Bringing back racial segregation …

Did I miss something?

I seem to remember the 1960s battles over civil rights.  Civil rights leaders – I believe – demanded an end to racial segregation back then. 

Segregation was evil. We could never expect different races, especially blacks and whites, to learn to get along and move forward as equals until we removed barriers keeping the races apart.

So no more racially divided public schools and universities. No more racially divided drinking fountains and lunch counters.  Or seats on public transportation. No more racially divided housing. No more laws prohibiting marriage between races.

There was no such thing as “separate but equal”; “separate” always meant unequal. 

The overriding message was that racial equality and racial harmony could only happen when segregation by race finally ended in America. Discrimination would wither and equality would reign once blacks and whites learned together, lived together, worked together, and realized they had much more in common than what had previously set them apart. 

It might take a generation or so, but that was the promise of desegregation. 

Did I dream all that? Am I “misremembering” what one of the major goals of the 1960s civil rights movement was about?

I don’t think so.

That’s why I am surprised that there’s new pressure to bring back racial segregation. By blacks. By young blacks, in fact.  By young blacks on integrated college campuses. 

There’s a movement on campuses by young blacks to create separate housing for black students. They claim this is needed because black students, especially black male students, need a safe space surrounded by only their racial peers to survive the pressures of college life on campuses they must share with students of other races.  Black-only housing would enable black students to nurture one another in a setting that allowed them to fully express their black culture.

Please note that the latest push for this – on the UCLA campus – is not focused exclusively on African Americans, but also would provide the same “black segregation” for Caribbean blacks, blacks from Africa studying here, and anyone else activists deem “black.”

So the only qualification is skin color.

Now, on most large college campuses in this country there are self-segregation elements already in place, again mostly at the request of black students. There’s usually a black student union, a black cultural center, an organization of black students, and black sororities and fraternities. 

It seems that self-segregation like this is perfectly fine in this day and age.  However, that right to so publicly self-segregate is selective. I doubt many university administrators would be as accepting of a white student union, a white cultural center, an organization of white students, and white sororities and fraternities, much less white-only housing.  

I personally believe people have the right to associate with whomever they wish without the heavy hand of government involved.  I also believe people have the right to form private groups or clubs, or other private organizations, that place limits on who can be a member. 

Yet I also believe very strongly that those rights go out the window when public money is used. As a hard and fast rule, no publicly-funded institution should indulge or permit any form of racial discrimination. Period. That’s a big part of what the civil rights movement was about.

Make no mistake: segregation by race is just another form of discrimination.   

What people do with their own money is their business. If black students want to raise money to build their own dorms off campus – dorms that only allow blacks as residents – I have no problem with that at all.  But if they want taxpayers to foot the bill for that by forcing a university to dedicate on-campus housing exclusively for one race or another, the answer always should be no.

People were beaten and lives were lost fighting for desegregation. National Guard troops were brought in at times to force the desegregation of public universities.

And here we are, more than 50 years later, and some people from the same groups that once fought and died to end segregation are now demanding it return. 

Talk about irony.