New York University moves to implement racial segregation in student dorms

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https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/08/24/nyur-a24.html

 

Since late June, the Office of Residential Life and Housing Services at New York University (NYU) has been working closely with a small, student-led task force to make racially segregated housing a reality in undergraduate student dorms.

On July 20, Washington Square News, the weekly undergraduate student newspaper of NYU, published an article titled “Student-Led Task Force Calls for Black Housing on Campus,” in which they reported on the university’s willingness to help implement residential communities open solely to “Black-identifying students with Black Resident Assistants.” Since then, the university has officially given the project a green light, aiming to have NYU’s first segregated residential floor established by Fall 2021.

A little over two months ago, a recently-organized advocacy group called Black Violets created an online petition demanding that the university “implement Black student housing on campus in the vein of themed engagement floors across first-year and upperclassmen residence halls.” In their petition, the group argues that “Too often in the classroom and in residential life, black students bear the brunt of educating their uninformed peers about racism.” African American students, they state, desperately require a “safe space” where they can escape from students, staff, and faculty of other races.

[Nature Boy 2.0 8,315]

I said the other day that black activists were slowly moving us back to segregation.  How is this even a thing. Amazing. Can you imagine the uproar if whites wanted white only housing/

[Boiler 43,464]

Perhaps a separate bus?

[luckytxn 2,263]

The more we progress the more we segregate.

[Boiler 43,464]

I must admit I laughed when I first came across this, but on reflection it is sad.

[laylalex 7,247]

I do agree it's sad, but it reflects on society as a whole. Why do some black students feel they need a separate space to be in? It can't just be being "too sensitive." What can the university do to make this a non-issue? 

 

Also, it's just a floor, which makes me think: what, like people aren't going to be filtering from floor to floor? People of all races? I remember at college we had single sex floors of dorms. It didn't stop pretty much anything.

 

There was also accommodation that was specifically for Jewish students to handle some of the specific issues that came with the Sabbath. I don't think that was specifically university dorms, but I think it was sponsored or maintained by the college. I do know that a lot of those issues were fixed when the eruv was extended a few years ago. 

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17 minutes ago, laylalex said:

I do agree it's sad, but it reflects on society as a whole. Why do some black students feel they need a separate space to be in? It can't just be being "too sensitive." What can the university do to make this a non-issue? 

 

Also, it's just a floor, which makes me think: what, like people aren't going to be filtering from floor to floor? People of all races? I remember at college we had single sex floors of dorms. It didn't stop pretty much anything.

 

There was also accommodation that was specifically for Jewish students to handle some of the specific issues that came with the Sabbath. I don't think that was specifically university dorms, but I think it was sponsored or maintained by the college. I do know that a lot of those issues were fixed when the eruv was extended a few years ago. 

African American students, they state, desperately require a “safe space” where they can escape from students, staff, and faculty of other races.

[laylalex 7,247]

1 minute ago, Boiler said:

African American students, they state, desperately require a “safe space” where they can escape from students, staff, and faculty of other races.

Okay, but what does it say about NYU that they feel they need somewhere to be apart? It isn't a mirror that reflects only on the students -- it reflects on the university too.

 

I know several people who went to NYU in the mid-2000s, and my impression is that it has become a far more racially diverse campus than it was then. But just because a campus is diverse doesn't mean that it's necessarily welcoming to people. One of the major issues I know at my college was about people who were the first people from their families to go to college, or came from financially-disadvantaged backgrounds (of all races), often felt out of place. I have to say that even as someone who was middle class and a legacy, I felt weird sometimes -- I went to public school, not prep school. I'd never been sailing or gone skiing abroad or spent summers doing enriching things like literary trips across Europe or volunteering in Vietnam or Thailand. It was alienating sometimes, even if the other students didn't mean for me to feel alienated. 

 

Going to a prestigious university if you are not like what the perceived "average" student is like can make a student feel excluded from a secret language to get ahead (psst the secret language is money). So the question is not just, what can the university do to make this perception disappear (because segregation is really, really dumb), but what is the profile of the students requesting the floor? Are they from more or less privileged backgrounds? Do they need support in other areas? Segregation isn't the answer, and it's a simplistic "solution" to a complicated problem. Since it's being proposed by a bunch of really young people, I'm not surprised that they see it as a solution when it really isn't one at all.

