Here's how matters of principle work: When something that is wrong in essence is applied, it applies in every circumstance. If it's wrong to abuse a child, it's always wrong to abuse a child. If it's wrong to steal a man's wallet, it's always wrong to steal a man's wallet. If it's wrong to lie, steal, and cheat, it's always wrong to lie, steal, and cheat.
If it's wrong to discriminate for or against a person because of some innate characteristic, something they were born with and did not choose, then it is always wrong to do this. Back in the Jim Crow era, in parts of the United States, black Americans (and others) were racially discriminated against under the law; they were forced to drink from different water fountains, to eat in different cafeterias, to use different restrooms, and if they managed to get into college, they lived in different dormitories.
This was wrong, and those practices were later proscribed by law; Jim Crow ended, including the segregation by race of college dormitories.
And yet, this is what is happening on American college campuses, in their dormitories, right now, every day.
A recent report in The College Fix reveals just how prevalent discrimination by race in American college dormitories really is.
Nearly 40 universities across the nation this year continue to offer neo-segregated dorms and housing opportunities despite a recent demand from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to end race-based discriminatory residential programs.
Research by The College Fix found 39 universities this fall semester operate “affinity housing” or “living-learning communities” geared toward students of a particular race or ethnicity.
What does that mean? That means Jim Crow has awakened, put on a different shirt, and is back in place on American college campuses. This is racial and religious segregation, nothing but, and it's as wrong today as it was in the Jim Crow era. Furthermore, the arguments in favor of this practice are pure horse squeeze.
Proponents argue such arrangements improve retention rates, foster peer mentorship, and support academic integration for historically underrepresented groups. However, these offerings have been deemed a euphemism for discrimination by the Trump administration. Another term used to describe such arrangements is “neo-segregation.”
Fix research identified 39 universities with one or more such residential programs, but because many universities operate multiple communities, the total number of individual segregated housing programs is substantially higher, coming in at 74.
Of the 39 universities, at least 28 offer housing geared toward black or African students, 17 toward Hispanic or Latino students, 10 toward Native American or Indigenous students, and nine toward Asian students. Several universities offer multiple affinity housing programs.
Wasn't diversity supposed to be a good thing? It's not easy to have diversity and equity when the people who are supposed to be diverse and equitable are housed in different places, and inclusion is just plain impossible.
The Trump administration is now trying to crack down on this neo-segregation, and as you might expect, they are being resisted every step of the way. Imagine that - academics, who are almost all Democrats, resisting a Republican president who is trying to desegregate our schools. But the Trump administration isn't backing down, any more than President Eisenhower did.
“Under the discredited idea of DEI, ideologues at our nation’s colleges and universities have perpetuated racially discriminatory housing schemes in direct violation of federal civil rights law,” HUD Secretary Scott Turner said in a statement. “Unlawful housing segregation has no place in America and certainly no place in the colleges and schools that hard working Americans send their kids for an education.
Not that it matters other than as a coincidence, but Secretary Turner is black.
Here's the thing: These practices are actually racist. There's no other word for them. Allowing or, worse, in some cases, insisting on a segregated dorm is racist, by definition. Claiming a right to housing separated from other students based on the melanin content of their skin is, by definition, racist.
Yes, there’s such a thing as freedom of association, and I would never claim that people shouldn’t be free to associate with whomever they please, for whatever reason they please; but that doesn’t make them any less racist if they judge their fellows as per the definition above. And it’s important to note that this university is a taxpayer-funded institution, and as such is presumably subject to the several Imperial anti-discrimination statutes. That seems to be what the Trump administration is leaning hard on. That may be what ends this neo-segregation: the yanking of federal funds from any school that persists in this. And, mind you, this would apply to almost every college and university in the country, as every one of them, save one I can think of - Hillsdale College - accepts some federal funding, in one form or another. When you dine at the devil's table, you don't get to choose the menu, and now the lefties in academia may be finding out that this works both ways.
If a thing that is wrong in essence, like racial discrimination, is wrong in one instance, it's wrong in every instance. Segregating college dormitories by race was wrong in the Jim Crow era, and it's wrong now. This is an egregiously wrong practice that needs to end, and it needs to end right away.
