It's commencement season and universities across the country are holding special minority graduations in addition to the main, all-inclusive ceremony. This piece in yesterday's Washington Post explains. At the University of Pennsylvania, there is a black graduation (where seniors receive celebratory pieces of kente cloth, witness an African libation ritual, and sign one another's black student yearbooks), and there are also special graduation ceremonies for Asian American and Latino seniors. What's done at Penn is what's done at every self-respecting diversity-celebrating campus across the country. Vanderbilt, Washington University at St. Louis, the University of Michigan, Michigan State, UC Berkeley, and a wide range of other schools all hold black graduations.

At Penn, black graduation is presented as an extension and expression of the university's commitment to diversity:

ìOur mission, at its core, is to educate. And we believe that homogeneity stifles learning,î said a statement on affirmative action issued by Judith Rodin, president of the University of Pennsylvania, and James S. Riepe, chairman of the universityís board of trustees.

Makuu, the black student center at Penn, teaches study skills and publishes a directory of black faculty members and a black resource guide to the university.

ìThe students describe Makuu as a safe space,î said director Burrell-McRae. ìIt is a place where they donít have to explain who they are.î

And for the past two years, it has hosted black graduation celebrations. The cost of the celebration is negligible: about $2,000, mainly for kente cloths and a sumptuous buffet. Penn is paying for the celebration, as many schools do. For the students, it is one of the high points of their senior year.

The arguments for and against these celebrations fall along predictable lines. Opponents say these celebrations are exercises in a deeply destructive separatism. According to John McWhorter, a black linguistics professor at Berkeley, ìThe fact that these ceremonies are so prevalent nicely shows that the common defense of racial preferences ó that it puts whites and blacks on the same campus to learn about and become comfortable with each other ó is senseless. ... On the contrary, campuses are precisely where many black students learn a new separatist conception of being ëblackí that they didnít have before.î UC Regent and affirmative-action opponent Ward Connerly, echoes McWhorter's sentiments:ÝìThese celebrations are part of a larger context of cultural centers, black orientations, black studies, black housing. ... They are part of an infrastructure of programs aimed at making students feel welcome. The problem is that this whole entourage of efforts has formed to isolate students in cultural ghettos.î

Connerly's assessment meshes with the rationale for minority graduations given by those who champion them. Supporters of these ceremonies claim that they recognize the special achievement of minority students in the (implicitly oppressive) atmosphere of the predominantly white university. As the house dean of Penn's black dorm explains it, "Our students need the support they get from one another. ... Often, they don't receive the same recognition and support as other students in the university."

The fact that minority graduations are instances where minority students actually get more support and recognition than "other students" does not enter into this argument. Neither does the notion that such a ceremony might feel like a cheap and belated compensation to students who have been underserved by their school (if indeed they have). Neither does the notion that "other students" are hardly an undifferentiated mass of privileged white male oppressors. Neither does the notion that it is not in itself an achievement to be black (or white). Neither does the possibility that some black graduating seniors--perhaps a significant number of the 50% of them that were not at Penn's ceremony this year--might regard black graduation as the final, ironic, crowning insult delivered by the pigeon-holing efforts of Penn's resident diversity industry. More than one Penn undergrad has confessed to me how disappointed and disturbed they were to find that their minority status seemed to matter more to the university than their individuality. But this is not to slam Penn. The patterns there are representative of patterns across the country.

The Post article reports that a survey conducted by the The National Survey of Black Student Engagement found that about half of college freshmen say they "often" have serious conversations with someone of another race, and that about half of college seniors make the same report. In other words, campus diversity initiatives don't appear to do what they say they aim to do: they don't increase substantive interracial interaction among students. What they do do: with their racial theme houses, racial student centers, racial societies, racial graduations, and even race-based majors, they make it possible for minority students who want to avoid interracial interaction to do so.

UPDATE: John Rosenberg has more.

A great post. I'd like to address some of the harmful effects of the "diversity industry" in the recent Jayson Blair case.
Blair, as you know, was a NYT reporter who was allowed to publish fraudulent stories in the paper because of its strong commitment to diversifying its newsroom and the guilty conscience of editor Howell Raines.
It's instructive to compare the coddling of Blair with the unremitting bile shown towards Stephen Glass, a WASP journalist who also engaged in fabulistic journalism.

