Conservative activists, politicians and pundits celebrated when Brown-Forman, the parent company of Jack Daniel’s and other brands, and the University of Kentucky recently cracked under the weight of threats from racists and homophobes and abandoned commitments to diversity. In February, University of Kentucky President Eli Capilouto said he opposed state legislative bills attacking Diversity, Equity and Inclusion and tenure. He opined that he found them “deeply concerning” and “at odds with the school’s mission.” Six months later, he’s changed his tune and announced UK will immediately eliminate its Office of Institutional Diversity and all mandatory university diversity training.
In his initial opposition to political attacks on diversity Capilouto said, “We don’t speak as an institution on public policy unless the issues will impact our entire community in potentially significant ways. This is one of those moments.” Now the word out of Lexington is DEI is done and neither he nor the university will make statements on “political or partisan events or issues.” It logically follows that the school and its leaders would remain silent even if Kentucky’s politicians tried to reinstitute the state’s 1904 Day Law and racially resegregate schools. After all - that would be “political”, wouldn’t it?
Other schools will surely follow UK's lead on DEI
It was quite a jarring shift for Capilouto, who has seemed more in sympathy with Black people than other silent university presidents in the state. Now that he has retreated from Kentucky’s longstanding war on Black folk and waved the white flag, other schools will surely follow.
Education isn’t the only place the racists are winning in Kentucky. A few days after Capilouto’s surrender, Jack Daniel’s owner, Louisville-based Brown-Forman, said it would also abandon its DEI initiatives , no longer participate in the Human Rights Campaign’s Corporate Equality Index social credit system, scrap efforts to expand work with minority suppliers and more. To be sure, these retrograde decisions are being made by schools and companies in other states, but they are particularly unsurprising in good old Kentucky.
In his statement on dismantling UK’s diversity unit, President Capilouto repeatedly couched his argument in the questions: “Did we care? Were we fair? Did we give all a fair shot?” I’ll leave it to those currently close to UK to answer those questions on the school, but it’s an absolute certainty that the state of Kentucky has never cared about Black people, treated them fairly or given them a collective fair shot.
More Ricky Jones: Students must remember who hurt, helped and stayed silent during the 2024 DEI battle
Kentucky’s Republicans’ anti-Black railings against diversity are just the latest entry in the sickening history of the state’s commitment to white supremacy. Be clear, Kentucky is already very, very white — and seems hellbent on remaining that way. It is the eighth whitest state in the country and Black people have minimal presence, socio-political power or possibilities.
Kentucky was technically neutral during the Civil War but, for all intents and purposes, claimed the cause of the defeated Confederacy at war’s end. Weird. Many Kentuckians are still rabidly proud of their Confederate statues and monuments. Weirder. After the War, the United States passed the landmark 13 th (1865), 14 th (1868), and 15 th (1870) constitutional amendments which respectively ended slavery, granted Black people citizenship and gave Black men the right to vote. Insanely, the state of Kentucky refused to ratify any of them until over a century later in 1976.
Kentucky has never elected a Black Governor, U.S. senator or congressperson. Its major cities have never had a Black mayor. Kentuckians still sing a state song, including at the world-famous Kentucky Derby , that used to proclaim “the darkies are gay.” Yes, they actually stood, enthusiastically sang, and called Black people “darkies.” That didn’t end until public shame forced them to change the words in 1986.
More anti-diversity attacks are coming to Kentucky
To this day, Kentucky’s historically white universities have a paltry number of Black students, faculty and administrators. Outside of its two HBCUs, the state’s major institutions of higher learning (including UK and the University of Louisville) have never had a Black president. The white ethno-state of Kentucky doesn’t need anti-DEI laws, because the Confederates have already won. Still, politicians in the state’s legislature are preparing to launch another round of anti-diversity attacks when they reconvene. It’s racist overkill, plain and simple. No wonder Black people, reasonable White people, and businesses are loathe to move to the state.
Black people (along with LGBTQ brothers and sisters, Hispanics and humane White people) would be well within their rights if they never bought another Kentucky Wildcat basketball ticket or refused to imbibe Jack Daniel’s or any other Brown-Forman spirits moving forward. Alas, that won’t happen. In fact, little will be said about this and even less will be done. Such is the case in the Bluegrass State where many Black folk have been broken by Kentucky’s culture of silence, fear, hopelessness and stagnation. Other Black people are just plain sick and tired of fighting an unwinnable and never-ending war against Kentucky’s modern white supremacists.
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In the end, most Kentuckians won’t pay attention to this issue at all. Those who do will probably forget about it as quickly as Jack Daniel’s drinkers forgot about Nearest Green .
Dr. Ricky L. Jones is the Baldwin-King Scholar-in-Residence at the Christina Lee Brown Envirome Institute and Professor of Pan-African Studies, University of Louisville. Follow him on Facebook, LinkedIn, Threads, and X. Read his Substack columns at https://rickyljones.substack.com .
This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: UK and Brown-Forman wave the white flag in Kentucky’s ongoing war on Black people
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