The racist traditions at Bowdoin and Bates
Whenever education is proposed as the solution to racism, my face gets hot. I guess the idea is supposed to be that racists just don’t know any better because racism is a default human setting that can only be undone by white elite institutions. The opposite of all that is usually true, and maybe the best way to explain is with a story that begins with a guy named Jeff.
The thing about Jeff is that he was destined to be a big deal. In 1835, when he was just 27 years old, Jeff became the son-in-law to future president Zachary Taylor. I’m sure that had no small part in Jeff eventually becoming a member of the U.S. House of Representatives. Jeff rose to such esteem in Congress that he delivered Andrew Jackson’s eulogy, and when Jeff left the House, he became a U.S. Senator.
Even though he represented Mississippi, Jeff was such a big deal that Maine’s own Bowdoin College gave him an honorary doctorate in 1858. It wouldn’t be long before Jeff was appointed the United States Secretary of War — what we called the Secretary of Defense back when we were honest about such things.
Anyway, like Taylor and Jackson, Jeff was also an enslaver. He held 113 Black people captive and he loved it. Like, really loved it. Jeff loved enslaving Black people so much that he once declared, “African slavery, as it exists in the United States, is a moral, a social, and a political blessing.”
As you might’ve guessed, a lot of people outside Jeff’s political and social circles hated him. Being such a loud and proud enslaver made him wildly unpopular in much of the country. Among the racists, however, he was actually considered a moderate. This is why Jeff — or Jefferson Davis, as you probably know him — was nominated and then elected to be the first (and only, as it happened) President of the Confederate States of America.
When Bowdoin gave him that honorary doctorate, Jeff was three years away from becoming the Confederate President, but his racist thoughts and actions were no secret. So, what did it mean for such a distinguished educational institution to reward such a disgusting degenerate back then?
Maybe you’re feeling an impulse to excuse Bowdoin. Maybe the leaders of this prestigious college just didn’t know any better…
The truth is that a seed was planted. Bowdoin went on to eventually offer something called the Jefferson Davis Award. This cash prize was given to students who excelled in constitutional law or government. Granted, there may be no other single individual in the entire history of this country who so completely encapsulates such total failure in the areas of constitutional law or government as Jefferson Davis. Even so, year after year, the Jefferson Davis Award was conferred without the slightest hint of irony.
Now please allow that impulse to excuse the administration’s ignorance to fade in light of the fact Bowdoin began offering this award in 1972. If that’s still too far back for you to care, consider that Bowdoin College kept awarding this prize until 2015.
Of course, Bowdoin doesn’t have a monopoly on systemic racism in Maine’s higher-education world. Bates College, for example, is more than proud of their abolitionist beginnings, but continuously fails to honor that past in ways other than branding.
Skye Brown, former managing features editor for The Bates Student, wrote in 2020 about how Bates treated students of color, how they were “reduced to our suffering and known only by it.”
That same year, a Black former assistant dean for intercultural education at Bates, Vvdaul Holloway, said of his time there: “My expectation was that I would join the staff of an elite, white institution to do the work of building better futures for students of color” — already a heavy weight to carry. Unfortunately, Holloway continued, “The reality is that they wanted to keep it as elite and white as possible.”
Malik Hall, the first Black head football coach to be hired by Bates, sued the school for racial discrimination, defamation, negligence and retaliation in 2022. The college settled the suit this past January.
Last year, Bates professor Tyler Austin Harper wrote an op-ed for the Boston Globe titled, “I am the wrong kind of Black professor,” in which he detailed being told by peers and advisors that he should be more involved with Black topics rather than his actual expertise in 19th- and 20th-century British literature.
Also last year, Black freshman Seneca Moore was recruited to be the quarterback of the Bates Bobcats. Unfortunately, even a star athlete like Moore wasn’t able to keep the team from having a disastrous season.
On Oct. 14, as a morale-booster after their fifth-straight loss (at Bowdoin), the Bates team had an on-campus Nerf gun battle. That night, Moore was in the car with two teammates – both people of color – when they spotted two other teammates, both white. The two white teammates shot their Nerf guns at their teammates in the car, the three players in the car Nerfed back, and a good laugh was had by all.
That is, until Moore’s friends in the car got an e-mail from Bates claiming the Nerf skirmish had violated the college’s Code of Conduct pertaining to possession or use of a weapon, as well as reckless driving and disorderly conduct. The two teammates asked Moore if he could vouch for them, which he did. But all this vouching did was get Moore the exact same weapons, reckless driving and disorderly conduct charges.
The two white teammates were not charged.
Receiving these charges left the three players of color with two options. The first was probation for their entire undergraduate careers, plus those Code of Conduct violations would remain on their records, so they would also be required to report these violations if they transferred colleges.
The other option was a Student Conduct Committee hearing, which could potentially result in expulsion from Bates.
In the notoriously racist U.S. justice system, more than 90 percent of criminal cases are resolved with a plea bargain given the similarly high stakes should you try to defend yourself. The teammates Moore vouched for took the probation deal. Moore, however, decided on the hearing. If a false accusation could lead to probation, then that probation could just as easily be violated by a second false charge, potentially resulting in expulsion anyway. So why not fight it?
One reason might be the blatant absurdity of facing a weapons charge for a Nerf gun, which strongly suggests the impossibility of getting a fair hearing. Another might be the absurdity of accusing three people of recklessly driving the same car at the same time, reinforcing that same suggestion. And a third reason not to appeal is that the process would take five months.
Five months of a looming misconduct hearing equates to guilt in many peoples’ eyes, regardless of the eventual outcome. Those people could be peers or administrators or professors capable of inflicting untold damage to the college freshman’s reputation and future. That’s five months of speculation worsening what is already the precarious position of being a young Black man not only in the United States, but in the whitest state at an elite, white institution with the reputation for wanting to keep itself as elite and white as possible.
But Seneca Moore decided to defend himself, and Bates College decided to force its freshman quarterback to go through their entire kangaroo court appeals process.
Moore was finally cleared of all charges in March, after which he told The Bates Student, “A lot of the committee members apologized at the end because of how absurd the situation was.”
There are those at Bates congratulating themselves on a “process” that “worked.” This belief in the integrity of the process would’ve been expressed regardless of the outcome. It’s a circular logic that must not account for externalities like the trauma and reputational damage false charges cause; nor may it acknowledge any responsibility the college has to a young Black student. Because if it did account for such things, if America’s educational institutions wanted such anti-racist considerations to matter, this country would’ve educated away its racism a long time ago.
As of this writing, the two other students in the car with Moore are still on probation.
Samuel James also writes “Banned Histories of Race in America” at samuelj.substack.com
