MA college pushes blacks-only dorms for safety

A longtime conservative columnist says a college deserves scrutiny for a plan to segregate its black students from the predominantly white student body.

Williams College, a liberal arts college of 2,100 students in Massachusetts, is home to an anti-racism student movement that is suggesting “affinity housing” for black students, which would separate them from others according to their race.

The College Fix reports that members of The Coalition Against Racist Education Now are proposing the establishment of non-white housing that it claims will "assist in making the College…more welcoming, supportive and safe."

Syndicated columnist DeRoy Murdock, a founding member of Project 21, says imagine the backlash if white students demanded their own dorms.

“If you say we black folks want to have our own dormitory, you and I might talk about it, and a few others,” he observes, “but you're not going to have NBC Nightly News, World News Tonight, CNN, the big newspapers, etcetera all drop everything and come to a screeching halt and start screaming on the roof tops. So, yeah, there is a double standard."

The school newspaper has endorsed the student proposal in an editorial, suggesting:

Some say affinity housing reinforces division, arguing that having minoritized students cluster in one space would be harmful to the broader campus community. We believe, however, that allowing for a space where students can express their identities without fear of tokenization or marginalization will encourage students to exist more freely in the broader campus community, rather than recede from it.

Murdock says still another issue is racism itself.

“If black people do it then it's somehow okay and a celebration of diversity,” he warns, “whereas if white people do it, it's just plain old prejudice bigotry and hatred."