John Hardly, with regard to your 24 Jul 07 - 09:08 AM post:

I wrote that at a particular period of time during my college years at an overwhelmingly White college, I "sat at the lunch table with other Black students instead of sitting at the "integrated table". I also wrote that "that was just what the doctor [in me] ordered at that time and in that space."

Note that I said "at that time and in that space". I did not say "all the time". I also did not say that I was forced to sit at a certain table or prohibited from sitting at another table.

I think that it's important to note that I made a VOLUNTARY decision about an action in a SOCIAL SETTING and not in an academic setting. While the location of the lunch room table was in the cafetaria of a federally funded college, the students concerned did not have the power or the desire to enforce a ruling that only Black people could enter the cafetaria at a certain time or that no non-Black people could be served or that the food or service for non-Black people would be inferior to the food and service for Black people.

Fwiw, I see nothing wrong with students VOLUNTARILY deciding to join organizations with persons of the same race/ethnicity or VOLUNTARILY deciding to room with people of the same race/ethnicity or VOLUNTARILY deciding to sit and eat with persons of the same race/ethnicity-particularly if most of their academic-and many of their social interactions-are with persons "outside" of their race/ethnicity. As long as these organizations don't exclude persons of other races/ethnicities, or people aren't prohibited from sitting at a certain table, then I think it's their own choice and their own business.

However, I believe that it would have been [and still is] not only wrong, but illegal if students, or college personnel segregated other students in classrooms, laboratories, or other academic settings by race, ethnicity, gender, religion, sexual orientation, or for whatever reasons except those based upon academic criteria.

I also think it would be wrong and illegal to segregate students by race/ethnicity/religion in college dormitories and in social organizations which receive money from the college or receive city, state, and/or federal monies.

John Hardly, with regard to your statement that "It isn't about whites wanting to segregate from blacks. It is quite often, and for their own reason, blacks who wish to segregate themselves", I'm not going to attempt to quantify which groups of individuals wish to segregate themselves more. Besides not having a clue what the wishes of 20 million or more Black people are and the wishes of how many million White people are, it seems to me that what is important is to safeguard the rights of people to have racially diverse experiences in institutions that receive public funding or are supported in part or in whole by tax dollars.

Finally, John, I have concerns about your statements that "Recent studies have shown that, contrary to the "diversity" model that has been pushed on us as "better" for education, actually blacks in their own controlled schools are doing better academically without all the social engineering pressure that requires them to excel in a cultural setting that is an obstacle to their better learning."

I find these statements to be too simplistic. For instance "which studies?" And what "diversity model"? And who is the "us" that this model [or models] have been pushed on? And who is doing the pushing and why? Also what is meant by "blacks in their own controlled schools"?

And what in the world is meant by the sentence that these "blacks" are "doing better academically without all the social engineering pressure that requires them to excel in a cultural setting that is an obstacle to their better learning."

I've no doubt that there have been times that some Black students in segregated schools did better academically than some Black students in integregated schools. However, there might be any number of reasons why students in one type of school would have better academic records than students in another type of school. For instance, I'm curious about how the curriculums between these two types of schools differed, how these schools were funded, what the economic status was of the each schools' students, and what the faculty composition by race/ethnicity and gender was in these schools.   

In case there is any doubt, let me take this opportunity to state for the record that I strongly believe in racial diversity and other forms of multiculturalism in educational settings -and other settings.

Furthermore, I strongly believe that multiculturalism should be not only valued, but also taught, promoted, facilitated, and safeguarded.