WASHINGTON — Facing a fierce backlash after she called historically black colleges and universities “real pioneers’’ of school choice, Betsy DeVos, the education secretary, spent Tuesday afternoon backtracking on the controversial statement and highlighting the institutions’ roots in racism and segregation.
DeVos, in a series of Twitter posts on Tuesday and in remarks at a luncheon with presidents from some of the schools, repeatedly acknowledged that the schools were not created simply to give African-Americans more choices but because black students across the country were not allowed into segregated white schools. The controversy is the latest gaffe for DeVos, who has had a rough start.
Since Vice President Mike Pence cast the tiebreaking vote to confirm her, DeVos has fled from a small group of protesters who temporarily blocked her from entering a school, been criticized by a middle school’s administrators for saying their teachers were in “receive mode,’’ and suffered through the embarrassment of the Education Department’s misspelling the name of civil rights icon W.E.B. Du Bois in an official tweet.
The latest controversy began Monday evening when DeVos released a statement shortly after meeting with several presidents of historically black colleges and universities. In it, DeVos began by praising the schools for making “tangible, structural reforms’’ that allowed students, often underserved, to reach their full potential.
“They started from the fact that there were too many students in America who did not have equal access to education,’’ she said in the statement. “They saw that the system wasn’t working, that there was an absence of opportunity, so they took it upon themselves to provide the solution.’’
Historically black colleges and universities “are real pioneers when it comes to school choice,’’ the statement continued. “They are living proof that when more options are provided to students, they are afforded greater access and greater quality. Their success has shown that more options help students flourish.’’
On Twitter, hundreds of angry users accused her of ignoring the fact that many of the schools were founded because black students were not allowed to attend segregated white schools, not because education pioneers wanted to give African-Americans more options in higher education. Many accused her of using the nation’s history of segregation to advance a contemporary political agenda.
Representative Barbara Lee, a California Democrat, said the comment was “tone-deaf,’’ adding that the schools “weren’t ‘more options’ for black students — for many years, they were the only option.’’
Senator Claire McCaskill, a Missouri Democrat, called the statement “totally nuts’’ and said that DeVos was “pretending that establishment of historically black colleges was about choice not racism.’’
Kristen Clarke, president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, wrote that DeVos “appears ignorant of racial segregation’’ during the Jim Crow era.
On Tuesday afternoon, DeVos seemed to backpedal on her statement at a luncheon for the school presidents at the Library of Congress.
“Bucking that status quo, and providing an alternative option to students denied the right to attend a quality school is the legacy of HBCUs,’’ she said, according to prepared remarks released by her office. “But your history was born, not out of mere choice, but out of necessity, in the face of racism, and in the aftermath of the Civil War.’’
She added that historically black colleges and universities, known as HBCUs, “remain at the forefront of opening doors that had previously been closed to so many,’’ and that the schools “made higher education accessible to students who otherwise would have been denied the opportunity.’’
DeVos later published several tweets on the same subject.
“Providing an alternative option to students denied the right to attend a quality school is the legacy of HBCUs,’’ she wrote, adding that “HBCUs remain at the forefront of opening doors that had previously been closed to so many.’’
Still, DeVos in her speech referred to Mary McLeod Bethune, a civil rights activist and educator, as a leader who “is less well known than others in the HBCU legacy.’’ DeVos said Bethune, who founded Bethune-Cookman University in Daytona Beach, inspired her because she recognized that traditional schools “systemically failed to provide African-Americans access to a quality education — or, sadly, more often to any education at all.’’
