# Are dormitories with ethnic themes segregationist? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [December 16, 2002, 8:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-dormitories-with-ethnic-themes-segregationist/143048 "2002-12-16T08:10:53Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Garfield226](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/9e8a1a/32.png) [@Garfield226](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Garfield226)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2002, 8:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-dormitories-with-ethnic-themes-segregationist/143048/61 "2002-12-17T08:13:47Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Azael \* > \*\*If the Chinese student were the one _renting out_ the apartment then discrimination would be illegal, instead this student is merely demonstrating a **preference** for a roomate. This is not illegal and hopefully you can see the difference. > > Sure if it were a white person saying that only white people should apply then we might look askance at the ad, but the fact remains that the white person is not the landlord and is not setting policy (might as well consider it a warning that this person is an ass you wouldn’t want to live with anyway). \*\* From wayyyyy back on Page 1 (sorry, I joined the thread late). Wait a minute…am I understanding this? A Chinese person can say, “Hey, I only want to live with Chinese people. I won’t even consider anyone else.” and everyone’s fine with that, but if a white person does it, he’s “an ass you wouldn’t want to live with anyway.”? Please tell me I’m reading this wrong… FTR, I live with a Chinese guy right now, and if I ever have someplace where I have control over my roommates, perhaps I’ll specify “No Chinese need apply.” Ok, so I wouldn’t. I don’t think it’d go over very well. I’m having a lot of problems with my roommate. However, I’m intelligent enough to realize that it may just be him (well, and the two other Asian folks on the floor) or his personality, and not necessarily his race that’s the problem here. Either it’s reasonable for EVERYONE to realize that being able to live with someone has a little to do with their race and a lot to do with their personality, or it’s reasonable to expect EVERYONE to discriminate. Pick one. ---
**Author:** ![december](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/838e76/32.png) [@december](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/december)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2002, 12:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-dormitories-with-ethnic-themes-segregationist/143048/62 "2002-12-17T12:12:10Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Kimstu \*(By the way, **december** , when are you going to start paying me for this research-assistant job? I swear, on the average thread you start I dig up about five times as much data as you ever do. :D) I apreciate it, **Kimstu**. I have attempted to repay you by doing some additional research myself. Here are some items of interest:[ol][li]I was suspicious of the New York Civil Rights Coalition (the group who did the survey), because I had never heard of them and because they were criticized in that Stanford Daily cite in the OP. Turns out, Michael Meyers, Executive Director of the New York Civil Rights Coalition, had become the youngest Assistant Director of the NAACP in 1975, so he does have a real civil rights pedigree. Meyers says, [/li][quote] By treating minority students as surrogates for their communities rather than as individuals, [ethnic dorms foster racial group thinking and defeat a university’s mission to broaden all students’ horizon.](http://www.dartreview.com/archives/000111.php) [/quote] [li]Dartmouth’s black dorm is segregated, just as Cornell’s is.[/li][quote] Noting that [only one of the 122 residents of Cornell’s African-American House was white](http://www.dartreview.com/archives/000111.php), Meyers denounced university-sanctioned de facto segregation. “Aside from the university’s and the regents’ collective failure to correct the pattern of racial segregation, they have ratified this segregation with the double-talk of ‘freedom of choice,’” he said. “If Cornell were a Southern university standing behind white students who chose to live in segregated dorms, the feds would demand immediate desegregation.” [/quote] [li]That cite also points out that the ethnic dorms at Dartmouth are part of a pattern of separation.[/li][quote] The ethnic residence halls are part of a larger institutional separatism, which includes special academic support programs for certain minority groups, whole academic departments, and extracurricular programs which range from professional groups such as the Society of Black Engineers to clubs based solely on ethnic and racial affiliations. [/quote] [li]Dinesh D’Souza calls [segregated dormitories _fashionable_](http://www.acton.org/publicat/randl/91jul_aug/lips.html). [/li][quote] Integration, the once-proud goal of the civil rights movement, is depicted by the students and administration alike as selling out one’s cultural heritage. At some universities segregated dormitories, which were considered intolerable only twenty years ago, are now considered fashionable. [/quote] [li]D’Souza’s point about a trend toward separatism is borne out by NAACP poll results.[/li][quote] A recent poll by the NAACP found that [over 40 percent of blacks and 50 percent of whites now accept the doctrine of racially separate but equal](http://www.salon.com/news/col/horo/1999/09/13/racism/index1.html). This is not terribly surprising, given that most of the “liberal” institutions in our culture have given their blessing to the idea. Whites have their own segregationist impulses, of course, but the license that the black leadership has given to separatism among the educated classes has had a real impact. [/quote] [li]Alan Kors, Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania, sees a pernicious trend toward telling students that they _are_ their ethnicities or sexuality.