California State University to Offer Segregated Housing to Black Students

[Pinkie-Dawn]

"A safe space for Black CSLA students …'

California State University Los Angeles recently rolled out segregated housing for black students.

The arrangement comes roughly nine months after the university's Black Student Union issued a set of demands in response to what its members contend are frequent "racist attacks" on campus, such as "racially insensitive remarks" and "microaggressions" by professors and students. One demand was for a "CSLA housing space delegated for Black students."

"[It] would provide a cheaper alternative housing solution for Black students. This space would also serve as a safe space for Black CSLA students to congregate, connect, and learn from each other," the demand letter stated.

The newly debuted Halisi Scholars Black Living-Learning Community "focuses on academic excellence and learning experiences that are inclusive and non-discriminatory," Cal State LA spokesman Robert Lopez told The College Fix via email.

The public university has 192 furnished apartments in a residential complex on campus, and the Halisi community will be located there, Lopez said, adding it joins other themed living-learning communities already housed there.

Lopez declined to answer any additional questions or provide more details on the new community, such as how many rooms it encompasses, and whether it's a whole floor or just a few rooms.

Cal State LA joins UConn, UC Davis and Berkeley in offering segregated housing dedicated to black students. While these housing options are technically open to all students, they're billed and used as arrangements in which black students can live with one another.

MORE: 'Orwellian,' 'ghettoization': Criticisms mount against UConn's dorm wing for black males

MORE: Universities, students of color embrace segregated spaces on campus

Meanwhile, at Cal State LA, campus leaders took down much of the online information on the new housing that it posted in late July. And university housing officials and other campus officials rebuffed requests by The College Fix for more details.

If campus leaders are proud of the new housing, they appear disinclined to talk about it.

CSULA's Housing Services page offers one paragraph on the new black living-learning community, calling it an effort to "enhance the residential experience for students who are a part of or interested in issues of concern to the black community living on campus by offering the opportunity to connect with faculty and peers, and engage in programs that focus on academic success, cultural awareness, and civic engagement."

In addition to the Black Student Union's housing demand, the group also demanded a $30 million dollar scholarship endowment to aid black students, three new black faculty counselors, a new anti-discrimination policy and cultural competency course for faculty and students, and finally, a meeting with the president for them to discuss the "fulfillment and implementation of each demand."

After the Halisi housing community was announced, the Black Student Union celebrated on its Instagram page, calling it a "long overdue, but well deserved" achievement, Young America's Foundation reports.

Members of Cal State LA's Black Student Union declined requests for comment from The College Fix.

Young America's Foundation quoted from the Halisi housing application prior to university officials taking it offline. Rules students who seek to live in Halisi must agree to include "respect the differences of others that live in my community and look for positive thing to learn from them," "be an advocate for change if the tools and resources available are deemed inadequate," and "accept that I am still learning and need to be open to new ideas and experiences."

Source: https://www.thecollegefix.com/post/28906/

All I have to say is that Martin Luther King Jr. literally didn't die for this. Abolishing segregation was suppose to be an important achievement for African American history, but now because of the SJW movement in recent years, segregation is slowly crawling back to its pedestal. Whatever happen to judging people based on their character and not by their color?

 

[Guest123_x1]

Ugh...

We all thought our wonderful President was going to heal race relations starting as soon as he took office in 2009. I had been fearing that other movements in education, such as single-sex K-12 public schools, would eventually (although indirectly) lead to government-sanctioned racial re-segregation such as what's happening at California State University.
Everybody thinks that movements like Black Lives Matter are about promoting racial harmony, yet their actions give off the feeling that they want supremacy. After all, it's ok for certain key demographics to have supremacy, but not white people including me since we've been racist for way too long.
With black supremacist groups growing like crazy and demanding that we bow down to their every demand that they make, it's no wonder I think race relations are worse than they were 60-70 years ago.
I will, however, say that tensions would not be as bad as they are now if it weren't for Trayvon Martin getting killed by a racist Neighborhood Watchman, which led to an onslaught of killings of innocent black citizens by militarized law enforcement.

