate talent, and coordinate strategically across organizational boundaries. Business schools are a critical node in that network. They are the institutions most directly positioned to translate academic investment into economic infrastructure, to convert tuition into entrepreneurial capacity, and to channel philanthropic capital into research that serves the community’s long-term interests. Their leadership must reflect that position.

The failure to develop and elevate HBCU alumni into business school leadership is not simply an administrative oversight. It is a strategic error with consequences that extend well beyond the schools themselves. Every dean recruited from outside the ecosystem without a plan to develop internal successors is a missed compounding opportunity. Every promising scholar who departs for a PWI without a pathway back represents a loss of accumulated institutional knowledge that will not return on its own. Every curriculum designed to satisfy external accreditation standards at the expense of community-relevant content is a semester in which the institution’s potential as an engine of economic development goes partially unrealized.

Graham built his firm on the premise that talent required institutional protection to reach its full potential—that external markets, structured against your community, could not be trusted to recognize or reward what you were building. That premise has lost none of its force. HBCU business schools that internalize it, and act on it with the rigor and consistency it demands, will be better positioned to fulfill the extraordinary institutional promise that their founding represented. Those that continue to defer to external validation and outsourced leadership will find that the promise remains exactly that—unrealized, and over time, increasingly difficult to recover.

Disclaimer: This article was assisted by ClaudeAI.

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