Biden’s HBCU Snub Is Yet Another Failure to the Black Voters Who Elected Him

The president’s broken promises suggest he’s taking a valuable bloc for granted

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4 min readOct 14, 2021

Joe Biden owes his presidency to Black people. This is a fact. Yet it so often feels as if his administration plans to be as cheap and empty as possible when it comes to paying us back.

Last week, it was reported that in light of an ongoing rift between Democrats over the passage of both the bipartisan infrastructure bill and a $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill designed to widely expand the social safety net, the previously planned $45 billion for historically Black colleges and universities will be reduced to $2 billion for educational programs and infrastructure of HBCUs and “other minority-serving institutions.” Newsweek’s Alyse Mesmer added that the amount could be reduced to competitive grant funding instead of direct funding to the schools.

As Kevin Cosby, president of Simmons College of Kentucky in Louisville, noted to Mesmer, it’s not only unfortunate that they plan to reduce funding to Black institutions in need, they’re not even distinguishing HBCUs specifically for assistance.

“To mix them with minority-serving institutions, which are are not historic institutions that do not have the legacy of historic discrimination, is not right,” Cosby explained. “Historically Black colleges and universities should be separated as a protected class of institutions because, like the Black community, our experience in the United States of America is a unique experience.”

Others have argued the narrative that’s widely spread about the cuts are not as bad as it seems.

Grambling State University President Rick Gallot claimed there is a misconception that this proposal will lead to a decrease in HBCU funding. “There’s a false narrative out there that the current administration is somehow cutting our funding, and that is inaccurate,” Gallot told the Monroe News-Star. “What they’re doing is proposing new funding above what we are already budgeted to get.”