I am sure that Dr. Martin Luther King would be sick to his stomach seeing that 63 years after Brown vs. Board of Education, the SCOTUS decision that ended segregation of schools in America, universities are holding segregated commencements for black students. I am absolutely gobsmacked. Evidently Harvard, who just hosted their first segregated commencement ceremonies for both their undergraduates and graduate schools, is not the first to do this.

A small school in Virginia decided that they would segregate students by achievement (by hosting a First Generation Ceremony), sexual preference (Lavender Graduation for the LGBTQ students),  international scholarship (Global Scholars Ceremony for international students and students who studied abroad), and race with the Raza Ceremony (named for La Raza which is really a hate group who cloaks themselves in civic engagement). All of these ceremonies were lumped under the (predictable) descriptor of “Diversity Year-End Ceremonies”. Well let me tell you something,  I attended a small, private liberal arts college in Los Angeles with an 80% international student body. If we had gone that route there might have been 20 of us in the hall (and I mean the Americans). If we took the gays out-wow maybe 10 of us? If these numbers sound off to you, my school had a large fashion program-stereotypical, maybe. But true.

Thank goodness there are some voices of reason out there to tamper down some of this insanity we find ourselves confronted with daily these days. Ward Connerly, president of the American Civil Right Institute, and former regent in the University of California system, sums up my feelings about the separate commencement ceremonies.

“It’s not easy being a student, being a student anywhere, but especially at a place like Harvard,” Ward Connerly, president of the American Civil Rights Institute and a former University of California regent who campaigned against racial preference in admissions, said sympathetically.

But events like black commencements, he continued, serve only to “amplify” racial differences. “College is the place where we should be teaching and preaching the view that you’re an individual, and choose your associates to be based on other factors rather than skin color,” he said.

“Think about it,” Mr. Connerly added. “These kids went to Harvard, and they less than anyone in our society should worry about feeling welcome and finding comfort zones. They don’t need that.”

Harvard even had a separate commencement for their students of Latin extraction and a separate black commencement for their undergrads as well. All ceremonies were open to students of all races, but virtually all who attended the black commencements were black. Imagine that, white people did not feel welcome at a segregated commencement? Pfft. Haters.

One graduate of the school’s African-American and social studies program summed it up so very eloquently:

“For me, the black community is a home away from home,” Olivia Castor, a student speaker from Spring Valley, N.Y., who earned a bachelor’s degree in social studies and African-American studies, said exuberantly.

“It’s where I spent most of my time, where I found my closest friends and, more importantly, where I’ve learned the most important lessons during my time here,” she went on. “So thank you, thank you for being beautiful, brilliant and blackety-black-black.”

I cannot even begin to explain how horrified I am on so many levels. SMOD 2017 where are you?