To make the connection between segregated graduation ceremonies and the culture of condescenion they create, I want to ask about the motives of those involved. Sure, it's hard to argue with increased recognition and opportunity for "historically marginalized" groups on college campuses, but when does history end?
Right now, African Americans hold some of the highest positions in our government. They didn't get their through avoiding "interracial interaction." Colin Powell rose through the ranks of our meritocratic military, and Condi Rice proved her mettle in the equally meritorcratic field of academic political science (queen of the social sciences, where facts and logic matter--unlike in some fields I won't mention out of respect to the blog's owner).

The main reason that we have a diversity industry is affirmative action. Get rid of quotas, and you won't have artificial imbalances in campus populations which need to be imperfectly (and harmfully) remedied with theme houses and student centers. At each level, we'll have a community of scholars; and I think that only those with real racialist thoughts would mind if the University of Pennsylvania became almost entirely White and Asian.

Compare and contrast. Last week, the blog world was agog with the news of a whites only prom at a Georgia high school. Andrew Sullivan, among others, denounced this as barbaric racism.

The practice of holding racially segregated commencement ceremonies is racism, pure and simple.

And, no, the purpose of this is not for the sake of the students. These events are run by people with a political agenda. See Jesse Jackson's comments last week that Carribean and East African black immigrants don't have the right attitude about being black. In other words, they don't cop the victim mentality. The point of these ceremonies is the indoctrinate blacks in the victim mentality, thus making them more amenable to the political agenda of the organizers.

It's not limited to racially segregated graduations. At my alma matter (UMass-Amherst), there was also a separate graduation for gay students.

BTW - I wasn't aware Jonathan McWhorter was a philosophy prof. I thought he taught linguistics-is this something new?

How, though, would Erin or anyone else recommend a university administrator -- a Lawrence Summers, say -- deal with the problem?

The elite institutions are sensitive, for whatever reason, to accusations of insufficient diversity. We are going to have to take that as a granted; it is not going to go away. If an Ivy League institution threw such concerns to the winds and suffered any significant decline in African-American enrollment, it would become a political football, especially if a Republican cabinet member were an alumna. I can't imagine even a Lawrence Summers seriously considering putting his institution through that sort of controversy. Imagine Howell Raines's reaction!

The pool of qualified African-American applicants is limited in relation to the institutions' need for diversity, and the universities compete for them. If it is thought that separate facilities are needed to attract applicants, then you are going to have to figure out a way to get applicants if you don't have those facilities to attract them.

If the overall number of places at the elite institutions were smaller, you would need a smaller applicant pool of any group to meet any desired percentage of representation. This is one thing that puzzles me: Dartmouth, for instance, has increased its enrollment from something like 3000 to something like 5000 in the last 30 years or so, partly to bring women into parity with men in overall enrollment -- but at the price of being much less selective with a shrinking enrollment pool. And it results in the need to recruit much more actively for diversity, and thus to cater to the students who provide same.

How do you back out of that situation?

Jake - A separate graduation for gay students?

Who on earth decides who can participate? Do you have to have the approval of the local gay community? What if you're a right-wing gay man (shades of Andrew Sullivan) and the left-wing campus gay community doesn't like you? What if you decide you're bisexual the month before the ceremony because you've fallen in love with a member of the opposite sex? Are you then disinvited? What if you're gay but haven't ever had sex with anyone? Does that still count?

That's the most absurd thing I've ever heard. The sexual orientation of students at UMass has nothing to do with their intellectual achievement, and to segregate them into a separate ceremony suggests that their achievement should always be viewed through the filter of their sexuality.

Separate graduations for black students, separate graduations for gay students - it's as though the KKK's dream of the future has come true. And it's a nightmare. Pretty soon there won't be anyone left at the main graduation except the straight white male students - and then they'll be accused of being bigoted, I'm sure.

