What's Old Is New Again

The Civil Rights Era in the United States, when do you date it?  Starting with Brown v. Board of Education, 1954?  Rosa Parks and the Birmingham Bus Boycott, 1955?  And "ending" with the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and/or the Voting Rights Act of 1965?  All of that happened before I was a few months old.  Equal rights has been the law of the land for my entire memory.  I grew up agreeing with Thurgood Marshall that there was no legitimate reason for government to classify people by race, and agreeing with King Jr that we should judge people on their character vs their color.  I supported Proposition 209 in California, which prohibited "public institutions from discriminating on the basis of race, sex, or ethnicity."  While I obviously don't believe that everyone in our society will be free from all racism or discrimination, I do agree with Chief Justice Roberts that the "way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race" (pp 40-41 of this ruling).  These are the values I was taught and have believed in all my life.

So you can imagine how odious it is to me to see our universities voluntarily and with gusto return to a funhouse-mirror reflection of "segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever".  Here are some:

The University of Alabama, for example, is endorsing a Goldman Sachs-backed “diversity” program that benefits black, Hispanic, Native American and LGBT students, but excludes other groups. White? Asian? Straight? You’re not welcome.

At the University of Colorado Boulder, a special retreat is available only to students "whose identity community/ies have been minoritized" in science, technology, engineering and math. Nor was it about special problems faced by “minoritized” students...

Meanwhile, at Portland State University, the Women’s Resource Center holds meetings "solely for people of color"...

And the University of Nevada, Las Vegas offers special race-based housing. The University of California, Berkeley, meanwhile, offers four orientations based on race in addition to the main orientation.

There are other examples given in the article, and I've discussed similar issues over the past 15 years on this blog.  Sadly, the author of the linked article correctly concludes:

As we were just reminded on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, progress on race in America used to mean seeing past color and race, not sorting people based on external characteristics. And, actually, it still means that. It’s just that the people running the show on campus seem less interested in progress than in division.