New Report Blasts Yale, Other US Universities for ‘Neo-Segregation’

ET: WASHINGTON—A new report suggests that Yale University, and other U.S. higher education institutions more generally, widely engage in “neo-segregation,” that is, “voluntary racial segregation of students, aided by college institutions, into exclusive dormitories, common spaces, classes, and events.”

The report is part of a larger project by the National Association of Scholars (NAS). It includes a survey of 173 colleges and universities, public and private, in all 50 states, finding 46 percent of schools segregate student orientation programs, 43 percent segregate residential arrangements, and a towering 72 percent segregate graduation ceremonies.

At the report’s rollout on April 29 at Hillsdale College’s Kirby Center, Peter W. Wood, NAS president and the report’s co-author, quoted then-Gov. George Wallace’s 1963 inaugural address, “Segregation Now, Segregation Tomorrow, and Segregation Forever,” noting Wallace was correct about “Segregation Tomorrow,” since “more than half a century later, racial segregation comes as easy as breathing to many American colleges and universities.”

Wood acknowledged neo-segregation differs from Jim Crow in that it is voluntary: “It invites students of color to separate themselves out from the rest of the campus.” A Wall Street Journal op-ed timed to correspond with the rollout, however, charged, “Though these arrangements are ostensibly voluntary, students can’t easily opt out.” Moreover, while accommodations might be open to other races de jure, history demonstrates those trying to cross racial lines face bullying, intimidation, and even violence, inevitably leading to continued de facto neo-segregation.

Wood quoted the Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown v. Board of Education verdict that argues, “in the field of public education, the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place,” as segregated schools are “inherently unequal,” and thus segregated minority students were “deprived of the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the 14th Amendment.”

Separate Accommodations

Yet, according to Dion J. Pierre, co-author with Wood of the overall study, “Separate But Equal, Again: Neo-Segregation in American Higher Education,” the Brown decision included studies indicating black students in primarily white schools felt more inferior than those in segregated schools. Within a short time of Brown, accordingly, black students in predominantly white higher educational institutions began requesting separate accommodations and facilities.  more