[/li][quote] I think that the more racial, social engineering that universities have tried and the more they have tried to tell people “You are your race,” “You are your sex,” “You are your sexuality,” the worse, not the better human relations have become. It should be obvious to anyone with open eyes that [every year, our universities become more balkanized and more segregated](http://www.declaration.net/news.asp?docID=3185). The second aspect of it that really ought to trouble people is that students who could have applied to historically black colleges and universities, students who could have chosen to go to school with people just like them, but chose to go to universities that are supposed to be in a real sense “diverse,” those students are told “Here’s what it means to be black,” “Here’s what it means to be female,” “Here’s what it means to be Latino,” “Here’s what it means to be Asian American,” “Here’s what it means to be gay.” And [they are taught] it’s one politics, one voice, one worldview, one set of answers that depend upon externalities. You have to go back to the Third Reich and notions of German physics and Jewish physics to find that kind of racialism that exists now. [/quote] [li]Kors argues that the temporary separation has been counter-productive toward letting people develop according to their own individual selves. [/li][quote] And the arguments that [the Left] used to convince people of this was “If you have a temporary period of heightened racial identity for the purposes of a university, it will lead us into an academic world in which people can individuate and diversify according to their own likes.” That was either a false promise or a fraudulent promise. But it certainly is the opposite of what has occurred. Everything that universities do is an attempt to create in people a racial sense of self, a sexual sense of self, a sexuality sense of self. [/quote] [/ol] ---
**Author:** ![monstro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba9def/32.png) [@monstro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monstro)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2002, 3:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-dormitories-with-ethnic-themes-segregationist/143048/63 "2002-12-17T15:30:12Z")
> [@](#): > > Typical colleges were nearly lily-white 40 years ago, but I don’t think they are today. My college wasn’t that atypical (big state school in Georgia) and it was between 80-85% white. ---
**Author:** ![smiling\_bandit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9a140/32.png) [@smiling\_bandit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smiling_bandit)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2002, 3:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-dormitories-with-ethnic-themes-segregationist/143048/64 "2002-12-17T15:46:18Z")
I wonder exactly what the “theme” dorms are all about. I mean, who decides what is appropriate to the theme? How varied is it? What makes an “asian” dorm or a “black” dorm? Which Asian? Heck, what is “black” culture? I don’t understand that, much be able to comment on the isue. ---
**Author:** ![december](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/838e76/32.png) [@december](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/december)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2002, 4:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-dormitories-with-ethnic-themes-segregationist/143048/65 "2002-12-17T16:32:11Z")
Just noticed that my point #2 above is incorrect. The quote is from the _Dartmouth_ Review, but it was addressing _Cornell’s_ situation. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2002, 6:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-dormitories-with-ethnic-themes-segregationist/143048/66 "2002-12-17T18:34:49Z")
Thanks for the cites, **december**! But you still haven’t provided any evidence that any of these ethnic-themed dorms **are actually promoting or causing racial segregation**. You’ve just got a bunch of opinions from various conservatives who don’t like them on ideological grounds, and who therefore conclude that they **must** be “balkanizing” or “segregating” the students. But that ain’t evidence. Are students really drawing further apart along racial lines? The current [data on interracial marriage](http://www.sistahspace.com/nommo/ir17.html), for example, suggests the very **opposite** is happening: although interracial dating is a tense subject on some campuses, the black/white intermarriage rate has been steadily rising, and it’s been rising significantly **more** for college-educated blacks. Intermarriage among whites and Hispanics or whites and Asians is growing even faster. How do we explain this if we believe that college students are growing **more** racially segregated rather than **less**? If you look at actual studies of diversity and integration on campus, rather than just handwringing ideological laments from anti-multiculturalism conservatives, it appears that what is actually happening is the very reverse of what they fear. [Debra Humphreys](http://www.diversityweb.org/diversity_innovations/institutional_leadership/campus_climate_culture/student_segregation.cfm) surveyed these studies for the Ford Foundation Campus Diversity Initiative. The studies found that while many students tended to **think** that different ethnic groups kept to themselves, their own social interactions didn’t bear that out: > [@](#): > > [Stanford researcher Anthony] Antonio found that students at UCLA do, indeed, view their campus as racially balkanized. “More than 90% of students in his surveys agreed that students predominantly cluster by race and ethnicity on campus. A small majority (52%) said that students rarely socialize across racial lines.” > > Antonio, however, didn’t stop at just measuring perceptions. He also calculated the actual racial/ethnic diversity or homogeneity of close friendship groups on campus. […] “Just 17% of UCLA students, or about one in six, reported having friendship groups that were racially and ethnically homogenous. Homogenous groups and those groups with predominantly one race/ethnicity together account for about one-quarter of the sample. The most common friendship group on campus (46%), however, was racially and ethnically mixed with no racial or ethnic group constituting a majority.” > > At the level of student friendship groups, then, racial and ethnic balkanization is not a dominant, overall campus characteristic at UCLA. Several other earlier studies also suggest a high degree of student