How many civil rights workers in the 1960s died trying to end segregated housing? It’s an academic question but very appropriate given what’s happened at New York University recently.
A couple of students circulated a petition that eventually got more than 1,000 signatures for NYU to designate racially-segregated housing for black and “black-identifying” students. Apparently, there are no “safe spaces” for blacks because NYU is “predominantly white.”
“NYU is a predominantly white institution, making it very difficult for Black students to connect or find community, especially when incidents involving racism occur,” Black Violets told Fox News. “It is not about exclusion, but rather creating a space where Black students can feel included.”
Simply saying it’s “not about exclusion” doesn’t mean it isn’t. If other races are not allowed to live there, it’s exclusion. It’s the very definition of exclusion. But we’re all supposed to pretend it isn’t? Sheesh.
The proposal proved to be too much, even for radical lefties.
Critics of such plans say such living arrangements would be akin to racial segregation.
“There is nothing progressive about the establishment of racially segregated housing at NYU,” Karsten Schneider wrote in a column for the World Socialist Web Site. “It is irrelevant whether the segregation being implemented is voluntary or mandatory. Racial segregation, in all forms, is entirely reactionary.”
Sixty years ago, the argument was a little less subtle: the races “don’t mix well” and whites and blacks would “feel more comfortable” living with their own race. How different is that from activists wanting to create “a space where Black students can feel included”?
The more things change…
Meanwhile, the milquetoast school officials needing to bend over backward to show how woke they are, said they would consider it.
“[Residential] Life staff have reached out to the authors of the petition to discuss how we might move forward with their goals,” an NYU spokesperson told Washington Square News, NYU’s student newspaper. “Given the COVID-related challenges to the student housing system for 2020-2021, these conversations would be aiming towards 2021-2022.”
A “themed engagement floor” for Black students is being pushed by a group called Black Violets NYU. “Marginalized groups” like queer students and international students already have access to such floors, Black Violets told Fox News in a statement.
Reason’s Robby Soave destroys the students’ argument for any kind of housing that separates the races.
But despite what the students said, the petition—which was signed by 1,000 people—inarguably uses the language of exclusion. It specifies that the housing must include “floors completely comprised of Black-identifying students with Black Resident Assistants.” If a proposal requires that certain floors only include back students, then it is a proposal for racially segregated housing.
Yes, but they’re not “excluding” anyone because they say they aren’t excluding anyone in their media statement. Doesn’t that count for anything? After all, there are no “quotas” in university admissions because we call them “targets” and “goals.”
Delusions on the left run very deep, For these students and, tragically, tens of thousands like them, they will go through life believing the world is one giant college campus, where people give a rat’s petunia about “safe spaces” and “marginalized groups.” They will remain oblivious to their own contradictions, their hypocrisy, and their biases.
And they will go into politics and the bureaucracy looking to impose their radical chic notions of race and class on the rest of us.
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