Equal access is often celebrated as progress. The argument goes: if everyone can attend the same schools, live in the same neighborhoods, or worship in the same churches, why do separate Black institutions still matter? On the surface, it seems logical. But access is not the same as equity. Access is not the same as belonging. Access is not the same as home.
Being allowed in a room doesn’t mean the room was built for you. You can attend the school your parents didn’t, sit in the pews of a church that wasn’t designed with your culture in mind, or move into the neighborhood your grandparents couldn’t afford. You can do all of it and still feel like a guest. Safe? Maybe. Belonging? Rarely.
Inequity in access persists in ways that are often invisible. For example, during a year of budget cuts in Louisiana, LSU wasn’t going to get a new dorm built, while Southern University wasn’t going to get new boilers. Two public universities, both educating students and serving the state, yet one clearly received advantages in funding, maintenance, and infrastructure. Access existed in theory, but resources did not. That imbalance isn’t just a line in a budget—it shapes experiences, opportunities, and outcomes.
Black institutions were never just about access. They have always been about safety, belonging, leadership, and the preservation of culture in a world that systematically denied those things. Black churches offered sanctuary and guidance when no one else would. HBCUs created leaders and scholars in spaces where Black excellence was expected rather than exceptional. Neighborhoods, communities, and family networks provided support when larger systems actively withheld it. These spaces were—and remain—lifelines.
The same choices are framed differently depending on who makes them. When white families live in the neighborhoods they grew up in, send their children to the schools their parents attended, or worship at the churches of their ancestors, it is celebrated as tradition, loyalty, and roots. When Black families do the same, it is often labeled limiting, sentimental, or even backward. The decisions themselves do not change. Only the lens does.
Many traditions that persist in Black communities today have roots in slavery. Sunday church services, family gatherings, storytelling, soul food, quilting, dance, and communal child-rearing were originally acts of survival and resistance. Spirituals were sung under threat, often carrying hidden messages of hope and escape. Quilts were used to communicate routes to freedom. Families gathered wherever they could to reclaim connection after being torn apart. These practices were never optional—they were lifelines.
Even the painful, negative parts of history are important. Erasure of suffering is not progress. History matters in its entirety, just as a doctor relies on a patient’s full medical history to treat the present and prepare for the future. Understanding the oppression, stolen lives, and systemic barriers is essential to preserving Black spaces today. It teaches resilience, ingenuity, and community in ways that “equal access” alone cannot.
Black institutions are not relics; they are living proof that Black culture has endured, adapted, and thrived despite systemic barriers. They remind us that supporting these spaces is not about resisting integration—it is about protecting spaces that affirm identity, nurture belonging, and pass knowledge across generations.
Churches, HBCUs, neighborhoods, family traditions, and Black-led spaces exist because elsewhere was never designed to fully hold Black communities. They preserve culture, identity, and history, while teaching lessons from both the triumphs and the hardships of the past. Progress without understanding history is incomplete. Proximity without belonging is hollow.
Supporting Black institutions is not nostalgic—it is practical, cultural, and essential. Access may open doors, but belonging, culture, and home are cultivated. To abandon spaces built for Black communities in pursuit of systems that were never designed to fully sustain them is not progress—it is erasure.
Black institutions do more than preserve tradition—they preserve life, history, and the lessons that come from surviving and thriving in a world that didn’t design itself for Black people. That is why they still matter.
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