My girlfriend just finished her M.A. at Rosemont College, a small Catholic school on the Main Line. The commencement ceremony two days ago featured a predictable series of speeches with sleepy platitudes and much pillaging of Bartlett's. The keynote speaker was Catherine Kinney, president of the N.Y. Stock Exchange. Her speech was okay. The best speech by far was by a young African American woman receiving her B.A. in English Literature. It was an eloquent, passionate address about the worldwide effects of illiteracy and the need for literacy education. I don't know how the schools who segregate their commencement ceremonies parcel out the speakers, but I'm glad Rosemont doesn't go in for such silliness. I'd have hated to miss that young woman's speech just because I happen to be a white boy.

On second thought, I could be persuaded to change my mind on this issue if Irish American students were given their own commencement ceremonies. The students would witness an Irish libation ceremony (a ruddy guy in an Aran sweater pounding Guinness) after being regaled with a pre-Bloomsday reading from "Ulysses." They'd receive a shellalagh and bar of Irish Spring (made for a man, aye, but the colleens like it too). Schools with an especially egregious record of oppressing the Irish would have to throw in a box of Lucky Charms.

It seems that "Separate but Equal" has returned as an acceptable social construct, at least at Universities and High Schools. Witness the situations described in this post and the story of the "whites only" prom in Georgia last week.

The most remarkable thing to me is the lack of outrage and dissent about these policies - Erin's post aside, of course.

For more on that prom, 'separate but equal' graduation ceremonies, student housing, and so on, see this column by Rod Dreher, formerly of National Review, and now with the Dallas News:

http://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/columnists/rdreher/stories/051903dnedidreher.5ed4c.html

"At Penn, black graduation is presented as an extension and expression of the university's commitment to diversity:"

What is diverse about a black graduation?

After thinking about this today, I can see a possible solution for a particular university that wanted to distinguish itself from the otherwise homogenous crowd. Via focus groups, polling, or whatever other method seemed worthwhile, it could develop a generally inclusive, "integrationist" program and policy toward students of color, identifying parents and applicants who wanted to experience this approach. Part of the approach would be, of course, that there would not be any segregated refuge -- you would have to sink or swim in the mainstream.

Students who did not like this approach would be free not to apply. It does appear that some students of color at some institutions do not like this approach; prospective applicants might wish to find a school that did not have a segregated approach; and some parents might wish their children to be educated in a fully integrated environment.

I doubt if any top-20 schools would do this. Some schools with a generally Christian or specifically evangelical orientation might consider it, since equality that comes as a divine gift is a Judeo-Christian idea that helped found the Enlightenment, and common membership in a community is a Christian idea. Enlightenment concepts are not big at the top-20, though.

This might also have the good effect of allowing universities to differentiate their product.

Jonathan Rauch wrote an interesting article on racial preferences entitled "It's time to break up the college color cartel" (http://www.jewishworldreview.com/jonathan/rauch.html).

He argues: "The problem here is fundamental. The whole premise of the current anti-discrimination model is wrong. In higher education, the law should not seek to prevent discrimination in every particular case. It should seek, rather, to ensure that discriminators never dominate the market."

His solution: "America is blessed with a vibrant mixture of public and private universities, in every region and every market niche. Although the University of California (Berkeley) may not be quite the same as Stanford, it is gloriously close. By the simple expediency of banning preferences in the public sector, the country would ensure a wide range of nondiscriminatory educational opportunities to students who seek a safe haven from color codes. At the same time, the rich assortment of private schools with race-conscious admissions policies would ensure an ample supply of chances for black and Hispanic students to enter the ranks of the elite, and equally ample chances for white and Asian students to rub elbows with them."

Read the whole thing, as they say.

Loren

John Bruce (8:19pm, 3:25am [do you sleep?!]):

Thanks for sharing your reflections on this issue. For what it's worth--Dartmouth increasing its size from ~3000 ('70s) to ~5000 (today) corresponded with the advent of co-education, thus doubling the size of the applicant pool.

I do occasional "alumni interviews" (questionable utility, but that's another story) of high school seniors for that very college. The impression of most interviewers is that the applicant pool is deep, broad, talented. And, diverse, in the best senses of that shopworn word. American secondary education may or may not be generally excellent, but it is often inspiring to spend an hour in conversation with a senior who is applying to your alma mater.

P.c. campus discrimination programs don't seem to be a response to the stated desires of the high-school seniors I've encountered.