Duke’s “Nigger Heaven”

Rather than stand up to the pressures from  forces not interested in inclusion, Duke University chose to relegate fee-paying students and employees who practice Islam to the campus’s metaphoric “Nigger Heaven.
Duke’s “Nigger Heaven” by Mark Anthony Neal | NewBlackMan (in Exile)
One of the most popular pieces of fiction on race published in  the 1920s was Carl Van Vechten’s Nigger Heaven (1926).  A photographer by vocation, Van Vechten was a supporter of and otherwise hanger-on to the Black artists and thinkers who comprised the Harlem Renaissance. Though the novel was basically a pre-reality TV-styled satire of the lives of the Black and Talented, the book’s title was drawn from the well known practice of relegating Black folk to the balconies of churches and theaters in a segregated society.
The goal of such practices was to maintain the illusion of segregation in American society, while being inclusive of taking money from anyone who wanted to spend it. It is the same logic that forced fare-paying Blacks to the “back of the bus.”
I thought about Van Vechten’s novel and its larger implications after Duke University--my employer--reversed its decision to allow the Muslim Call to Prayer to be amplified through Duke University Chapel’s Bell Tower on Fridays--a chapel that was designed by Black architect Julian Abele, who was denied accommodations in Durham, NC because of segregation in the 1930s.
Regardless of the reasons why Duke reversed its original decision--a question best addressed by the University’s leadership housed in the Allen Building, another building designed by Abele--it is a classic example of an institution choosing to embrace the tenets of diversity, inclusion (religious or otherwise) and pluralism, only when it is convenient and profitable for them to do so.

Rather than stand up to the pressures of forces not interested in the very inclusion that Duke claims to value--who irrationally believe that the Call to Prayer was an example of "Muslims taking over"--it chose to relegate its fee-paying students and employees who practice the Muslim faith to the campus’s metaphoric “Nigger Heaven.”