Following the University of Michigan's lead, Michigan State will hold its first annual Black Celebratory this spring. Conceived as a celebration of this year's black graduates, the event will be held on the afternoon of May 3, after the university-wide commencement ceremony earlier that day. MSU is encouraging black graduating seniors to attend both events.

Predictably, white students have protested the event as separatist. As one wrote in a letter to the MSU student paper, "What would happen if some students tried to organize an all-white graduation? All hell would break loose. They would be labeled bigots." Just as predictably, MSU is countering such criticisms with thinly veiled accusations of racism: "The response of critics is indicative of white privilege, because they don't really understand why this is a significant accomplishment for black students," said Nikki O'Brien, MSU's coordinator for African-American Affairs.

Predictably, the racial tension created by the idea of racially specific graduation ceremonies means that the issues have been distorted. Black students' triumph over economic adversity is being cited as one of the main reasons for the MSU event -- as if poor whites, Asians, and Latinos do not also attend MSU, and do not also overcome significant social and financial challenges along the way. Likewise, separate graduations for minority students are typically defined as rites of inclusion. As Gloria Aquino Sosa of nearby Oakland University's Office of Equity puts it, "Our whole goal is inclusion, not exclusion .... We are celebrating the inclusion of these students into the workforce."

Predictably, too, paternalistic condescension on the part of the administration goes hand in hand with the separatist agenda of the event's organizers. Hence the chilling statement of support from Lee June, MSU's assistant provost and vice president for student affairs: MSU "is seeking ways to reinforce, congratulate and give special recognition for the accomplishment they've made, given that they are students of color." June means well, and that is what is so sad about the quote: it underscores, painfully and powerfully, the humiliation built into Black Celebratory, which, with university funds, will proudly commend MSU's black class of 2002 for making it to graduation, "given that they are students of color"-- in other words, for doing what no one, not even their own administration, expected them to do because they are black. This attitude is born out by the numbers: at MSU, 46 percent of black students who enrolled in 1994 had graduated within six years, as compared to 58 percent of Hispanic students, 67 percent of Asian and Pacific Islanders, and 70 percent of whites.

Events at MSU are following what is by now a set choreography of rhetorical and institutional moves. Black Celebratory will happen; campus conservatives will mock it as separatist and campus radicals will call the conservatives racist. Meanwhile, the administration gets to have it both ways: in supporting the Black Celebratory, MSU both demonstrates its enlightened understanding of the special needs of minorities while at the same time suggesting that without special programs and special events and special congratulation--without the institutionalized pity exemplified by comments like June's--minorities would never get anywhere at all.