Separate But Equal (Or Not)

Erin O’Connor has a typically impressive post today on an article in the Washington Post about separate minority graduation exercise at the University of Pennsylvania and other elite preference-giving institutions. For the most part I have only one thing to add to Erin’s post: what she said.

But as long as I’m here I may as well add a thing or two:

  • Ward Connerly points out that these separate ceremonies “are part of a larger context of cultural centers, black orientations, black studies, black housing” that “isolate students in cultural ghettos.” The defenders of these cultural ghettos, such as Karlene Burrell-McRae, director of Penn’s Makuu Black Cultural Resource Center, said the Penn students describe Makuu “as a safe space.” It sounds like a refuge from diversity.
  • Another refuge from diversity is the W.E.B. DuBois College House, a Penn dorm that houses about one quarter of Penn’s black undergraduates. How does this segregation (and that’s what it is, even if it’s self-segregation) contribute to diversity? If minorities are admitted to prestigious places like Penn in order to provide diversity, why not require them to live in diverse dorms? Recipients of athletic scholarships are generally required to play sports; why shouldn’t diversity preferees be required to provide diversity?
  • According to the Post, race and religion are socially interchangeable: “There is the Hillel House, a cultural center for Jewish students, the Newman Center, which promotes Catholic traditions, and the W.E.B. DuBois College House….” Thus it would presumably be legitimate for Penn et. al. to pay for separate ceremonies for Jews and Catholics too. Wouldn’t it? What about Penn State: could a state school sponsor restrictive religious celebrations?
  • John McWhorter, a black linguistics professor at Berkeley who opposes racial preferences, is quoted observing that “campuses are precisely where many black students learn a new separatist conception of being “black” that they didn’t have before.” Insofar as race, like gender, is “socially constructed,” should colleges — especially publicly subsidized colleges — be in the business of constructing it?

Not the least virtue of the principle of racially neutral colorblindness is that it is clear, simple, and easy to apply. None of which can be said for racial preferences.

Say What? (5)

  1. Kimberly May 19, 2003 at 5:25 pm | | Reply

    Great job, as always. I particularly like your “required to provide diversity” line. That’s in line with my suspicion that colleges only strive to provide diversity for the white students; they are required to coexist with and learn from everyone else, while minority students are allowed to segregate themselves.

  2. Paladin May 19, 2003 at 6:16 pm | | Reply

    I’ve been wondering lately about this. If we are given that gender is an entirely socially constructed phenomenon (a position with which I disagree in its strongest form, but some gender roles are clearly socially constructed). Considering the huge amount of supposed scholarship put into the social construction of gender, why isn’t the construct of race subject to the same sort of inquiry? Instead of attacking the construct, it seems that the diversity crowd is exclusively about perpetuating it.

  3. John Rosenberg May 19, 2003 at 11:22 pm | | Reply

    Kimberly – I’ve hit the theme that diversity benefits, and is intended to benefit, white more than blacks pretty hard a number of times. This post is one example, with cites to earlier ones.

  4. RB May 22, 2003 at 4:43 pm | | Reply

    If diversity is meant to benefit whites more than blacks, then we have yet another example of anti-black discrimination. Shameful.

    As for segregated commencement ceremonies–quick! Someone send in the national guard!

  5. Andrew Lazarus May 25, 2003 at 8:48 pm | | Reply

    Volokh conspirator Jacob Levy writes “But it’s not commencement. Fewer than half of the black students attended, and they’ll take part in the standard commencement as well; the truth is it’s more like an extracurricular-activity party than a racially-segregated graduation.”

    That accords with Berkeley: there’s graduation by academic department, but many other groups have events to which you are expected to attend in appropriate once-in-a-lifetime garb.

Say What?