Southern Jim Crow laws might be history but segregation is making a comeback at Brown University.
Brown University has decided to offer a new kind of segregation, but now it’s being billed as “racial reconciliation” as the academic institution promotes segregated “dinner discussion groups” where black students can sit by themselves. Muslim women are also separated from others who are not of their sex and religion.
In the wake of the Charlottesville riots, the university is using a $30,000 grant from the Association of American Colleges and Universities to “break down racial hierarchies and create a positive narrative about race in the community,” reports the The Brown Daily Herald.
The source of the funding is the Newman’s Own Foundation and the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. Brown University Chaplain Rev. Janet Cooper-Nelson will be leading these reconciliation discussions, which she told the Brown newspaper will “allow the women to engage in topics such as the intersection of race, Islam and gender fluidity.”
Jamall Calloway, a Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America fellow, told the paper that he is optimistic the segregated groups won’t avoid controversial issues.
“I want to make sure that justice and liberation and fairness for black people isn’t compromised in rhetoric that focuses on healing and reconciliation,” Calloway said.
Brown is just one of 10 universities that the Association of American Colleges and Universities has chosen to bring the message of “transformative change” to students across America while they consider the “historic and contemporary effects of racism.”
While encouraging neo-segregation, the association says participating universities should be prepared to “educate, prepare and inspire the next generation of leaders to advance justice and build equitable communities.”