I am so glad I don't live in California. I don't know why our politicians think that California is a role model that the rest of the country has to emulate, especially when it comes to certain things including taxes and regulations. (Look at how expensive Wall Street speculators have made energy in CA and everywhere else through schemes like Cap and Trade! "Kenny Boy" Lay of Enron would be gushing with excitement if he were alive today.) And now, it looks like the rest of the country would eventually pick up the idea to follow California State in re-segregating student housing by decree.

[/rant] I know people will jump all over me for the above, but I'm getting damn sick and tired of having to bow to political correctness and the belief that certain demographics are superior to others.

 

[mew_nani]

Weren't blacks trying to end segregation decades ago? They went through hell and high water trying to end segregation in schools, busses, and everywhere else people could gather. Why are their great-grandchildren trying to start it all back up again?

This microaggression and safe space craze has got to stop one of these days. These people are legal adults; they can drive, enlist for the military, smoke, vote, and if they're 21, drink alcoholic beverages. Part of growing up is learning to deal with offensive things and that's something most people master in elementary school. You cannot as an adult expect the world to coddle you and treat you like an infant and protect you from scary things you don't like; you're old enough to be able to deal with it. Ironically in their drive to isolate themselves from scary "microagressions" and "racially insensitive remarks," they put in the very policy their grandparents and great-grandparents tried to hard to free them from. Is it really ok to be barred away from your fellow students because something they said makes you make frowny faces? Give me a break!

 

[Sir Codin]

I'm just wondering how it is that instead of moving a step forward from Martin Luther King's speech like we were supposed to, we ultimately moved two steps back.

 

[Somewhere_]

Great job undoing the work of the civil rights movement that blacks worked so hard for. What is the point if they are just self-segregating? Its quite counter-productive.

 

[Kanzler]

The fall semester has opened at universities across California after a year in which racial and ethnic tensions flared on campuses across the state and country.

This week, the spotlight turned to Cal State Los Angeles, which unexpectedly found itself having to respond to false reports that it had introduced "blacks only" housing.

It started with a dubious item posted on a conservative college student news website that said the university was now offering racially segregated housing.

That tidbit was picked up by a series of conservative websites, some of which dialed up the language, using "blacks only" to describe the new housing enclave. Television news broadcasts ran with the story, as thousands of people registered their anger in comment threads on social sites like Facebook and Reddit — one more reminder not to believe everything you read on social media.

By early Wednesday, The Los Angeles Times and The Huffington Post had weighed in with more skeptical takes.

After all the commotion, the university has made clear the reports are untrue.

The campus, which serves about 28,000 students, roughly 4 percent of them African-American, has indeed created a dorm space for 24 students oriented around the black community, a spokesman, Robert Lopez, said on Wednesday.

But, it's "open to all students."

"This living-learning community focuses on academic excellence and learning experiences that are inclusive and nondiscriminatory," Mr. Lopez said.

Residential communities organized around themes like race and gender are neither rare nor new on American college campuses.

Many California campuses offer similar residential communities, among them U.C. Davis, U.C. Berkeley, Stanford and at least two other Cal State campuses.

This year, debates have erupted over racially themed environments at Princeton University, the University of Iowa and the University of Connecticut.

Opponents argue that such programs promote racial silos and degrade the quality of learning, while supporters say they provide a sense of belonging to minority students who face discrimination.

Jonathan Thomas, a participant of the Cal State housing program, known as the Halisi Scholars Black Living-Learning Community, told the local CBS station that the new housing created a feeling of inclusion.

"You can go and be yourself and not have to worry about explaining how you're doing because of your skin color," he said.

Cal State officials and black student leaders both rejected the depictions of the housing program as segregationist.

Eddie Comeaux, associate professor of higher education at U.C. Riverside, said themed dorms have been a useful tool in higher education going back to at least the 1980s.

"This is not new," he said.

