This story is archived
John Leo: Let the Segregation Commence »
Posted by: stephen-johnson 2 years, 6 months agoCommencement weekend is hard to plan at the University of California, Los Angeles. The university now has so many separate identity-group graduations that scheduling them not to conflict with one another is a challenge.
Read Full Story at city-journal.org »
This Story is Archived and Commenting is Closed
Comments: 43
-
stephen-johnson
June 14, 2007, 11:21 p.m.From the article:
Some students are presumably eligible for four or five graduations. A gay student with a Native American father and a Filipino mother could attend the Asian, Filipino, and American Indian ceremonies, plus the mainstream graduation and the Lavender Graduation for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered students.
Only in America! ;-)
-
BronxBomber
June 14, 2007, 11:28 p.m...."No major objections to ethnic graduations have emerged since. As in so many areas of American life, the preposterous is now normal."
Gee yah think?
Thanks SJ!
-
bobo-in-texas
June 14, 2007, 11:32 p.m.How about the US citizen only celebration? Or the people of no color fest?
-
MacR
June 15, 2007, 1:08 a.m.You know when I see articles like this. The line from an Extreme song always pops into my head.
"Think the world, could be black, white and Jew?
-
lovelytxwoman
June 15, 2007, 1:51 a.m.Seems pretty stupid to me why is it not just a plain ole single ceremony! Silly people to divide and conquer it like this!
-
Radiofreeeuropa
June 15, 2007, 3:47 a.m.People have become far too "politically correct". Is this story for real? It could be a parody.... I'm uncertain.
I say no one should be persecuted but pandering to every self proclaimed minority is just foolishness. I have 2 freckles on my cheek, I'm a tufrek so can people with 2 freckles have a seperate ceremony. Knee jerk reactions are painful. Don't know how they gained popularity. This is an interesting piece SJ, thanks for posting.
-
amazed
June 15, 2007, 8:52 a.m.((The organizers also sometimes argue that identity-group graduations make sense for practical reasons. They say that about 3,000 graduating seniors show up for UCLA's "regular" graduation, making it a massive and impersonal event. At the more intimate identity-group events, foreign-born parents and relatives hear much of the ceremony in their native tongues. The Filipino event is so smallâ;;about 100 studentsâ;; that each grad gets to speak for 30 seconds.))
If they are looking for a more "intimate" graduation, perhaps they should go to a smaller school, or, alternatively, have each school in the college have its own ceremony -- you know, school of nursing, school of arts & sciences, school of business. Wow! what a concept.
cont'd
-
slate
June 15, 2007, 10:18 a.m.Humans have a tendency to want to see their own reflection looking back at them in social settings. All you have to do is look at a lunch room at a school to verify this. Whether it be because of race, social status or popularity it holds true. You'll also have mixtures of race due to having the same interests. The 'popular' students don't hang with the geeks, the jocks don't hang with non jocks, the head bangers don't hang with those that like country etc. Graduation however: is about the schools as a whole and graduation should done as a whole of the student body IMO.
-
-
Pisces84
June 15, 2007, 1:33 p.m.I hope this story is a fraud. I have been to both traditionally white AND historically black colleges for studies. I always felt college was the one place where diversity could take place without judgement. I am from Virginia, and the normal thought is college is the accepting place; only bitter people in the "real world" discriminate.
WOW, I really hope this story is a satire. I have friends of all races, religions, and sexualities and I love it.
-
Pisces84
June 15, 2007, 1:35 p.m.btw UBCONFUSE, I have taken classes in black studies. There is enough reasoning power that is learned to fight ignorance. We learn our true history that has been neglected in schools either because of sheer ignorance or SOL testing. Considering that I have made a few white power men run in my day, I think I learned well
-
oldgringo
June 15, 2007, 1:38 p.m."I draw the line in the dust and toss the guantlet before the feet of tyranny, and I say segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever."
George Wallace
Who woulda thunk it? Wallace was right!
-
GoldStandard
June 15, 2007, 3:59 p.m."Graduates usually wear identity-group markersâ;;a Filipino stole or a Vietnamese sash, for instance, or a rainbow tassel at the Lavender event. Promoters of ethnic and racial graduations often talk about the strong sense of community that they favor. But it is a sense of community based on blood, a dubious and historically dangerous organizing principle."
This is just disturbing. The nazis did the same thing when they made all Jews, Gypsies, and others wear arm bands. This is about separating individuals according to thier physical and ethnic traits, which is wrong on every level.
-
KingOfTruth
June 15, 2007, 5:26 p.m.But the core reason for separatist graduations is the obvious one: on campus, assimilation is a hostile force, the domestic version of American imperialism. On many campuses, identity-group training begins with separate freshman orientation programs for nonwhites, who arrive earlier and are encouraged to bond before the first Caucasian freshmen arrive. Some schools have separate orientations for gays as well. Administrations tend to foster separatism by arguing that bias is everywhere, justifying double standards that favor identity groups.
Four years ago Ward Connerly, then a regent of the University of California, tried to pass a resolution to stop funding of ethnic graduations and gay freshman orientations.
-
agentX
June 15, 2007, 9:43 p.m.I don't know what the fuss is all about.
Nowhere in the article does it say that a white person who's kid or relative's kid of group X is graduating cannot attend the group X graduation. If a white person is being blocked from that, then that's segregation.
You guys are whining about this when SUNDAY is still the most segregated day in America (until the game starts).
All 43 comments are shown.
Submit a Story
Advertisement
