Roy S. Johnson: Anti-DEI Law Is ‘Straight, White Only’ Sign on Alabama School Doors

This is an opinion column.

“Any law that elevates human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust.”

– Father Martin Luther King

Ole George Wallace himself might as well have jumped out of his grave and thrown his body back in front of the schoolhouse doors.

Might as well.

Even better would be for his body to stand at the entrance to the University of Alabama, Auburn University, the University of Alabama at Birmingham, the University of Alabama in Huntsville, Jacksonville State University, the University of South Alabama, and other public institutions and educational facilities in our state.

Might as well just stand there with all that stench.

The stench created by Governor Kay Ivey and Alabama’s Republican legislators. The stench of the sign they hung on the front doors of our public colleges and institutions. The sign that reads: “Whites Only.”

Or even better: “Straight only, white only.”

Might as well.

I have to make this clear: white, no vaginal dischargeBecause the new Alabama unjust the law, poorly worded as banning “divisive concepts,” does not bar people from accessing them based on skin color, gender, or who they may love. However, it does make illegal any shade of thought or behavior that does not align with those who created and signed it.

So let’s call it what it is — a heterosexual, white-only law — because no Republican can define a “divisive concept” with a straight face, or point to one that a public college or university espouses. (Republican state Sen. Will Barfoot of Pike Road, who sponsored the crime, says professors who knowingly “force” students to believe in a forbidden concept, whatever it is, can be punished or even fired.)

Let’s call it what it is because it’s already happened: jobs have been eliminated, funding for student organizations has been cut, and spaces on college campuses that have been safe, empowering havens for students from historically marginalized (that’s putting it mildly) groups in our complicated country have been closed down.

This has left respected educators confused and fearful, forcing them to paint over syllabi and modify course titles they have taught to generations of students, many of whom now live, work and lead in our state.

They are depressed students who want to live, to learnand maybe one day I will even work here and lead.

Students to whom we have already said: If your path differs from our heterosexual, white path, if you intend to increase the growing diversity in our state, promote equal opportunity for all, and ensure that our classrooms are inclusive to all – welcome Down everything – then no, we are not ready for this.

We do not support this “legally.”

We will not provide you with spaces on campus where you can meet, lift your spirits, or share with each other. Spaces where you can breathe, be accepted, be seen. Spaces where you can heal mentally if necessary.

The places my AL.com colleague Rebecca Griesbach mentions, which once housed organizations like the University of Arizona’s Intercultural Diversity Center, the Black Students Union, and the Safe Zone Resource Center for LGBTQ students, are empty or devoid of any trace of your presence.

Sites that ‘won’t be moved,’ university says with the law.

We will not fund your efforts to celebrate or empower each other. Indeed, we have erased student positions that sought to do so. Positions with scholarships that could be a financial bridge to allow a student to remain in college.

Positions like the one held by third-year UAB student Sydney Testman. For years, she worked as the financial coordinator for the Social Justice Advocacy Council, helping other student organizations fund multicultural and social justice programs, voter registration drives, professional development conferences and community service.

It’s all good, right? No, we’re not ready for that.

In July, Testman told Griesbach she was “dreading” returning in the fall “to a completely different campus.”

Indeed, she returned to the campus that had her performance removed because SJAC is now responsible for raising its own funds. (How dare we spend our public money on a professional conference or registering young people to vote?!).

Testman earned $300 a month for her job, money she (and no doubt many others) now has to recoup — thanks to our governor and GOP legislators.

Ivey’s signature also defunded organizations like Esperanza at UAB, created to retain the small (6%) but growing Hispanic student body in a state with a small but growing Hispanic population; and U.A. decades Queer Students Association.

Elder Bryce Schottelkotte, who leads QSA, told Griesbach, “It’s sad that we all have to struggle with this.”

Neph Irvin, a third-year student at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, told us it’s “almost scary… because no one knows exactly how it’s going to play out.”

“From what I can tell,” added former QSA president Sean Atchison, “our community has been completely eliminated.”

Indeed, try to find All on diversity, equality and integration — bad, bad words that make Alabama Republicans’ heads explode — on the websites of those universities. The schools say they’ll continue to support “access” and “engagement” programs (wink), but you’ll need a digital scythe to cut through the whitewashed jargon and find anything about it.

Ivey stands firm in his stance, as steadfast as Wallace once was:

“I will not allow a few bad actors on college campuses — or anywhere else — to operate under the acronym DEI, using taxpayer dollars to promote their liberal political movement contrary to what the majority of Alabama residents believe,” he said repeatedly.

I don’t know what movie she and her fellow Republicans watched or what study forced them to flush out so much of the positive. The flickering images of narrow-mindedness and baseless fear I see disappear into the dusty bin where most of our state’s most embarrassing history resides.

I truly believe that most Alabama residents welcome with open arms anyone who wants to live, learn, and perhaps even work and lead here.

No matter the journey.

So it’s worth remembering this: ripping posters off walls, removing job titles from office doors, kicking students out of their spaces, changing jobs, and defunding the things that made students feel good about their chosen higher education institution may seem scary and depressing now, but it won’t deter these young people.

It won’t stop them from finding a way. A way to lift, strengthen and celebrate each other. A way to honor their trip.

A way to eventually tear down that new, hateful inscription on their school door.