Hat tip Daily Bruin
Mere Diversity is not enough these days. At UCLA, a campus with plenty of Diversity, a group of students has banded together to write a letter to Chancellor Gene Block to complain about the fact that students seem to be "self-segregating" when they gather together socially on campus. Apparently, this is a form of racism.
http://dailybruin.com/2015/06/01/submission-block-should-hold-town-hall-to-address-racism-on-campus/
I am going to go out on a limb here and guess that one of the undersigned students was a member of the Afrikan Student Union, which apparently has some sort of office space on campus. (I have no knowledge of what was posted on their door or what was said.) Did it ever occur to these students that the mere presence of such ethnic clubs on campus may contribute to the self-segregation? And what kind of message does it send out when you spell Africa with a k? I don't know, but I would guess it has the same connotation as when you spell America with a k.
But as to the issue at hand, I would bring up the old refrain, "You can lead a horse to water, but.....".
Or perhaps, there should be some sort of student police force established to break up gatherings on campus that consist of only one ethnic group. You know, kind of like the religious police they have in Saudi Arabia who hit women with sticks if they are not properly covered.
* If you are wondering why I capitalized Diversity, it is not a misprint. In English, we always capitalize the names of religions, don't we?
Generally its the students of African descent who do the self-segregating. Doonesbury wrote a hilarious series about it in the 1970s, and a follow-up in the 1990s with the memorable line "Sir... they want their own water fountains."
ReplyDeleteWhen I read the material you quoted here, at first I thought it was written by the campus Young Republicans. (And I didn't know there was a chapter at UCLA).