Blexit, which the group says “stands for the ‘black exit’ from the victimhood mentality,” explained on its website why it picked the occasion for the tour: “Timed during the excitement of homecoming season — when school spirit is at its peak — we’re stepping onto campuses to challenge the status quo and champion empowerment, personal responsibility, and the American Dream.”
Howard University’s Office of University Communications wrote in an email that a Blexit representative engaged “students in conversations as they walked past (the representative’s) location on Sixth Street, which is a public street that runs through our campus,” on Friday, but it was not known how many people engaged with the organization.
“For the time that the BLEXIT representative was present the engagement was cordial and the topics of his conversations are unknown to university staff,” the statement added.
Without naming Blexit in particular, Dr. Wayne Frederick, Howard’s interim president and president emeritus, asked homecoming participants in a Friday safety video “to remain aware of your surroundings and avoid engaging with anyone who seeks to disrupt the celebratory spirit that represents the very best of us who are Bison,” referring to the name of the mascot of the school, which has a student enrollment of 14,433.
Earlier in the tour, Stephen Davis, a Blexit contributor and podcast host, described an Oct. 17 visit to Tennessee State University in Nashville, where, according to a local NBC news report, Blexit representatives were escorted off campus because they did not have a permit.
“I went to TSU to engage in respectful conversation, only to get kicked out shortly after landing on campus,” he said in a Facebook post, describing the situation “before police descended on me” as having included interviewees who were open to discussing different ideological viewpoints.
Davis said he was disappointed by those seeking to end the discussion and similar efforts toward dialogue.
“As always, witnessing such things take place saddens me, due to such people maintaining the ideological slavery within the black community, all the while complaining that no one wants to work with our race for our betterment,” wrote Davis, who vowed on Facebook to continue Blexit’s mission. “They forget that such betterment starts in the mind through the medium of presented information, which sometimes is established through peer to peer conversations. For some, the maintenance of ignorance — for themselves and others — is the comfortable slavery they wish to continue for all black Americans, whilst using the victim mentality as the bulwark against meaningful progress.”
TSU’s public relations and communications office declined to comment on the Blexit visit to campus.
Stephen Fusi, chief brand officer of North Carolina Central University, an HBCU in Durham with a student enrollment of 9,281, said three Blexit supporters “walked around campus and asked students to engage with them,” but he could not provide information about how many students were involved in the interactions or the details of the discussions.
