Loading ...Bob Jones U. apologizes for past racial discrimination
flockwoodBy JEFFREY COLLINS
Associated Press Writer
COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — Bob Jones University has apologized for racist policies including a one-time ban on interracial dating that wasn’t lifted until nine years ago and its unwillingness to admit black students until 1971.
The private fundamentalist Christian school that was founded in 1927 said its rules on race were shaped by culture instead of the Bible, according to a statement posted Thursday on the university’s Web site.
The university in northwestern South Carolina, with about 5,000 students, didn’t begin admitting black students until nearly 20 years after the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruling found public segregated schools were unconstitutional.
“We failed to accurately represent the Lord and to fulfill the commandment to love others as ourselves. For these failures we are profoundly sorry. Though no known antagonism toward minorities or expressions of racism on a personal level have ever been tolerated on our campus, we allowed institutional policies to remain in place that were racially hurtful,” the statement said.
The interracial dating ban was lifted in March 2000, not long after the policy became an issue in the Republican presidential primary that year. Then-candidate George W. Bush was criticized when he spoke at the school during one of his first campaign stops in the state after losing in New Hampshire.
Bob Jones University President Stephen Jones decided to issue the apology because the school still receives questions about its views on race.
The leader of the South Carolina NAACP said the civil rights group welcomed the statement.
“It’s unfortunate it took them this long — particularly a religious, faith-based institution — to realize that we all are human beings and the rights of all people should be respected and honored,” said Lonnie Randolph, president of the state chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
Randolph said that when Jones became president three years ago, he asked the civil rights leader not to hold the decisions made under his father and grandfather against him.
Jones is the great-grandson of the school founder, Bob Jones. He took over for his father, also named Bob Jones, in 2005.
———
On the Net:
Bob Jones University statement: http://www.bju.edu/about/race.html
November 22nd, 2008 at 10:35 am
Here’s always my question about these churches of the latter day apology: If there were no anti-discrimination laws, and if there weren’t people out there championing civil rights, and if it hadn’t become an embarrassment to be seen as a racist in today’s society, would these people have voluntarily changed their policies because they were wrong, unchristian and immoral? I doubt it. The dirty little secret about that ole time religion is that it was segregated, and that the people whom we hold up as such paragons of virtue fully supported the system of segregation, right down to segregated church services and segregated christian schools. Nothing would please me more than to be able to think that Bob Jones University has become enlightened all on its own, but I doubt it. I suspect this is a public relations ploy, and one can’t help but notice that it didn’t come until after the election of our nation’s first black president. But then, I’m ever the pessimist.
November 22nd, 2008 at 1:56 pm
Whatever the reasons for BJU offering the apology, I welcome it. It is appropriate and very, very long past due. Perhaps BJU and South Carolina are beginning to catch up with the rest of the country on what is viewed as acceptable public stances on racial issues. That could be a prelude to changing the cultural inheritance of decades upon decades of racist policies, attitudes, and practices.
Now, given that the same Biblical warrant (and cultural basis) for racist attitudes and practices have also been given for sexist ones and homophobic one–including the same basic “Bible-based” arguments–perhaps one can be a bit more hopeful for the future sensible modification on those issues too. I hope it doesn’t take as long–after key laws have been changed–on those as it has taken on racism.
November 24th, 2008 at 1:19 pm
AG, I’d say it’ll be about the same. It’ll take the more conservative churches another fifty years to catch up, and then they’ll all be apologizing to the gays like they are to the blacks now. My prference would be for them to keep their apologies and change their attitudes, but that isn’t going to happen anytime soon: Homophobia is as rampant among the conservative churches today as racism was in the ’50s.