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/08/us/california-today-colleges-segregated-housing.html

 

[CoffeeDrink]

Ah. I can see it now. A beautiful land where each race marries someone like them. Wonderful separated areas where each race can enjoy their own separate cultures unimpeded by other races. Places where the white man is put in a pillory and mocked for his skin color.

These people disgust me.

 

[gimmepie]

I mean, ignoring the complete failure of continuing to improve upon Martin Luther King and the like's work, I seriously fail to see how this is going to help. It's just going to further cement the idea that everyone is too different and needs to be treated as such.

 

[Kanzler]

@Coffeedrink and gimmepie

Did either of you read that article I posted that exposed the original as conservative clickbait?

 

[Pinkie-Dawn]

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/08/us/california-today-colleges-segregated-housing.html

Well that's a relief, and at the same time, I feel outraged of being lied to from my previous source.

 

[Guest123_x1]

Well that's a relief, and at the same time, I feel outraged of being lied to from my previous source.

At least there won't be actual civil rights violations with this development. After I made my last post, I started to think "CSU would really stoop this low into violating the law?"

I don't know if I ever want to post in TRT (this section) again, though...

 

[CoffeeDrink]

@Coffeedrink and gimmepie

Did either of you read that article I posted that exposed the original as conservative clickbait?

If you have a specific sections for a color of skin tone and then claim "it's open to all students" amid the fallout it doesn't change the fact that they saw it necessary to create a separated area specifying and controlling access simply because of skin color. I find it unacceptable and detestable. You can say that it's 'only a small portion' but that's how things begin. These people are gaining traction, and it is sick.

So the school crafted the area for a specific color and said "it is open to all students". Open, as in others can come and go but only one color gets to stay. I just think the school panicked and tried to cover their ass as monetarily motivated groups often do. So I won't be surprised if they had several tasks on their docket removed/shredded. It is what it is. And it's a blacks only living space. Doesn't get more crystal than that.

Hope that helps clear up my end a bit.

 

[Esper]

This is not the segregation that was commonplace in the past. This is a simplification, but in the past white people forbid black people from accessing things and places that black people wanted to access. This is an example of black people asking for a black-specific space in one area of their education to help protect them from unwanted aggression. They're not asking to have segregated classes or to only be taught by black professors or anything like that. It's still open to non-black students. There are similar things on plenty of campuses. My own university had a bunch of colleges with different focuses and themes and whatnot. You didn't have to be an art student to be in the art college housing (like I was). It did tend to attract a lot of the art students of course because that's what the focus was. Having a dorm that focuses on black culture doesn't really sound different.

I find it kinda of funny that people are getting upset at this instead of getting upset at the people who are apparently harassing black students. With that kind of attitude among people I can understand why a black student would want to get away from others.

 

[Desert Stream~]

Well, if the students are fine with it, I guess we should be too?

 

[Arsenic]

Sounds to me like living quarters strongly aimed at only black students, that added in that anyone can live there if they want to just to stay on the good side of the segregation line. But it is way to close to segregation for me.

 

[Kanzler]

If you have a specific sections for a color of skin tone and then claim "it's open to all students" amid the fallout it doesn't change the fact that they saw it necessary to create a separated area specifying and controlling access simply because of skin color. I find it unacceptable and detestable. You can say that it's 'only a small portion' but that's how things begin. These people are gaining traction, and it is sick.

So the school crafted the area for a specific color and said "it is open to all students". Open, as in others can come and go but only one color gets to stay. I just think the school panicked and tried to cover their ass as monetarily motivated groups often do. So I won't be surprised if they had several tasks on their docket removed/shredded. It is what it is. And it's a blacks only living space. Doesn't get more crystal than that.

Hope that helps clear up my end a bit.

"for a color of skin tone" not really, it more so sounds like an area where "Black" events can be marketed - for example, if you were interested in speakers talking about Black issues, or a discussion about Black media, or any other event of interest to Black people or Black culture, you know where to go. Perhaps the living area also hosts some kind of Black learning community, which would be totally voluntary which you'd know if you've ever been to college.

Like, the bottom line is that anybody can live there. That's literally what the university came out to say. It's open as in anybody can live there. I don't know how that point could be made more clearly.

