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.
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