The death Friday of Jason Arday, a 41-year-old Black scholar who resigned from the University of Cambridge after waves of attacks over the last few weeks, hits close to home.
His death left me so devastated I had no words when the news broke.
But I woke up this morning with words.
To be a prominent antiracist Black scholar is to know you are a target, almost totally surrounded by resentments. Prominence is relative.
You can be prominent at your university, in your field, in your local community, in your nation, across oceans.
As a prominent Black scholar, you know that at any point, the attacks haunt and hunt you like a lynch mob.
And then, one day, the attacks are at your door.
The attacks are wielded by racist propagandists, resenting you for shining a light on anti-Black racism. They hope everyone finally picks up their baseless claims. They know that to dim your light is to dim the light on their anti-Blackness.
The attacks come from centrist and progressive White scholars and writers, resenting your positions and honors and pay. They believe the great replacement theory that you’ve taken their spots, their honors, their money, like the followers of Donald Trump and Nigel Farage.
The attacks come from Black scholars and writers, resenting your prominence, treating you as a competitor as opposed to a comrade, demonstrating their capitalist and anti-Black orientation, even those identifying as anti-capitalist and pro-Black. They end up spending more time in private and public undermining you than the racist White scholars and writers that are actively undermining them and you.
The attacks come from social media users across ideologies who see that attacking you is trending on algorithms. And then they join the fray as if you aren’t a human being, as if you aren’t going to feel the harm they unleash for likes, shares and follows.
But when in memory have Black people been treated first and foremost as human beings?
The university that propped you up for years now abandons you amid all the attacks. It announces an investigation to protect its reputation at the expense of yours, even when it knows the attackers have been coming at you for years, even when it knows they are the problem that needs to be investigated, not you.
The White-owned, mainstream media doesn’t investigate the problem: those attackers bent on your “downfall,” believing as you fall, they will rise.
The White-owned, mainstream media circulates their attacks. And piles on and on and on and on.
The White-owned, mainstream media published 249 articles in 22 days on Jason Arday, according to data from NewsCord, a UK media watchdog.
By comparison, in 2024, in the weeks after the then newly released Epstein files showed long-standing ties between Epstein and Peter Mandelson, former UK Ambassador to the U.S., the UK media mentioned Mandelson 119 times, NewsCord found.
In 2023, only the Financial Times covered extensively that William O’Reilly, a White Cambridge professor, was found guilty of plagiarism. All told, a Black Cambridge professor endured 249 times more media coverage for an accusation of plagiarism by a known racist propagandist than a White Cambridge professor found guilty of plagiarism.
A similar media pile-on happened to me in the fall of 2023 when I was a professor at Boston University. We had to let some staff go to ensure the financial sustainability of the Center for Antiracist Research, after huge declines in fundraising at a time when many antiracist organizations were being compelled to let people go amid major dips in funding. We gave our staff three months’ notice and severance, and allowed them to spend those next three months looking for a new place of employment. Enraged at me for the layoffs, some staffers retaliated by baselessly accusing me of mismanaging the center.
The university launched an “inquiry” when it knew nothing was there, when it knew I was caretaking a newborn and a partner with stage IV breast cancer. When I was cleared of mismanagement after an audit weeks later, the media suddenly went quiet. There were hardly any reports of this news. It was a miserable time, navigating all these attacks and providing care at home.
I’ve seen other prominent Black scholars face these attacks time and again.
And if you die from all the attacks, the media still calls the attacks on you “accusations” to wash their hands of the blood. Your lynchers announce your death as if they had no role in your lynching.
But you know what your lynchers won’t announce: when you are cleared of wrongdoing. We won’t be seeing a media pile-on for that news on Jason Arday or other prominent Black scholars.
The media will bury its culpability while we bury Jason.
I hope he finally receives what we have never received as prominent Black scholars: peace.
