DEALING WITH MERITOCRACY IN DEMOCRACY
485
Rounding out their affection for and devotion to "separate but equal,"
the race scholars and erstwhile civil rights advocates
talk
up the value of
segregation. They blame the desegregation movement for jeopardizing
"fine" black schools. In effect, and purpose, civil rights groups and black
identity advocates have cut and run away from integration. One black
pundit/activist, Robert L. Woodson, Sr., proudly points out that he broke
with the Civil Rights movement over "forced busing," adding that black
children "don't need to sit next to whites to get a quality education."
Some of us in the Civil Rights movement still dare to
think
that black
public colleges are mere relics of a discredited past. They need to be phased
out, merged with other state institutions, or discontinued altogether as
racially-identifiable institutions. Some of us
think
the purpose of bringing
blacks into the mainstream institutions of higher education, to the best and
better colleges, was
precisely
to give black students the opportunity to
immerse, to integrate, to--quoting Roy Wilkins-"learn what the white
boys learn;' and, yes, also to assist with the thorough education of white and
other college students about diversity and commonality-through interac–
tion, socialization, and education in a common core, expanded curriculum.
Who would have thought that blacks themselves would demand a
return to "separate but equal"? One black Ph.D. told me, "I want segrega–
tion again, only wi thout the lynching." From her American base, one black
student says that she's
tired
of living in a world full of white people; "I want
to know how it feels to live in a world full of people who look like me."
At Cornell University
in
Ithaca, New York, when I visited with stu–
dent residents of Ujarnaa, their black dorm-to urge them to abandon
their retreat from integration-one black student leader shot back, "I did–
n't come to Cornell to be white." And, it seems, not to be a scholar, either.
So, on-of all places-college campuses, there is a confusion as to culture
and race. Students don't know that there is no such thing as "race," that it's
a mere social invention, and they don't know the basics about culture. In
any inner-city neighborhood, there are many cultures represented. Blacks,
like whites, have various religions, languages, and nationalities.
But, the driving philosophy behind some Afrocentrics, masquerading
as multiculturalists or pluralists, is that all blacks share a common culture,
a common heritage, a common
(if
not identical) "black" experience. To
the naked eye, it seems they are depicting blacks as look-alikes, who talk,
pray, think, love, and "be" black-who walk
in
lockstep. When will stu–
dents learn-when will they be taught--as Dr. Kenneth B. Clark often
told me--that cultures are not like water and oil;
cultures mix.
Shockingly, as we approach the new rnillenium, many still cling to the
old-fashioned thinking that race-mixing, that cultural interchange, is unset–
tling, unnatural, and unnecessary.
