White House Photo
So let me see if I have this straight. In the 1860’s America went to war-with herself. A bloody, deadly civil war. More than 620,000 dead. Some said in the name of states’ rights and others said, yes, the right of states to have slaves. The right to buy and sell black people. Separate families. Treat human beings with less compassion shown to their working animals. A wholesale attack on the sanctity of all life.
“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” Abraham Lincoln
After this civil war came Reconstruction. So hopeful. It failed. And was followed by Jim Crow laws; legislated segregation .
And then almost 100 years after the Civil war, civil rights were demanded by Black Americans. Rightly so. They demanded that black and white be treated as equals because all people have equal intrinsic value with inalienable rights.
“There comes a time when one must take a position neither safe, nor politic, nor popular but he must take it because his conscious tells him it is right.” Martin Luther King Jr.
Rosa Parks sat on a bus;
Others, including Ronald Martin, Robert Patterson and Mark Martin demanded service at lunch counters
Library of Congress New York World-Telegram & Sun Photograph Collection
and black families demanded that their children, like Ruby Bridges, have access to white schools. Black Americans demanded their right to vote and to be anywhere in the public square.
Think of the amount of money spent on desegregation. I have to believe it is billions on educating the population, changing long held beliefs, paying for more teachers, busing children to “white schools” fighting hate in the name of equality.
And now 60 years later Progressive Black Americans are demanding their right to segregation. Well, they call it safe spaces but in the end it’s the same. Whatever you call it, they demand separation from the “white oppressors.”
They are not alone! The LGBTQ2 and Muslim communities are demanding the same rights-to separate, to segregate.
These self-proclaimed minorities have left the building,voluntarily, because they just can’t cope. With diversity, the “Progressives” most important value of the 21st century, comes panic that leads to the need to run away; to separate. “Students are lobbying across the country for their universities to provide a safe space, or inclusive environment where students of any race, gender, sexuality, class and ability can go to find compassion and empathy while escaping the pressures of prejudice. Safe spaces are becoming a perceived necessity among minority and LGBT students.”
Congratulations Progressives. You have “regressed” our culture back to tribal times.
Don’t take my word for it. Listen to those making the demands.
Bernard Goldberg wrote “At Evergreen State in Olympia, Washington, students demanded a day with no whites on campus. At several other colleges, they’re offering segregated housing for black students. And a few weeks ago, Harvard held a special graduation ceremony — for black graduate students only.”
In 2015 and 2016, students of color at many colleges called for segregated safe spaces. A group of Oberlin students demanded “spaces throughout the Oberlin College campus be designated as a safe space for Africana identifying students.” Kudos to Oberlin’s president who refused, noting the whole list “explicitly rejects the notion of collaborative engagement.”
“The time is always right to do what is right.” Martin Luther King Jr. from Oberlin College Commencement speech, 1965
Now POC (People of colour) at college insist on non-white roommates.
“We don’t want to have to tiptoe around fragile white feelings in a space where we just want to relax and be comfortable,” commented Nina Lee, a Women’s Studies major. “I could live with white people, but I would be far more comfortable living with other poc.”
I hear the echoes of white people saying the same thing-and accused of racism.
Columbia University called for “more institutional support, staff, resources, funding, and space for LGBTQ+ students, students of color, and those who hold combinations of these identities…There are many spaces on campus, especially those that are dominated by straight males, that leave me tense,” said one freshman. “An LGBTQ+ Center would offer me yet another space where I could feel like I am safe to simply exist and be me.”
“If we are not careful, our colleges will produce a group of close-minded, unscientific, illogical propagandists, consumed with immoral acts. Be careful, ‘brethren!’ Be careful, teachers!” — Martin Luther King Jr. “The Purpose of Education” from Morehouse College student newspaper, The Maroon Tiger, 1947
The UC Irvine Black Student Union demanded, and received, the creation of a Black Scholars’ Hall (“a safe space where Black history, culture, and intellectual thought is celebrated,” according to the petition). Similar accommodation has been granted at UC Santa Barbara and UC Berkeley. The Social Justice Living Learning Community offered by the University of North Dakota includes accommodation beyond ethnicity to students’ political convictions, too.
Northwestern President Morton Schapiro wrote in the Washington Post “We all deserve safe spaces,” and “black students had every right to enjoy their lunches in peace.”
And not to be left out there is the demand for government funded segregation for Muslim students.
“The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.” MLK from Strength to Love, 1963
It seems diversity is anathema to inclusion.
A UC Students of Color Conference had as its objective the creation of a space” to discuss, dissect and create relevant solutions to issues for this diverse group.” According to one account the conference turned into “a kind of ‘oppression Olympics,’ where students argued over which minority group was oppressed the most rather than finding solidarity and understanding amongst each other.”
So while Progressive Blacks and Gays and Muslims demand to be segregated, who’s left? Let me see… Caucasians! The white folk are left over. No safe spaces for them. They will run the world because you cannot run the world from safe spaces.
“Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.” – Love In Action from Strength to Love, 1963. Martin Luther King Jr.
