On Fox News this week, the host Laura Ingraham described my proposal as “resegregating the country.” It isn’t; black athletes are free to go anywhere they like, and nonblack students have always been allowed to attend HBCUs, too. Regardless, instead of mislabeling my argument, conservatives should have been applauding it.

For years, commentators on the right have lectured black people to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. (Let’s put aside, for the moment, everything that’s wrong with that argument, which presumes that individual achievement can successfully overcome centuries of institutionally racist policies.) I am encouraging black people to use their athletic talents for the good of their own community. College football and basketball have become billion-dollar empires. College coaches and administrators make millions in salary because of the lucrative television and merchandise deals that marquee black talent has helped them secure. These same athletes could help rebuild, revitalize, and strengthen HBCUs, which were black athletes’ only option during segregation, but which have since struggled financially and academically.

Times have changed, but the HBCUs play an outsize role in cultivating future black professionals and community leaders. Despite constituting only 3 percent of four-year colleges in the country, HBCUs have, for instance, produced 80 percent of the nation’s black judges and 50 percent of its black doctors. Even President Donald Trump, whom very few black Americans view as an ally, understands that these schools deserve federal support. “This nation owes a profound debt of gratitude to its HBCUs,” he told more than 40 leaders from such schools at a conference this week.

And if top college prospects were to attend HBCUs, then the benefits would ripple outward through the black community at large.

You might think this message would resonate with conservatives. Self-reliance rather than increased government dependency? Using capitalism and market forces to improve your community’s lot in life? These strategies are part of the conservative Ten Commandments. But the notion that black athletes would use their own talents to build up historically black institutions rather than make money for majority-white ones is, for some reason, unthinkable.

In fact, the accumulation of black wealth and talent has always been feared—sometimes leading to tragic results for African Americans. Historians believe the the Tulsa massacre in 1921 was born out of white racial resentment toward affluent African Americans, who used their oil wealth to turn Tulsa’s Greenwood neighborhood into a thriving enclave known as “Black Wall Street.” Those resentments exploded into violence after it was rumored that a black teenager had sexually assaulted a 17-year-old white female elevator operator. Angry whites destroyed Greenwood during the 18-hour race riot, which resulted in 300 black people dead, and 10,000 people left homeless.