 

[The Gunney]

@Coffeedrink and gimmepie

Did either of you read that article I posted that exposed the original as conservative clickbait?

Your bias is showing.... The NYT is notoriously far left. I personally don't like any news source thus I have to rely on multiple news sources to find the middle ground. Taken from those sources I have no good indication as to the intent on the separate barracks but if it is used as depicted in NYT is it not encouraging at the very least an echo chamber and discouraging diversity?

Why not do the same thing for all cultures? If this is for a sense of judgement free community?

 

[Kanzler]

Your bias is showing.... The NYT is notoriously far left. I personally don't like any news source thus I have to rely on multiple news sources to find the middle ground. Taken from those sources I have no good indication as to the intent on the separate barracks but if it is used as depicted in NYT is it not encouraging at the very least an echo chamber and discouraging diversity?

Why not do the same thing for all cultures? If this is for a sense of judgement free community?

You could argue that, but the article is reporting that a university spokesperson came out and said that the dorms were open to everybody, literally in quotes. Are you suggesting that the NYT misquoted the university? Note that the OP article claims that the dorms were segregated, but had no quote from any source saying that those dorms were for Blacks only, or that the students to be living there would be somehow separate from the rest of the student body. Claiming that any institution is "segregated" is kind of a big deal, and if there's no evidence to back that up, then such a claim is purely inflammatory and highly biased. If we're talking about the relative bias of the OP and the NYT article, then the OP article is more biased since they're making big claims without anything to back it up.

 

[CoffeeDrink]

This is an example of black people asking for a black-specific space in one area of their education to help protect them from unwanted aggression ... I find it kinda of funny that people are getting upset at this instead of getting upset at the people who are apparently harassing black students. With that kind of attitude among people I can understand why a black student would want to get away from others.

It's nearly the exact opposite though. There haven't been many cases recently where the African American community has been targeted specifically because of their skin that I know of (I'm not saying it doesn't happen). I would have agreed with you, perhaps, were it not for the fact that the very same college students that attend these academic institutions claim that whites have never, ever been subject to prosecution to the level that they have, which is ridiculously and hideously false.

There have also been cases of students not related to black lives matter forming 'lines' to prevent entry into the schools they attend (which is classified as a misdemeanor under trespassing. At least I would have held it to that regard). There have been attacks on Caucasians simply because their skin. They scream at people just because they have different skin. They hate you just because of your skin tone. What? How does any of that make any sense? Also, they did demand 30 million in scholarships for blacks, more black professors, more black faculty and cheaper housing for blacks so, yeah, I would argue that they want to be taught by other blacks and the cream pie that they rode in on.

What, me college? College is about going to school. That's it. It isn't about colluding with friends, finding safe spaces, or causing unneeded or unwarranted ruckus. Destroying property, stealing property, vandalising and other damage is not a right of the student body. You go to school, learn a field of study and get a job in a field you are now specialized in. These whiny kids that always want it their way never had reality come around and smack them in the face with her dick.

At least that's what it was. Now students can disagree with a history teacher and have 'em fired for not liking history. We have kids wanting A's because they tried real hard. It's an epidemic of hurt feelings and it looks like it'll get worse before it gets better.

So, lessons I've learned from today's student body: whine to get your way. Piss on the American flag, just because, you know... Islam. I'm a victim and should get paid to breath oxygen. Everyone is here for me.

College used to actually mean higher education and the exchange of ideas and knowledge. These days I'm not too sure. I mean, you can get a degree in air conditioning so I wouldn't go flaunting the 'I went to college, so fuck you stick' too much.

 

[Herbalist]

This was an entertaining read {XD}

Let them do as they please as long as they aren't preventing anyone from participating. There's catholic/christian/muslim corners on every campus, frat houses and clubs for anything.

Americans are hilarious, you don't have to include yourself in every facet of every community. You don't have to paternalize them either, there are regulations in place that must be met, constitutional right that must be respected, they don't need your permission.





Oh and I hope Trump wins.