George Wallace would be so pleased with Cornell University’s segregated rock climbing class.
Lwam Asfaw ’21 explained that when choosing a P.E. class, it was the BIPOC label that ultimately encouraged her to enroll in the course. She explains that the BIPOC label works to make participation more comfortable, accessible and encouraging in an unfamiliar environment. Asfaw said that people should be focusing less on why segregation exists and more on why there’s a need to segregate.
May 5th, 2021 at 3:28PM
The critical studies types will probably argue that it is empowering for people who have relatively little power to self-segregate.
Whether that argument would have cut much ice when the civil rights types of half a century ago came for the Polish Alliance or the Catholic Knights Insurance (which in my neighborhood served second-generation blue collar types, not exactly the local establishment) seems unlikely.
And that is how archetypal Scranton Democrats in Milwaukee got pushed to George Wallace, and later, Donald Trump.
May 5th, 2021 at 5:41PM
Stephen: I can’t argue with your analysis. Elites always make this mistake of going too far. They are making it again.
May 9th, 2021 at 6:29PM
Did no one at Cornell ask what this would look like (the optics) to the rest of the world? When ever an organization makes a bone-headed decision, I always wonder if the leaders did not listen to their staff or was their staff too stupid to see the problems coming at them.