Read The Yard — Muriel Bowser Gets Booed At Howard University After Trying To Merge Her Legacy With Their Moment [Op-Ed]
Anybody pretending to be shocked has not been paying attention to the city Howard University students had to survive while earning their degrees. The post Read The Yard — Muriel Bowser Gets Booed At Howard University After Trying To Merge Her Legacy With Their Moment [Op-Ed] appeared first on MadameNoire.
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Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser came to Howard University on Saturday, trying to graduate herself from City Hall, as if she and the class of 2026 were walking the same stage.
But those students were not fooled. They were not there to be props in her farewell narrative. They were not there to clap for a mayor who wanted to borrow the glow of the Mecca without answering for what happened to the city around it.
The graduates booed her. Of course they did. What did people expect?
That a graduating class of politically literate, Gen Z, HBCU students, sitting on the Yard in the middle of D.C., was going to pretend they had not spent the last four years watching this city become more expensive, more policed, more developer-friendly, and less livable for Black communities? Anybody pretending to be shocked has not been paying attention to the city those students had to survive while earning those degrees.
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Bowser, who received an honorary doctorate degree from Howard, stood on the dais and said, “Just like you, I will be graduating, too. This is my commencement, too.”
She kept reaching for Howard’s history, symbols, rhythm, and sacred language, as if proximity to the Mecca could launder her record. She said she had learned the night before that receiving an honorary degree made her a Bison, then tried to play with “H-U” and “You Know” like students were supposed to forget rent, policing, displacement, Trump, Black Lives Matter Plaza, federal troops, downtown developer politics, and the cost of trying to survive in her D.C.
The post Read The Yard — Muriel Bowser Gets Booed At Howard University After Trying To Merge Her Legacy With Their Moment [Op-Ed] appeared first on MadameNoire.