interaction across racial and ethnic lines at campuses across the country, especially among students of color. A 1991 study that examined patterns of intergroup contact at 390 institutions across the country confirmed that self-segregation is not a general pattern among students of color. The authors of this study examined the frequency with which students dined, roomed, socialized, or dated someone from a racial/ethnic group different from their own. “Chicano, Asian American, and African American students reported widespread and frequent interaction across race/ethnicity in these informal situations. White students were least likely to report engaging in any of these activities across race/ethnicity. Sixty-nine percent of Asian Americans and 78% of Mexican American students frequently dined with someone of a different ethnic or racial background compared with 55% of African American students and 21% of white students. Nearly 42% of Asian American students reported interracial or interethnic dating compared with 24% of Mexican Americans, 13% of African Americans, and 4% of white students.” In short, racial integration on campuses has been steadily improving, and appears to be resulting in significant increases in the ultimate form of racial integration, namely interracial marriage. It is a common superficial error to assume that ethnic-themed “diversity” efforts to foster minority cultures would tend to “balkanize” students, but the actual **evidence** doesn’t support that conclusion. ---
**Author:** ![jane11e](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f05b48/32.png) [@jane11e](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jane11e)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2002, 8:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-dormitories-with-ethnic-themes-segregationist/143048/67 "2002-12-19T20:08:58Z")
You won’t find this on the University website. When I went to Cornell, I spent some time at Uj although I didn’t live there. It was very much an African-American living center. Not a celebration of African cultures but a shelter for its residents, understandably, from other prevalent cultures (the all-white frat/sorority culture, the stay-in-your-room-and-study culture, the obsessed-with-medieval-studies culture, etc.). I’m not black but when I was young, I was the only minority student in an all-white school. You could say it was a learning experience, but yes, it sucked. Still the people who are most harmed, I think, by ethnic housing for minorities are people who end up living in most-to-all-white dorms because minority students are housed somewhere else. I think ethnic housing (other than language houses) should be abolished for this reason. Particularly at Cornell, I doubt very much that on campus, a black student would be afraid for themselves in their dorm for being black. At Cornell, it is much more likely that, as a true minority, you have to deal with romantic notions of exoticism than hick tendencies toward violence. Is it any better to have an all-Republican dorm called Reagan Hall? Or an all-gay dorm in honor of Oscar Wilde? ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2002, 8:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-dormitories-with-ethnic-themes-segregationist/143048/68 "2002-12-19T20:42:48Z")
**jane11e:** _Still the people who are most harmed, I think, by ethnic housing for minorities are people who end up living in most-to-all-white dorms because minority students are housed somewhere else._ But if “minority-ethnic-themed” housing could accomodate at most only about 10% of the minority students (and don’t forget that most such housing, unlike Cornell’s Ujamaa, has a significant number of non-minority student residents), how much of a difference does it really make to the racial balance of the rest of the dorms? Again, I think we have to draw a clear distinction between the effects that we **think** such policies **“would”** have and the effects that **evidence** shows the policies **are really** having. ---
**Author:** ![jane11e](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f05b48/32.png) [@jane11e](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jane11e)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2002, 4:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-dormitories-with-ethnic-themes-segregationist/143048/69 "2002-12-26T16:39:43Z")
Numerically, Kimstu, you are probably correct, particularly if you’re talking about all minorities v. the black and/or Latino/a student community. However, there was a subjective feeling on the Cornell campus that resulted from the existence of Uj. After the first year at college, people gravitate towards people with similar interests anyhow. Why do racially-based separations have to take place from the very start? On another vein, why is this an American phenomenon? I didn’t see the same in African students. Maybe this is because they came to the US to study not with other African students. I don’t know. At a UN speech I attended, an African Ambassador to the US who was also a professor of African Studies at a number of universities, asked the audience (I’m paraphrasing), “Why am I not invited to speak at ‘African-American universities’? Why am I only invited to speak about Africa by whites?” Maybe this should be a separate topic. ---
**Author:** ![KarlGrenze](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/dbc845/32.png) [@KarlGrenze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KarlGrenze)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2002, 11:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-dormitories-with-ethnic-themes-segregationist/143048/70 "2002-12-27T11:04:40Z")
Well jane, the title of the topic was not only about blacks, but about all the minorities. Racially-based separations (unfortunate in many cases, not in others) occur even if there is no Ujamaa. That house is officially not black-only. That students have decided to make it one is another thing. And I repeat a comment I made earlier. All the activity houses at CU carry an extra activity fee. Only those that are really interested in the theme of the house will be willing to pay the extra money to live there. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-dormitories-with-ethnic-themes-segregationist/143048.md?page=3)