Welcome to Democracy-ish.

I'm Toray.

And I'm Danielle Moody.

And we dedicate this episode to the lovely people at UNC who are probably stewing in bitterness

and shame and embarrassment after Nicole Hannah Jones rejected their offer of tenure like

Dekembe Matumbo rejecting a weak shot from Brian Scalabrini and instead chose to teach at Howard

University along with Toneheese Coates setting up what seems to be a fairly powerful shift

which which will make a lot of people who are 16, 17, 18 years old, think about,

maybe I shouldn't go to one of these traditionally white schools that I could get into.

I should go to Howard because there is extraordinary people teaching there.

Not that there wasn't before, but now with these two superstar names being added,

it becomes this amazing glittering galaxy of professors.

You know, what I appreciate, if folks have not read the entirety of Nicole Hannah-Jones's statement as to why she denied finally after, I don't know, seven months of deliberation, the UNC Board of Trustees decision to grant her the tenure that was granted to every single fucking night chair

ahead of her.

It was beautiful and its refusal to bow to the applause and the final acceptance of white people.

I cannot express to you as a person who wanted so greatly to attend an HBCU but did not.

The fuck you that Nicole Hannah Jones in her eloquence, in her brilliance, provided. We have played to

your games. We have done everything that you asked of us to do as black people. We superseded

the rules that you set for us. And even when you decide to change the rules at the end of the day,

we look you in the face and we say, you know what? Do you know what she said, Toray, that I love so much?

I refuse. I refuse. Black women, black people never get to utter that phrase with the boldness, with the straightness

of our backs and the liftedness of our chins to ever say, I refuse.

...