This used to be called racial discrimination and was deplored. Now it is called settling the score and is applauded.
Campus Reform reports:
A group of students at the Claremont Colleges in search of a roommate insist that the roommate not be white.
Student Karé Ureña (PZ ’18) posted on Facebook that non-white students in need of housing arrangements should reach out to either her or two other students with whom she plans to live in an off-campus house. The post states that “POC [people of color] only” will be considered for this living opportunity. “I don’t want to live with any white folks,” Ureña added.
Let me correct my earlier statement. Refusing to share living quarters with someone based on the color of his skin is still considered racial discrimination, but only when the exclusionary act affects a member of protected class. POC are a protected class. POP (people of pallor) are not.
In fact, you can’t be racist against a white person. The Campus Reform article quotes a second student, Dalia Zada, as asking rhetorically in response to Karé Ureña’s demand:
‘POC only?’ Maybe I’m missing something or misunderstanding your post, but how is that not a racist thing to say?
Another student, AJ León (identified as a member of the Pitzer Latino Student Union) jumps in with an answer:
This is directed to protect POC, not white people. Don’t see how this is racist at all….
Which is a problem for everyone. Yes, I am aware of the notion of white privilege. I don’t happen to agree that all white people are perforce treated better by society than all POC, but the more trenchant question is why all white people are automatically the enemy of POC?
Claremont is not the only university where self-imposed segregation by minorities is taking place. In 2015, students at Princeton University occupied a building on campus, refusing to vacate until three demands were met. One of these was that the university create an “affinity housing option” for black students, so that those interested in exploring black culture could live apart from the rest of campus.
Nor is this trend confined to higher education. Fieldston, a private school in tony Riverdale, N.Y., decided last year that the best weapon against racism — in the third grade — was to separate the kiddies for 45-minute sessions once a week so they can ponder their privilege, or lack thereof.
