Double Standards, Racism, and the Uncomfortable Question

 

Two things can be true at once. A Black academic accused of plagiarism deserves a fair investigation. And the coverage of that accusation can still be excessive, racially loaded, or out of step with how comparable white academics are treated. We should be able to hold both thoughts without collapsing into one.

The recent conversation around Professor Jason Arday raised, once again, the question of racism, accountability, and double standards in Western institutions. It is understandable that Black people look at cases like this and ask whether a white academic facing the same allegations would face the same scrutiny. That is a legitimate question. But there is a second one we owe ourselves: what are we going to do about it? Naming a double standard is only the opening move.

Plagiarism Is Not a Black Word

Plagiarism existed long before Jason Arday became a professor. White academics have been accused of it, investigated, and in some cases forced out; others have weathered the controversy and kept their careers. So the real question isn't whether Black academics get scrutinized — it's whether comparable cases are treated comparably. If the answer is no, the proof is in the documentation: compare the allegations, the evidence, the institutional responses, the headlines, the shelf life of the story, the language used, the consequences that followed.

And if we believe mainstream outlets are selectively interested in Black wrongdoing, we don't need their permission to investigate the cases they ignore. We have newspapers, podcasts, YouTube, social platforms, and our own academics, lawyers, and journalists. Build the databases. Publish the comparisons. Name the institutions. The democratization of media means gatekeepers no longer decide which stories get told.

Accountability Can't Depend on What Someone Else Got Away With

There's a dangerous turn this argument can take: "White academics plagiarized and faced no consequences, so why should a Black academic face any?" Follow that logic to its end and it collapses. If someone else falsified a document and got away with it, does that make falsification acceptable for me too? Equal permission to do wrong is not equality. The right demand is investigate them too — not stop investigating us.

Racism Is Real — But It Shouldn't End the Analysis

Racism exists in Western societies, and it shapes hiring, policing, media framing, education, and countless daily interactions. Institutions are run by people, and people carry bias. But acknowledging that shouldn't mean abandoning every other analytical tool. Sometimes racism is the driver. Sometimes it's institutional politics, or sensational journalism, or simply someone having done something wrong — and sometimes several of these are true at once. Our analysis gets weaker whenever racism becomes the automatic verdict rather than one hypothesis tested against evidence. If we want others to interrogate their biases, we have to interrogate ours.

Jason Arday Deserved Fairness

None of this diminishes the human weight of intense public scrutiny surrounding someone's final days. Allegations are not convictions, and misconduct investigations should be allowed to run their course. Where media attention becomes disproportionate, that too deserves scrutiny. Behind every public controversy are human beings, families, and friends. May his soul rest in peace — and compassion should not require us to set aside hard questions, nor should accountability require us to set aside compassion.

Beyond "Why Do They Do This to Us?"

There's a question Black communities should ask more often: not just why are they treating us differently, but what are we going to build in response? If mainstream media ignores stories that matter to us, build credible media institutions. If double standards exist, document them with evidence. Endlessly naming hypocrisy without building the capacity to confront it eventually becomes its own form of helplessness. There is power in identifying injustice. There is greater power in building institutions that can challenge it.

The Equality Worth Wanting

The strangest destination would be a world where we celebrate equal numbers of Black and white academics fired for plagiarism. That is equality of a sort — but it can't be the equality worth fighting for. I don't want equal corruption, equal incompetence, equal fraud, or equal plagiarism. I want equal standards: investigate the Black professor and the white professor, give both due process, apply the same evidentiary bar, and report and punish comparable cases comparably. That is a harder fight than shouting racism whenever the numbers look unequal — but it is the more serious one.

Yes, double standards exist. Yes, racism exists. Yes, media institutions deserve challenge when their treatment of people looks racially disproportionate. But after saying all of that, the question remains: what are we going to do about it? Equality should not mean demanding the same freedom to escape accountability. It should mean demanding that accountability applies to everyone.