[TBoneTX 43,069]

3 hours ago, Boiler said:

racially segregated housing

There's nothing as ridiculous as progress.

[Nature Boy 2.0 8,315]

4 hours ago, Boiler said:

Perhaps a separate bus?

Would not be cost effective.  We could just make white folks sit at da back 

Edited August 24, 2020 by Nature Boy 2.0

[Nature Boy 2.0 8,315]

2 hours ago, laylalex said:

I do agree it's sad, but it reflects on society as a whole. Why do some black students feel they need a separate space to be in? It can't just be being "too sensitive." What can the university do to make this a non-issue? 

 

Also, it's just a floor, which makes me think: what, like people aren't going to be filtering from floor to floor? People of all races? I remember at college we had single sex floors of dorms. It didn't stop pretty much anything.

 

There was also accommodation that was specifically for Jewish students to handle some of the specific issues that came with the Sabbath. I don't think that was specifically university dorms, but I think it was sponsored or maintained by the college. I do know that a lot of those issues were fixed when the eruv was extended a few years ago. 

why do some whites feel they need  separate space. It cant just be they are too sensitive?

 

Would you defend whites wanting there own space, of course you would not.

[laylalex 7,247]

1 hour ago, Nature Boy 2.0 said:

why do some whites feel they need  separate space. It cant just be they are too sensitive?

 

Would you defend whites wanting there own space, of course you would not.

I think you're misunderstanding me, Nature Boy. I said segregation is not something I support, at all. My questions are really about why some students would want this in the first place at a racially diverse university like NYU? Is it something about the university? What do these students have in common besides being black? Quite clearly they aren't all the black students at NYU. 

 

I have less of an issue about "safe spaces" -- there was an African-American cultural center at my university, for example, and these are very common for all sorts of different communities -- where people can hang out during the afternoon, attend dances, etc. But segregated housing defeats the purpose of going to a university. I wasn't crazy about gender-segregated housing either for that matter. I think the more give and take we can have the better we all are. 

[Nature Boy 2.0 8,315]

1 hour ago, laylalex said:

I think you're misunderstanding me, Nature Boy. I said segregation is not something I support, at all. My questions are really about why some students would want this in the first place at a racially diverse university like NYU? Is it something about the university? What do these students have in common besides being black? Quite clearly they aren't all the black students at NYU. 

 

I have less of an issue about "safe spaces" -- there was an African-American cultural center at my university, for example, and these are very common for all sorts of different communities -- where people can hang out during the afternoon, attend dances, etc. But segregated housing defeats the purpose of going to a university. I wasn't crazy about gender-segregated housing either for that matter. I think the more give and take we can have the better we all are. 

Yes I get you. I am just sick of the double standard.  If a group of white students said the same thing. They would burn the place down and there would be 24 7 coverage of the white separatist

[Burnt Reynolds 5,058]

Zero difference between safe spaces and segregation here. Might sound a tad familiar:

 

 

https://englishc.pressbooks.com/chapter/5-jim-crow/

Quote

One rationale for the systematic exclusion of black Americans from southern public society was that it was for their own protection. An early 20th-century scholar suggested that having allowed blacks in white schools would mean “constantly subjecting them to adverse feeling and opinion”, which might lead to “a morbid race consciousness”.

 

You can see why the left are resorting to burning and trying to rewrite history books.. tends to remind us what the point of liberalism used to be. 

[laylalex 7,247]

1 hour ago, Nature Boy 2.0 said:

Yes I get you. I am just sick of the double standard.  If a group of white students said the same thing. They would burn the place down and there would be 24 7 coverage of the white separatist

I don't really disagree with you. But I still have the question: why do these students feel this way at NYU? It isn't all of the black students, and it isn't even all of the liberal black students, so what is going wrong here? Of course there are always going to be some students who will never be satisfied -- helllloooooo we were all teenagers and in our very early 20s once -- but are the grievances based in something real? And if so, what can be done besides a segregated dorm? And if not, what resources exist to help these people feel more integrated?