This is really appalling, the restoration of a phenomenon thought to belong in the Jim Crow era in the name of "anti-racism". The author describes racially segregated field trips, playground nights, supposed to "create a space of belonging". Diversity training programs that separate whites from non-whites so the former can "accept responsibility for their own racism" and the others can avoid any "harm" from cross-racial conversations.
It is now being extended to the distribution of public health care, including access to Covid vaccines, with prioritization decisions being made on racial grounds rather than health status. These measures violate the "equal protection" clause of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, and are being challenged on that basis. However it could take years for challenges to make their way through the courts.
And don't think it cannot happen here in Australia. The ABC recently screened a series of documentaries about "anti-racism" training in a NSW public school that separated whites and non-whites into separate "affinity groups", with the former required to reflect on their privilege. The American political scientist Karen Stenner has shown how this kind of thing can actually have the effect of awakening latent racist tendencies in individuals otherwise not disposed to racism.
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Images from the Jim Crow era in America are seared into the minds of those who lived through it, and of anyone who attended an American history class after the victory of the civil rights movement: side-by-side drinking fountains with signs reading “white” and “colored”; parks and recreation facilities separated into racial enclaves; small-town main streets with whites-only theaters, restaurants, grocers, and amenities.
Fortunately, all that ended by the mid-1960s—or so we had thought. In recent years, segregation has been resurrected, but this time under the guise of “racial equity.” As I reported in late 2020, government agencies in Seattle, Washington, including the King County Library, King County Prosecutor’s Office, and the Veterans Administration, began segregating employees by race for diversity training programs, so that whites could “accept responsibility for their own racism” and minorities could be insulated from “any potential harming [that] might arise from a cross-racial conversation.”
This year, the new segregation has extended itself into new domains: public education and public-health policy. In Denver, Centennial Elementary School launched a racially exclusive “Families of Color Playground Night” as part of its racial equity programming. In Chicago, Downers Grove South High School held a racially exclusive “Students of Color Field Trip” as part of its own equity initiatives. In the words of Denver Public Schools officials, the administrators implemented the segregated program to “create a space of belonging,” which, they said, without a hint of irony, is “about uniting us, not dividing us.”